tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post2549755905006407043..comments2023-10-31T03:18:26.963-07:00Comments on Great Guys Weblog: Ah, Now We See the Fascism Inherent in Collectivism!Brethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15063508651955739056noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-60894454164262148522015-11-19T11:07:29.177-08:002015-11-19T11:07:29.177-08:00Clovis, thanks. I wish I could type a more thought...Clovis, thanks. I wish I could type a more thoughtful reply, but an iPad isn't the tool for the job. Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-49186491863270870962015-11-13T05:43:44.224-08:002015-11-13T05:43:44.224-08:00Skipper,
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Assume the experiment in the article...Skipper,<br /><br />---<br />Assume the experiment in the article produced valid results. Doesn't that mean that our notions of the structure of space have to be completely wrong?<br />---<br /><br />Welcome to my world, you just turned yourself into one more person trying to figure out what should be a Quantum Theory of Gravity. Your question is right there in the frontier of Physics, where all ideas are competing for their day under the Sun.<br /><br />See, in our discussions up above we assumed space and time as well defined (classical) things, outside of the quantum theory itself.<br /><br />But we know better. Both space and time are not an immutable stage over which everything happens, but are themselves actors too, that's the whole point behind our best clasical theory of gravity: General Relativity.<br /><br />So how do all the quantum weirdness translates to space and time?<br /><br />We don't know. We have multiple competing theories about it, most probably all of them wrong.<br /><br />The big problem being, if space and time do behave like our quantum crazy world, that would only manifest itself to our lying eyes (i.e. simple experiments) near a level of energy way above anything we can achieve down here on Earth (the famous Planck scale).<br />The reason being that gravity is such a feeble force, so weak compared to all others.<br /><br />A few wise minds (Sir Roger Penrose among them) have been proposing experiments to try to detect a superposition of gravitational states, on the hope that gravity would be exactly the force that plays the role of "collapser of the quantum state" of a system.<br /><br />In other words, he proposed that gravity would be the force mediating that spooky "action at a distance" you asked about to begin with. And he actually proposed a few interesting experiments to check for that, and they are even feasible to be done in not so distant a future.<br /><br />Just wanted to give you a hint of what's been going on in that area. There are many other ideas, but that would really ask for a ton of other posts.<br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-76488211352042805592015-11-12T17:25:23.011-08:002015-11-12T17:25:23.011-08:00Quantum mechanics is the weirdest thing ever.
Eve...<i>Quantum mechanics is the weirdest thing ever.</i><br /><br />Even more inexplicable than women, if only just.<br /><br />When I was studying Physics, I "got" relativity. Even now, at a conceptual level (my math skills having long since deteriorated from disuse) it makes sense.<br /><br />But QM, especially action at a distance? No way.<br /><br />Assume the experiment in the article produced valid results. Doesn't that mean that our notions of the structure of space have to be completely wrong?<br /><br />(I should have made this a separate post.)Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-49816912348820402072015-11-12T05:22:03.842-08:002015-11-12T05:22:03.842-08:00BTW, let me tell you a bit more on why people thin...BTW, let me tell you a bit more on why people think those experiments point out to the above interpretation ("action at a distance" by measurement of the states).<br /><br />The question is, what could possibly differentiate between the state of the photons being decided upon their splitting (in some hidden variable we don't know about), or being decided only when we measure it?<br /><br />See, that makes a hell of a difference, because if the state was previously decided, it is just like the cookie experiment, no "action at a distance" at all is involved.<br /><br />That question was what John Bell was trying to answer in 1964, and he came up with one very insteresting result. If we allowed for a few hypothesis on how those hidden variables work (those hypothesis making them to be like what we'd expect from any probabilistic game involving classical hidden variables, like cards in a stack), he realized that the statistics of the measurement of one case (photons have unknown hidden variables and their state was decided upon splitting) was markedly different from the statistics of the other case (they have no hidden variables and their state is decided upon measurement only).<br /><br />So the idea is that you make our cookie experiments with photons (or electrons) in superpositon of polarized states not only once, but you make it N times, and the statistics you make with the correlation of results can differentiate both theories.<br /><br /><br />That's the reason there is always someone working those results again and again: there are all sorts of different hypothesis for how those hidden variables work that you can make, and people always figure out a different hypothesis not covered by present experiments. <br /><br /><br />We are reaching the point where the experimentalists covered most of what could be seen as "reasonable hypotheses", but that does not mean the question is absolutely settled anyway, for who is the judge of what is reasonable in that strange world of Quantum?<br /><br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-91859522941091850872015-11-12T05:01:19.984-08:002015-11-12T05:01:19.984-08:00Skipper,
