7 ms·
Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’: 10,000 times faster than light
- jerf 14y ago"If it turns out that we actually can communicate data via quantum entanglement, we now know that it’ll be much faster than the speed of light." No, no, no, no, no. No. No. No. Quantum entanglement can not be used to communicate in that manner, on its own. This is well-established, and given the how mathematical the establishment is, it's not going to change anytime soon. No. No. No. Stop that. No.
- olgeni 14y agoToo bad - it could have saved a few telecommuters at Yahoo!.
- abstractbill 14y agoEarlier on, the article says: "As of our current understanding of quantum mechanics, though, it is impossible to send data using quantum entanglement, preserving the theory of relativity. A lot of work is being done in this area, though, and some physicists believe that faster-than-light communication might be possible with some clever manipulation of entangled particles." Shame it's so vague about those some physicists!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cwzwarich 14y agoThere are skeptics who maintain that the various "no-signaling theorems" in physics are simply "begging the question" and rely on hypotheses that are too strong, e.g. http://people.uleth.ca/~kent.peacock/FQXi_v2.pdf http://people.uleth.ca/~kent.peacock/FQXi_v2.pdf
- nessus42 14y agoYes, they shouldn't get their hopes up too much. Since the Many Worlds Interpretation is the simplest one, it is also the most likely one. With MWI there is no spooky action at a distance, and nothing is actually transmitted faster than the speed of light.
- wamatt 14y ago> Since the Many Worlds Interpretation is the simplest one, it is also the most likely one The simplest defeasible claim in 2013, is still: "we don't know". Consider, 'How does the sun come up every day?' Answer A: God makes it happen. Answer B: The earth is a spinning geoid that rotates eastwards, once about it's axis, roughly every 24 hours. However most of the effect is not related to the orbits of either the sun or earth, with respect to each other. The sun "rises" is more an observational effect of a stationary observer on the surface of the earth, having their field of view rotated. (For the record, answer B can be improved of course, though that's not the point here) "Simplicity" does not mean a catchall (Answer A). It also does not necessarily mean linguistic brevity either. There is debate around what it means and it's beyond the scope of my comment[1]. This is the problem with string theory, that also tends to be popular among the MWI crowd too. It's overly broad and the math looks pretty, but those are not sufficient conditions for a good scientific theory. (Oblig xkcd [1]) MWI, like string theory, makes little if any falsifiable and testable claims. [1]http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simplicity/ [2]http://xkcd.com/171/ http://xkcd.com/171/
- eridius 14y agoA fair definition of "simplicity" is relying on the fewest (or simplest) assumptions. "God made it happen" relies on the most complicated assumption possible, that of an omnipotent god. It is never the simplest answer, except linguistically.
- Eliezer 14y agoUm, no. MWI is simplest in the strict, formal, information-theoretic, Kolmogorov-complexity sense, while fitting the data to equal precision with any competitor. That's kinda the whole point of MWI. http://lesswrong.com/lw/q3/decoherence_is_simple/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/q3/decoherence_is_simple/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/q4/decoherence_is_falsifiable_and_testable/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/q4/decoherence_is_falsifiable_and_te...
- OGinparadise 14y agoBut the title leads people to click. Why let about the little details like truth and math interfere with that?
- alanctgardner2 14y agoMaybe I'm mistaken, but I thought Einstein coined 'spooky action' sarcastically, to try and point out that it was absurd and violated his theories. I guess there aren't any better, sexy physicist names to put in the headline to attract clicks.
- Scriptor 14y agoI think that's what happend. Schrodinger's cat was also initially conceived to ridicule the idea of quantum superposition.
- ars 14y agoThe name Big Bang was also coined to ridicule the idea.
- stcredzero 14y ago"Star Wars" was used to ridicule Reagan's anti-ballistic missile initiative.
- olalonde 14y agoI had never heard of that so I tried to find a reference and it appears to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Etymology
- ISL 14y agoPoisson's (Arago's) Spot was meant as ridicule, and ultimately became one of the definitive experiments to justify the wave theory of light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arago_spot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arago_spot Amaze your friends! Shoot light through steel ball bearings with a laser pointer.
- jivatmanx 14y agoThe speed of light ought to be enough for anyone.
- kevint8 14y agoWe need the ansible to head off into the final frontier.
