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-------------------- 2580 - QUANTUM RANDOMNESS - Photons and Quasars?
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- A century-old series of physics experiments still hasn’t been able to settle this question, but a new experiment has tilted the odds toward the laws of randomness by performing a quantum experiment across billions of light-years, to the distant quasars.
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- The laws of classical physics are ‘deterministic“. Newton’s math gives us a clockwork universe, where each cause has a unique effect and we are governed not by our choices but by the rigid laws of nature.
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- “Quantum physics“, on the other hand, has a property of fuzzy “randomness“, which some scientists feel could open the door to free will. Since quantum physics lies at the heart of reality, it would seem that randomness is today‘s best understanding of how the Universe works..
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- But some scientists have argued that quantum randomness isn’t truly random. If I roll a die the outcome seems random, but it isn’t really. All of its bumps and turns are caused by the forces of gravity and the table in a complex dance, but that dance is “deterministic“.
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- The moment the die leaves my hand, its fate is sealed, even though I don’t know the outcome until it happens. Perhaps quantum objects behave in the same way. They seem to act in random ways, but they are really governed by some deterministic hidden variables?
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- To understand the experiment of Schrödinger’s cat, it explains that a quantum cat is neither alive nor dead until observed in a definite state. Like classical cats, quantum cats like quantum boxes. In the quantum realm things can be in an indefinite state until you observe them.
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- It would be as if our boxes contained a pair of something but it is impossible to know what specific something until one of us opens their box. Even stranger, how we measure quantum objects determines what the outcome can be. It would be as if opening the box on the side forces it to be a head pf a coin, while opening it from the top forces it to be a tail f a coin.
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- How I open my box affects your box miles away. In quantum theory, we say that our two boxes are “entangled“, so that observing the content of one box also tells us something about the other. If one is heads the other is tails and vice a versa.
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- We can’t do this experiment flipping a coin for heads or tails , but we can do it with light photons. Two entangled photons can be sent in opposite directions. We measure the orientation of one photon at random, and measure the other, and then we compare our results. There are lots of different orientations we would measure, so we can each choose the orientation we want. When this experiment is done in the lab, it actually works.
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- If our measurements are random, there is no way for the photons to know ahead of time which orientation will be measured. So, there can’t be any hidden variable to determine the outcome. Whether we get the heads and tails, or tails and heads, the result is truly random.
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- This is the heart of why Einstein referred to entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” It’s spooky because entangled objects have a quantum connection, even if they are light-years apart.
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- A measurement on one object is a measurement on both through this spooky entanglement. But it’s only spooky if the measurement we make is random. If it’s not random, then no spooky connection is necessary to explain the experiments results.
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- This is known as the “freedom of choice” loophole. Experiments are done in a lab, and even though the choice of how to measure the photons seems random, if there’s no free will then the observation we make was determined by earlier conditions.
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- Since it takes time to set up the experiment in a lab, it’s possible that there are small interactions that could let the quantum system know ahead of time what measurement will be done. Maybe the experiment, the scientists and the lab are all entangled in such a way that the outcome isn’t truly random, so the quantum objects can game the outcome.
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- To get around the loophole, you have to deal with the speed of light. It’s often said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but it’s really information that can’t travel faster than light. We can send each other telegrams or text messages, but never faster than the time it takes for light to travel between us.
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- In a small lab, light has plenty of time to travel back and forth across the room while the experiment is being set up, so perhaps small bits of information bias the “random” aspect of experiment before it’s even done. That doesn’t seem very likely, but a new experiment has overcome this problem. Rather than using a random number generator in the lab to decide which photon measurement to make, the experimenters used “quasars“.
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- Quasars are brilliant beacons of light powered by supermassive black holes in the centers of distant galaxies. The team used random fluctuations in the light from quasars to determine how the photons were measured. Since the light from a quasar has to travel for billions of years to reach us, the fluctuations in brightness happened billions of years before the experiment was done, billions of years before humans even walked the Earth. So, there is absolutely no way for it to be entangled with the experiment. Right?
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- The result was just what quantum theory predicts. “Quantum particles are entangled regardless of space separation.” Thus, it looks like there really are no deterministic hidden variables, and randomness is still possible throughout the cosmos.
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- Of course, randomness isn’t the only thing necessary for free will. But it does mean that your fate is not necessarily sealed. You do have control of your own destiny. To some degree anyway. Your wife has the rest.
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- January 9, 2019 2580
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--------------------- Friday, January 10, 2020 --------------------
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