Was Einstein wrong?

[twilyth]

Was Einstein wrong?


This article is pretty heavy even for SciAm. It's also pretty long so I'm not going to quote it, I'll just try to sumarize as best I can. But it definitely worth reading. In addition to the science, he also covers a lot of very interesting history.

For the first 3 pages the author is talking about non-locality. As fas as I can tell, that means what Einstein would have called 'spooky action at a distance.' Specifically, it is the idea that event that happens in one location - whether inches away or billions of light years from another location can affect the outcome at that location without passing through the distance in between.

So lets say that you have 2 entagled electrons. They are entangled such that both have both an up and down spin. When you measure the spin of one - lets say it's up - the spin of the other will instantaneously become 'down'. This has been shown to be true for distances of up to a few kilometers, but Quantum Mechanics predicts that will ALWAYS be true regardless of the intervening distance - whether kilometer, light years or megaparsecs.

This is an example of an event (measurement of the first electron) having an effect in another location (that of the second electron) without anything in between being affected.

This is what the author is calling non-locality.

For many years this aspect of QM was regarded as just being an artifact of the theory that may or may not have any basis in reality. But in 1964 John Bell proved that non-locality could not be just an artifact - that it was the only possible explanation for entanglement scenarios.

This relates to special relativity because it potentially violates the claim that neither matter, energy, information or anything else can travel faster than the speed of light. But the apparent transfer of information from the measured particle to its partner must, according to QM, happen instantaneously and in any event at least at speeds much greater than the speed of light.

At this point I started to lose consciousness and I barely have any idea of what he is on about. However according some new theories, it seems that non-locality occurs not only across space but also across time.

[[XC] riptide]

Probably not.

[Speederlander]

No, it's not that Einstein was "wrong", it's that just like Newtonian mechanics there is an underlying set of principles for which Relativity is an approximation. Newton wasn't wrong, his principles were correct in their way, but incomplete. There is just more going on can is accounted for in Relativity.

[twilyth]

No, it's not that Einstein was "wrong", it's that just like Newtonian mechanics there is an underlying set of principles for which Relativity is an approximation. Newton wasn't wrong, his principles were correct in their way, but incomplete. There is just more going on can is accounted for in Relativity.

I don't think so. This goes right to heart of special relativity.

As Maudlin emphasized in his third point, however, the particular variety of action at a distance that we encounter in quantum mechanics is an entirely different animal from the kind exemplified by Feinberg's tachyons or Maudlin's other examples. What is uncanny about the way that quantum-mechanical particles can nonlocally influence one another is that it does not depend on the particles' spatial arrangements or their intrinsic physical characteristics—as all the relativistic influences alluded to in the preceding paragraphs do—but only on whether or not the particles in question are quantum mechanically entangled with one another.

The kind of nonlocality one encounters in quantum mechanics seems to call for an absolute simultaneity, which would pose a very real and ominous threat to special relativity.

[STEvil]

Like i've said before, the speed of light is neither constant nor the "maximum" speed of anything... and for the record I also believe quantum entanglement is incorrect in its defining of two particles as paired. That doesnt mean its entirely wrong though or that I have a better theory

[[XC] riptide]

Like i've said before, the speed of light is neither constant nor the "maximum" speed of anything...

Its IS the maximum speed for anything involving energy, matter or information however, in a given frame of reference.

[[XC] riptide]

I don't think so. This goes right to heart of special relativity.

I haven't read the entire article but the premise to date is that Quantum entagled situations do not allow the transfer of information because its impossible to control the quantum state once it is observed.

[twilyth]

I haven't read the entire article but the premise to date is that Quantum entagled situations do not allow the transfer of information because its impossible to control the quantum state once it is observed.

Huh? Where are you getting that? The virtual definition of entanglement is the instantaneous transfer of information. So unless you're redefining QM, I don't think so.

It also has nothing to do with controlling the entangled states of the particles. Both particles exist in both states, simultaneously, until one is observed. That collapses the wave function (page 6 of the article) and precipitates the non-locality.

[Speederlander]

I don't think so. This goes right to heart of special relativity.

No, because on a macroscopic scale relativity is perfectly intact as far as we can tell. It's only at the scale of quantum mechanics that the problems appear to start, but problems have been suspected to exist for years. Hence all the efforts at unification. Again, relativity, for almost all practical situations in the observable universe, holds up fine. It's only when we move to the very very small that the difficulties arise.

