Thanks BenLurkin.
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Posted on 11/16/2018 9:19:36 AM PST by ETL
A lot of scientists think that major quantum effects like entanglement, in which particles separated by vast distances mysteriously link up their states, shouldn't work for living things. But a new paper argues that it already has — that scientists in 2016 have already created a sort of Schrödinger's cat — only with quantum-entangled bacteria.
Usually, we describe quantum physics as a set of rules that governs the behavior of extremely tiny things: light particles, atoms and other infinitesimally small objects. The larger world, at the bacterial scale (which is also our scale — the chaotic realm of life) isn't supposed to be anywhere near that weird.
That was what the physicist Erwin Schrödinger meant to say when he proposed his famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, as Jonathan O'Callaghan pointed out in Scientific American. ..."
Quantum experiments often involve measuring physical features of one entangled particle to figure out whether those features influence the other particle. In this case, that would have meant measuring physical traits of the bacteria in concert with physical traits of the light. That wasn't possible in this experiment, but Marletto said experiments are already being designed that could demonstrate true entanglement.
Even more interesting, she said, is the question of whether the bacteria use the entanglement in some way that's useful to them, though answering that question would take much more experimental work.
"It is possible that natural selection has led the bacteria to take advantage of quantum effects," she said.
[How Quantum Entanglement Works (Infographic)]
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Thanks BenLurkin.
Might explain identical twins and their “intuition”, or whatever you want to call it, about each other.
Interesting thought!
Grazing Cattle Entanglement
+++++
Nice picture.
But it would be very interesting to John Nash if he were still around. It shows you how cattle, like pigeons, spread themselves out as a group to both their mutual and group benefit.
I believe this was all talked about “ad nauseum” in Arthur Koestler’s book “Roots of Coincidence”. I remain highly skeptical! Though it did make a great Red Dwarf episode!
Quite an intriguing and thought-provoking article. Thanks for posting that. I had to read it twice to let most of it sink in.
Like I said, these things make my head hurt but in a good way!
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