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Is there any explanation for how mea...Skipper,<br /><br />---<br />Is there any explanation for how measuring the state of one photon can instantly affect another? <br />---<br /><br />Short answer: no. <br /><br />It is the whole point, how baffling this is for most people who think about it. Even though our theories do not allow for instaneous action at a distance, the process of the "collapse of the state" involved in a measurement looks like too close to be such.<br /><br />And things get more baffling: nature looks to conspire to make sure this "instantaneous action" actually does not produce anything like real instantaneous action, in the sense of superluminal communication.<br /><br />Quantum mechanics is the weirdest thing ever.Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-79858391153180251952015-11-11T10:23:30.621-08:002015-11-11T10:23:30.621-08:00Clovis,
That was the best explanation of entangle...Clovis,<br /><br />That was the best explanation of entanglement that I've ever read. Thanks. There was no danger of falling asleep.<br />Brethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15063508651955739056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-49872853858637557052015-11-11T10:06:24.872-08:002015-11-11T10:06:24.872-08:00Clovis:
Thanks for the explanation -- you should ...Clovis:<br /><br />Thanks for the explanation -- you should have written the NYT article (not that it was bad, only that your explanation is far better.)<br /><br />It was all sensible enough, to the extent quantum mechanics can be, until I got to this:<br /><br /><i>So the thing that looks to "act at a distance here" is the process of "collapse" that made my photon (and yours) to take a definite state (vertical or horizontal, instead of the combination of both previous to my measurement). What those experiments are showing is exactly so: that the photon state was not decided at moment of split (in some hidden variables, as per Einstein's "preferred" hypothesis), but that it is being decided only when I measure it.</i><br /><br />Is there any explanation for how measuring the state of one photon can <i>instantly</i> affect another? <br />Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-15286606340008073242015-11-11T06:11:55.105-08:002015-11-11T06:11:55.105-08:00And here comes the spooky thing: by measuring my p...<br />And here comes the spooky thing: by measuring my photon in Brazil, I *instantaneously* know the state of your photon in Dusseldorf, with the big difference from the cookie case that my photon state (and yours also!) was indeed decided the moment I opened up the bag. So the thing that looks to "act at a distance here" is the process of "collapse" that made my photon (and yours) to take a definite state (vertical or horizontal, instead of the combination of both previous to my measurement). What those experiments are showing is exactly so: that the photon state was not decided at moment of split (in some hidden variables, as per Einstein's "preferred" hypothesis), but that it is being decided only when I measure it.<br /><br />Even though that thing bothered Einstein - hey, it bothers anyone who thinks about it - it remais true that I can not use such an effect to actually make *information* to travel faster than light. Any way I (and anyone else) tries to conjure up to make this work as an faster-than-light telegraphic machine, utterly fails. Either due to (i) quantum mechanics uncertainty or to (ii) the need of our previously meeting to agree up on codes and procedures of measurement, making it as slow as our cookie experiment as a way of communicating things.<br /><br /><br />That's it, Skipper, if I go any further our fellow bloggers will sleep (anyone still there? :-).Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-5804572125730501272015-11-11T06:11:48.565-08:002015-11-11T06:11:48.565-08:00Skipper,
I'd say "action at a distance&q...Skipper,<br /><br />I'd say "action at a distance", even though being the term currently used, is a bit misleading.<br /><br />Rest assured beforehand of one thing: no, you can not use this effect to communicate information faster than light. Hence, nothing you learned in your relativity course is shown wrong by quantum mechanics. Trying to be as succint as possible (yet failing), here goes my take.<br /><br /><br />Let's meet at 12 o'clock GMT at any cafe in Dusseldorf you like and share a cookie this way: we both simultaneously touch the cookie, close our eyes and break it in two parts, placing each in a different paper bag (one mine, the other yours) and go home, with the agreement we only open it the next day at 12 o'clock GMT - I already in Brazil by then, you still in Dusseldorf (I guess the hardest part of the experiment is for you to stay so long in one place, right?).<br /><br />See, we both don't know, up until opening the bag, who got the bigger piece of cookie. But the moment I open my bag, I *instantaneously* know something about *your* piece of cookie (if it is bigger or smaller than mine), even though we are 5700 miles away. Hey, action at a distance!