- Xcelerate 14y agoWell, actually it poses a lot of problems. Communications that have back-and-forth transfers can be very slow. For instance, if I wanted to do a distributed computation with a server on the other side of the world, it would be limited by the speed of light. From where I am to Australia is about 48 ms. So if I want to communicate there and receive a reply, that's about 1/10 of a second right there. I can only do that 10 times a second then. Not so good. Not to mention the Mars mission has to wait anywhere from 8-19 minutes to get data between earth and the rover. We could certainly use > c if it was possible.
- martindale 14y agoI believe the poster of this comment was being sarcastic, in the spirit of Bill Gates' [debatably misattributed] quote: "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
- Zimahl 14y agoOn Earth, it's fine. Communicating with elements outside of Earth, the speed of light is way too slow. Talking with Mars is anywhere from 3 minutes to a 22 minute delay[1]. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to control a rover or talk with Mars settlers in real time? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars#Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars#Communicat...
- a_p 14y agoIt's not fast enough for high frequency traders. That's why all the major HF traders pay large sums of money to rent space for their servers at the site of the exchanges.
- wjnc 14y agoIt's even better in German: "spukhafte Fernwirkung"
- nolanpro 14y agoScrew that, faster than the speed of light should be back in time. I want the information before it was sent!
- ars 14y agoHow does this rule out hidden variables? I am aware of Bells inequality, but how do they show that for this specific experiment there were no hidden variables in play?
- fjorder 14y agoThey test a CHSH Bell inequality in this paper. This rules out local hidden variable theories. Non-local hidden variable (NLHV) theories are another matter entirely. Indeed, some NLHV theories may reproduce the predictions of quantum theory exactly.
- oneandoneis2 14y ago> One half of the pair was then observed, and the time for the other half to assume the same state is measured. How?? How is it possible to observe whether or not an entangled particle has had its state resolved by the other particle being observed?
- sbashyal 14y agoIn a pair of quantum particles [1], when one is spinning-up, other is spinning down even when they are separated. Therefore it is possible to find out about the state of one by looking at the other. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement#Concept http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement#Concept
- colanderman 14y agoYes but doing so collapses the wavefunction. Hence there's no way to observe when the wavefunction collapses.
- ubercow13 14y agoBy a series of repeated experiments and statistical inference?
- aroberge 14y agoMany (most?) interpretations of quantum mechanics do not involve a "collapse" of the wavefunction. The Copenhagen interpretation, which is the oldest and better known, does, but the many-worlds interpretation (which I dislike), which is favoured by many working in cosmology and quantum gravity, does not involve a collapse of the wavefunction.
- lnanek2 14y agoWell, for entangled light, figuring out the path taken by one part of the pair forces both to produce no interference patterns. Their superpositions both collapse into a set state. I assume there's a similar effect for electron deflection or whatever they are using. Electron beams can similarly produce interference patterns.
- fjorder 14y agoContrary to the claims of the extremetech article, they have not closed all loopholes in this experiment. Specifically, the detection loophole has not been closed. This loophole is caused by not being able to detect a high enough portion of the photons your source emits. A paranoid person might argue that the ones you do detect are not a representative sample. For example, some devious third party could be choosing which photons you detect in such a way that your results are skewed. Yes... This is a paranoid suggestion, but closing loopholes is all about satisfying the paranoid. In this paper they invoke the assumption of "fair sampling". i.e. They assume what they do detect is representative. Ergo, they have not closed the detection loophole in this experiment. Fair sampling is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make and is very commonly used, so this should not be interpreted as invalidating their results. It just leaves room for improvement in the future, since single photon detectors with sufficient efficiency to close the detection loophole do now exist (They are very bleeding edge). Note that the paper is correct and does not make the claim that "all loopholes" have been closed. The extremetech article got it wrong.
- pdonis 14y agothe detection loophole has not been closed. Not completely, but if I'm reading the paper correctly, they claim a detection rate of 91%, which is pretty high. Previous experiments had much lower detection rates. So while it may not completely close the loophole, it does make the detection loophole argument ("the photons you detected weren't a representative sample") much more "paranoid", to use your word.
- Raz0rblade 14y agoIt is so simple, this is the same object seen over 2 places. Think of a fishing tank, the side glass wall and the front glass wall show the same fish. And that's i hope an easy to understand example of an extra dimension, it solves many physics problems add a dimension.. As the fish swims in the tank, both walls show change in position to and no need for communication at all, its just one fish. you need proof for extra-dimensional existence just take all those experiments that could be solved by it .. double split... spooky action .... and many more.. (even quantum computers inner working)
- bornonmars 14y agoQuantum internet is "starting to become feasible"? It will be in their daily lives so much faster than that.