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---------------- - 1950 - Quantum Entanglement, new mysteries in science.
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- You kids are so lucky. You have so many mysteries to solve in this Universe you find yourself in. I mean 95% of the Universes is Dark Matter and Dark Energy that we have not identified. Particles are communicating faster than the speed of light and we can not explain how.
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- Yes, there is “ entanglement” that allows “ spooky action at a distance” Add two that are the simplest “take for granted physics” like explaining the true nature of “time” and “space“.
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- Let’s start with “time“. Time is not a constant duration, it varies with velocity and gravity . Time is a variable dependent on how fast you are moving and how much gravity is pulling on you.
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- Increasing the precision of measurement of time in the same space will increase the fuzziness, or warping of time. It is a trade off between the two.
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- Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that when increasing the precision of measurement of ‘complementary variables” the other becomes less precise. For example: the more precise you know “ position” in time and space the less you can know about momentum. Momentum is the product of “mass” and “ velocity”. Velocity is the ratio of distance and time. The closer you know position the less you know velocity. And, the closer you know velocity the less you can know about position.
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- This is how nature keeps electrons from crashing into protons inside atoms. The balance between uncertainty of position and uncertainty of momentum. It all works on probabilities. As you split fractions of a second further and further you are less and less certain about energy. More precision on one gives you less precision on the other. There is an equivalence between mass and energy, E=mc^2. And there is an equivalence between time and space.
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- Gravitational lensing uses this fact that gravity bends space-time. This also means that mass can effect time. “Time dilation “ occurs when clocks slow down as they become closer to a gravitational source. There is more new physics still to be learned in this area.
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- It gets weirder in the Quantum World. Nothing is not “ empty space”. Nothing is full or virtual particles, quantum vacuum fluctuations that flash into and out of existence faster than we can detect or measure them.
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- Empty space should be the lowest possible energy state. But, a vacuum is not really empty. It is full of energy. There are particles disappearing and re-appearing in a random fluctuating energy field.
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- January, 2017, a laboratory produced laser pulses that were a few “ femtoseconds” long, 10^-15 seconds, a quadrillionth of a second, so they could measure light photons moving through a vacuum. Light photons that are slowed down for a certain segment of space-time. Instead of detecting photons in space, they are detecting photons in time.
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- Could this technique be able to detect particles without disturbing them? Somehow particles communicate faster than the speed of light. Somehow particles are connected when they are separated great distances. Their connected response occurs faster than the speed of light can communicate between the two particles. Called Quantum Entanglement. How can this be possible, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. At light speeds time stops and length ( space) shrinks. Maybe it even becomes a Blackhole?
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- According to Quantum Mechanics particles do not exist in one position of space. They only exist as relative “probabilities” to be in one place or another, or, to be a “particle” or a “wave”.
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- When two particles interact they can become “entangled”. They shed their individual probabilities and become a single probability function. This function describes the two particles when they are together. But, that “together” does not include space. They can be separated great distances in space and still be “together“.
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- So, if one particle is polarized vertically , the other is polarized horizontally. Could be “ spin up” and “spin down”. Regardless of the distance of separation switching one “spin down” instantaneously switches the other “ spin up”. This can be repeated as long as the particles are entangled. No signal has time to possibly travel between the two particles. In the 1930’s this was described as “ spooky action at a distance”.
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- In 1964 John Bell came up with the theory that the particles exist in both states simultaneously. Only at the moment one is observed ( measured) do they collapse into their opposite states. If no one is looking both states exist. He called this “realism”. And, no signal traveling faster than light he called “ locality”. The third assumption he called “ freedom”.
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- The “freedom” component gained traction in 2010 when Michael Hall showed that a reduced freedom of choice correlates measurement outcomes enough to create the illusion of quantum entanglement. Still another idea is that gravity is responsible for limiting the degrees of freedom.
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- So the search goes on, does the Universe lack “local realism”, or does it just “ curb the degrees of freedom”? To test this idea, how about separating the particles the distance to the stars and see if the entanglement still holds. Two telescopes equipped with optical modulators. Each telescope pointed at a random star. The color of the photon chosen coming from the random star is used to set the angle of the optical modulator. The color was obviously decided yy the star hundreds of years ago. Still this experiment with polarizes photons repeated the spooky action at astronomical distances.
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- These stars were 600 lightyears distant. The team is now starting the same experiment again using “quasars” that are billions of lightyears distance and billions of years back in time. Is there some distance where entanglement breaks down?
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- The other theory that is independent of distances is that every measurement is “predetermined” by correlations going back to the Big Bang. The “freedom-of-choice” loophole in particle entanglement may remain a mystery. We need another big discovery to shake up this science. How can measurement of one particle mysteriously fix the property of another particle?
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- Science is not easy. It is not supposed to be. The process of open publication, peer review, and clear data are part of science because they help us understand how the Universe works. Would that be great if politics worked the same way?
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- This method can be inconvenient and contentious , but it works. Through this process, new ideas are faced with an uphill battle. This is particularly true of ideas that would contradict the foundation theories of physics. So it is tempting to react to such opposition by playing a different game. Rather than addressing criticism, you start building a story closed -minded to see otherwise . Down the path lies pseudoscience, and sometimes you can watch it happening. Take global warming for example. Or, take the health care law for another example.
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- Such is the science of today trying to explain Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and Entanglement. Together the Dark stuff represents 95% of the mass-energy in the Universe. The 5% left is us trying to understand entanglement. Talk about lacking the Big Picture. Stay tuned, there is much more to learn, and an announcement will be made shortly
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- Note (1): Request any of the Reviews by number to learn more.
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- #1949 - Quantum computers used in cryptography plus list 10 more reviews on the subject numbers from #1818 to #51.
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