<br /><br />Or... not really. We actually needed to carry on the experiment since 24 hours before, there was nothing breaking causality here, information actually was pretty slow - after all, we could have known it in microseconds by sharing the cookie with eyes open in the first place.<br /><br />All - and I do mean all - those fancy experiments you read about on spooky actions at a distance are just like the one above in that sense. All the experimental setup is done in such a way that no meaningful information is travelling any faster than light - usually way slower actually.<br /><br /><br />So where is the difference? Instead of a cookie (a classical object made of gazillions of atoms), they are sharing photons or electrons, tiny objects ruled by quantum mechanics. In that Reign, they have the curious ability to be not in a "single defined state", but a "combination of many ones" at the same time. <br /><br />And we can create setups where two photons (or electons, as in your link) are in "entangled states", which means states where (i) both are in possibly two different states (for example, vertical polarization or horizontal polarization) and, very important, (ii) they are in such a combination that whatever is the state of one photon, the other is in the opposite one. So we don't know which state any photon actually is before measuring them, but we do know that by measuring one (for example, it turns out to be a vertically polarized photon), the other is necessarily in the opposite state (horizontal polarization). Not too different from bigger-piece-of-cookie versus smaller-piece-of-cookie in that sense.<br /><br />But, and you knew there was a but, while we can easily agree that our cookie's state was pretty much decided at the moment we broke it, we can not say the same about those photons. Up to the moment we actually measure them (i.e. open up our paper bags), they were not defined in one or the other state. It is decided the moment we measure it. (Otherwise, if it was decided the moment we split it with eyes closed, it must have been encoded in "hidden variables" beyond our knowledge, or so supposed Einstein).<br />[Continues...]<br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-14467616394807192812015-11-10T11:02:50.021-08:002015-11-10T11:02:50.021-08:00In 1986 Climatists predicted the East Coast would ...<a href="http://realclimatescience.com/2015/11/1986-scientists-were-sure-sea-level-would-rise-one-foot-by-2016/" rel="nofollow">In 1986 Climatists predicted the East Coast would see one foot sea rise by 2015</a>.<br /><br />Actual: three inches. Most of that subsidence.<br /><br /><br />Back in 2011 or so, some fundamentalist preacher on the West Coast predicted the apocalpyse in August. <br /><br />Spoiler alert: it didn't happen.<br /><br />He refigured his figurings, found the error, re-predicted for October something or other.<br /><br />Spoiler alert: didn't happen.<br /><br />So he may have been wrong, but at least he took his wrongness to heart.<br /><br />Unlike climatists.<br /><br />Clovis:<br /><br />I saw <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/science/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html" rel="nofollow">this</a> article recently, and thought of you.<br /><br />I get, at least conceptually, relativity. I had three semesters of physics in college to help. <br /><br />However, quantum mechanics, not so much.<br /><br />And action at a distance, which the experiment in the article appears likely to have proved, is utterly beyond my meager powers.<br /><br />Any chance you could explain it?Hey Skipperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10798930502187234974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-36331156836131327272015-11-09T12:14:37.827-08:002015-11-09T12:14:37.827-08:00I found this last week in a discussion of one of m...I found <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ie0xweq10759ucx/Scientists.PNG?dl=0" rel="nofollow">this</a> last week in a discussion of one of my pet peeves -- federal grants to academe is producing lots of brilliant grant writers, but not much brilliant science in exchange for gazillions of our tax dollars.erphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09826044412670324694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5806884.post-74998170529029338952015-11-09T11:15:41.363-08:002015-11-09T11:15:41.363-08:00Skipper,
Hey, in good old Soviet times you could ...Skipper,<br /><br />Hey, in good old Soviet times you could <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Soviet_Union" rel="nofollow">abolish Mendel's laws</a> (an others) by fiat and be done with it.<br /><br />Now we need this whole complicated ostracism and social pressure dynamics to shut up the inconvenient people, what a drag!<br /><br /><br /><br />In a more serious note, I think this fits within the decay of scientific standards we've been witnessing in the last few decades. If Superstrings can <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535" rel="nofollow"> now be declared The Truth by some </a> without all those bothersome requirements of falsifiability and experimentalism - there, right in the Reign of Newton which gave us the Scientific Revolution - I think pretty much everything, including Climate Science, is up for grabs.<br /><br />Clovishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08921327103613284595noreply@blogger.com