Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Free ThinkerNY; AdmSmith; SunkenCiv; All

In the referenced article, the authorship of which was attributed to unnamed "NPR staff," there appears the following passage:

"...and some even think entanglement may explain things like telepathy."

A couple of posters have noticed this passage, and used it as the basis for a condemnation of the professional scientists working in this area, going so far as to imply that those scientists are "idiots."

I want to point out that this absurd passage in the article doesn't actually quote any trained, professional physicist who actually earns a living by working in the field of Quantum Information Science (nor does it quote any professional scientist of any kind for this passage). In fact, this passage doesn't quote anyone at all. There is probably a very good reason for that: I suspect that "NPR staff" made it up (because they believe it), and that "NPR staff" did not hear any working physicist utter this inane, meaningless comment. I have never in my entire career heard a single one of my fellow physicists ever make such a statement about "telepathy," whatever telepathy is, assuming it is even a real phenomenon, which I doubt. The topic of the article, quantum teleportation, is an actual physical phenomenon that has been independently reproduced in a number of physics laboratories around the world over the last few years, and has nothing whatsoever to do with so-called "psychic phenomena." This work is real physics, and has nothing whatsoever to do with "telepathy," for which there is currently no scientific evidence available.

(Incidentally, although this phenomenon, to which we have given the name "quantum teleportation," has indeed been demonstrated in a few laboratories (beginning with demonstrations at the University of Innsbruck and at Caltech in the late 1990s), one shouldn't fall into the trap of associating this with what appears on Star Trek. The experimental demonstrations that have been performed (for which, by the way, there is a mathematically rigorous, theoretical basis) have involved "teleporting" small numbers of elementary particles under carefully controlled conditions. We are a very long way away from doing anything remotely like what appears on Star Trek.)

40 posted on 08/27/2010 9:53:43 PM PDT by E8crossE8
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: E8crossE8

I agree, furthermore a lot of pseudo science is inserted in articles by mistakes and bad editing, that not always are caused by the original writer/journalist.


41 posted on 08/28/2010 5:14:38 AM PDT by AdmSmith (GCTGATATGTCTATGATTACTCAT)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson