Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ Is Real.
In a landmark study, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment that they say proved one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behavior.
The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of standard physics known as “locality,” which states that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. The Delft study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, lends further credence to an idea that Einstein famously rejected. He said quantum theory necessitated “spooky action at a distance,” and he refused to accept the notion that the universe could behave in such a strange and apparently random fashion.
Einstein was deeply unhappy with the uncertainty introduced by quantum theory and described its implications as akin to God’s playing dice.
But since the 1970s, a series of precise experiments by physicists are increasingly erasing doubt — alternative explanations that are referred to as loopholes — that two previously entangled particles, even if separated by the width of the universe, could instantly interact.
The new experiment, conducted by a group led by Ronald Hanson, a physicist at the Dutch university’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, and joined by scientists from Spain and England, is the strongest evidence yet to support the most fundamental claims of the theory of quantum mechanics about the existence of an odd world formed by a fabric of subatomic particles, where matter does not take form until it is observed and time runs backward as well as forward.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Love Einstein -- I recommend Walter Issacson's biography -- but he was wrong. "God" does play dice. All the evidence for the past 60 years or so demonstrates that.
But yup! Einstein was still a very cool guy and he got a lot of stuff right.
R&K
So, good on them!
The word "yet" is key.
Scientific conjectures, theories, and results need to be falsifiable, and the scientific community exists to support this requirement.
The result presented is a great example of the principle.
“I think this is a beautiful and ingenious experiment and it will help to push the entire field forward,” said David Kaiser, a physicist at M.I.T., who was not involved in the study. However, Dr. Kaiser, who is with another group of physicists who are preparing to perform an even more ambitious experiment next year that will soon measure light captured at the far edges of the universe, also said he did not think every scintilla of doubt had been erased by the Dutch experiment.
<snip>
“The experiment has closed two of the three major loopholes beautifully, but two out of three isn’t three,” Dr. Kaiser said. “I believe in my bones that quantum mechanics is the correct description of nature. But to make the strongest statement, frankly we’re not there.”
A potential weakness of the experiment, he suggested, is that an electronic system the researchers used to add randomness to their measurement may in fact be predetermined in some subtle way that is not easily detectable, meaning that the outcome might still be predetermined as Einstein believed.
To attempt to overcome this weakness and close what they believe is a final loophole, the National Science Foundation has financed a group of physicists led by Dr. Kaiser and Alan H. Guth, also at M.I.T., to attempt an experiment that will have a better chance of ensuring the complete independence of the measurement detectors by gathering light from distant objects on different sides of the galaxy next year, and then going a step further by capturing the light from objects known as quasars near the edge of the universe in 2017 and 2018.
Can you imagine how much better off humanity (and the planet we live on) would be if religions operated this way??
Realize that warp drive was a plot device to get it past the next commercial and it was precisely as fast as was needed to move the story forward.
Yup! It was good at that, which is why Star Trek was so great. But transporters, warp drives, and sub-space were mere plot devices. They were like the pseudo-Latin magic invocations in the Harry Potter series.
That said, fiction always has such things. One has to accept them to get the narrative. If one cannot do that possibly one cannot enjoy the underlying story.
But no. All of science says that there will never be warp drives. Too bad. It is such a great plot device. (Just like time travel, which inevitably invokes a much more tangled plot. )
The concept of FTL travel is a well known trope in SciFi. It moves the plot forward. Everybody accepts it as such and ignores that the science behind it is dodgy, at best.
Like the Star Trek transporter, which operates in the plot similarly, is also not likely possible, let alone practical. Actually, the transporter is a bit frightening if one considers the concept of continuity. The red shirt on the pad is destroyed and a duplicate is created at the destination. I wouldn't step onto that pad for all the money in the world.
This stuff is fun to discuss. But I draw the line at any claims that they are real, or could be implemented. Indeed, that may be my bias, however I think it is a safe bet that we'll never see warp drives (FTL travel ) or transporters any time soon.
Oh! And one last thing about science is that one must be willing to change ones mind if new information comes to light. I admit that as well. But I see no reason to change my thinking on these topics as of now. Certainly there is no hard science to convince me, just fringe stuff. It is like Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." FTL travel is clearly an extraordinary claim because relativity says it should not be possible and nobody has shown any flaw in that yet.
My best to you.
