Posted on 12/03/2011 9:19:07 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Scientists have linked two diamonds in a mysterious process called entanglement that is normally only seen on the quantum scale.
Entanglement is so weird that Einstein dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." It's a strange effect where one object gets connected to another so that even if they are separated by large distances, an action performed on one will affect the other. Entanglement usually occurs with subatomic particles, and was predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the realm of the very small...
Because energy must be conserved in closed systems (where there's no input of outside energy), the researchers knew that the "lost" energy had been used in some way. In fact, the energy had been converted into vibrational motion for one of the diamonds (albeit motion that is too small to observe visually). However, the scientists had no way of knowing which diamond was vibrating.
Then, the researchers sent a second pulse of laser light through the now-vibrating system. This time, if the light emerged with a color of higher frequency, it meant it had gained the energy back by absorbing it from the diamond, stopping its vibration...
If the two diamonds weren't entangled, the researchers would expect each detector to register a changed laser beam about 50 percent of the time. It's similar to tossing a coin, where random chance would lead to heads about half the time and tails the other half the time on average.
Instead, because the two diamonds were linked, they found that one detector measured the change every time, and the other detector never fired. The two diamonds, it seemed, were so connected they reacted as a single entity, rather than two individual objects.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
This bothers me a bit. Are the two diamonds not reacting as a single system just because the split laser beam reaches them at exactly the same time? The experiment seems to be saying more about the laser than the diamonds. What if one of the diamonds was moved a cm. further sway so the laser hit it slightly later? Would the synchronized behavior then break down? I believe that other entanglement experiments have separated the members or isolated one and still seen entanglement. But I'm not so sure this one is an authentic example of the phenomenon. Or maybe the article's description is over-simplified and my misgivings were accounted for in the experimental design.
Thanks for that;I was wracking my brain trying to remember the right term.
IIRC, it's same phenom Heinlein used to explain his twins' telepathy in Time for the Stars; I think it was A.E. van Vogt who used it extensively in some of his yarns.
I know it has also been postulated as an explaination for some paranormal phenomena many times.
i is so glad that i decided to give up particle physics to do precinct politics.
Now that I wanna give up politics, can I do precinct physics? or whatever.
So that is what has been pulling my eyelids down.
If progress continues, I can imagine what this will do for computing and communications in the next few decades.
You thought the judge said “alimony”. No, he said “all-the-money”.
Yep, the first thing I thought of was the Ansibles.
Yeah, this is so huge I literally screamed out loud when I realized the implications. If something like this is mounted on a probe and sent out to Pluto, we could have the pictures with so little time delay that it would probably blow Einstein’s mind if he was alive today.
That sounds more like Chaos Theory than String Theory (although there are a lot of interrelationships [entanglements?] between the two).
bflr
My thinking is that would be a given, but the communication would be, for all practical purposes, undetectable, putting the state at a huge disadvantage.
And unless there is a way to make the tech very easily available to anyone, you can't just create entangled objects.
Every government has powerful enemies that would supply those willing to pay or subvert.
And your're right, it will take a genius to explain this.
Yeah, I have heard of this.....it’s called marriage.
I think it would take another species to explain this.
But then again I’m a huge fan of Ender’s Game.
It would give us a heads-up when the buggers come.
I hope not, I would like to see humans rise to the challenge in thought understanding this depth of the physical universe represents.
But, then if the alien girls are cute and like old sailors, other than for food, well,...
Like the Orion slave girls?
Bflr
IMO, Einstein wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t factor in that we live in a three-plus dimensional space, and what is “local” is accurate only in N-dimensions, however many those may be.
Alternately, our concept of dimension Time may yet be primitive, limited to a linear conceptualization, and thus unable to account for a real effect via the planar temporal connetion.
that looks like my screen saver....with the squiggles moving..
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