[twilyth]

No, because on a macroscopic scale relativity is perfectly intact as far as we can tell. It's only at the scale of quantum mechanics that the problems appear to start, but problems have been suspected to exist for years. Hence all the efforts at unification. Again, relativity, for almost all practical situations in the observable universe, holds up fine. It's only when we move to the very very small that the difficulties arise.

All I can say is that you should read the article. I don't know enough to argue these points.

There have been theories that require faster than light particles.

Second, the truth of special relativity is (as a matter of fact) perfectly compatible with an enormous variety of hypothetical mechanisms for faster-than-light transmission of mass and energy and information and causal influence. In the 1960s, for example, Gerald Feinberg of Columbia published an internally consistent and fully relativistic theory of a hypothetical species of particle—tachyons—for which it is physically impossible ever to travel slower than light. Maudlin invented other examples.

But I don't think you're seein the magnitude of this. We're not talking about faster than light travel, we're talking about instantaneous communication over any distance. Speed is irrelevant when something happens instantaneously. You can only talk about speed if time and distance are involved. With non-locality of the QM variety, neither time nor distance are involved.

I know it warps the mind to think of that, but those are the facts.

[[XC] riptide]

Huh? Where are you getting that? The virtual definition of entanglement is the instantaneous transfer of information. So unless you're redefining QM, I don't think so.

It also has nothing to do with controlling the entangled states of the particles. Both particles exist in both states, simultaneously, until one is observed. That collapses the wave function (page 6 of the article) and precipitates the non-locality.

Exactly... until it is observed... THEN there is no control over the state it will then exist as which, making this very simple, means that no REAL communication can occurr of any significance ... this is intenesly complicated.. but you'd have to start at Bells Theorem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

[twilyth]

Exactly... until it is observed... THEN there is no control over the state it will then exist as which, making this very simple, means that no REAL communication can occurr of any significance ... this is intenesly complicated.. but you'd have to start at Bells Theorem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

Maybe we're talking about different things, but entanglement is not a difficult concept to understand. It's a mind bending concept, but once you get past the idea of something existing in 2 contradictory states simultaneously, it's pretty simple.

If I ever get the urge to understand the math behind the concepts, I'll start by brushing up on my Newtonian dynamics and then try to progress from there.

[Serpentarius]

Einstein would roll over in his grave; not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded

[Spawne32]

can we take this to the other forum so i can tease riptide about how god is the maximum speed of everything?

[STEvil]

Its IS the maximum speed for anything involving energy, matter or information however, in a given frame of reference.

Then maybe our perception of transmission is incorrect.

My point is that c is being given more importance than it should, or more function than it should may be a better way of putting it.

[Monkeywoman]

Hey, you guys want to know the maximum speed of anything? My core 2 Quad!

[gallardo]

I never really did think the speed of light can't be beaten.

Hmm... so how does this instantaneous communication happen? Kinda like sub-space communication in Stargate?

[[XC] riptide]

I never really did think the speed of light can't be beaten.

Hmm... so how does this instantaneous communication happen? Kinda like sub-space communication in Stargate?

Not quite. See.... for quantum communication to happen in this manner, its called Quantum Teleportation. And for all things we have experimented up to now (and included in teh theory) quantum teleportaion has ALWAYS had a classical information path as they call it.

[fart_plume]

Why is it everyone keeps failing to mention Tachyons which do travel faster than light? Einstein never wanted to include them in his theory, but had no other choice when his math would not work out otherwise.

[[XC] riptide]

Why is it everyone keeps failing to mention Tachyons which do travel faster than light? Einstein never wanted to include them in his theory, but had no other choice when his math would not work out otherwise.

lol... outside of Star Trek, and as balancing terms for equations... there is no evidence they exist.

[DeltZ]

Einstein didn't like the quantum physics stuff Niel's Bohr and others pioneered at the time, that's no secret.

Here we have quantum mechanics, pretty much on par the most important theory. It has made countless predictions which have turned out to be correct.

Subspace doesn't really exist and neither do Tachyons.

Einstein wasn't just wrong though, I think it's just his instinct and intuition which made him fight QM rigorously and to be honest, you need to have someone fighting the against argument to make a theory credible. Einstein did just that. You can make an incorrect theory, but there's nothing wrong with fighting someone elses.

[[XC] riptide]

Well lets not oversimplyfy. Einsteins Nobel Prize was for the Photoelectric effect... which was one of the foundations of QM.

[DeltZ]

yeah, i'm aware of his contribution there. It is more lack of definition. Sure he embraced the idea of quantised energy as photons in the case of the photoelectric effect.

I was more referring to quantum probability and stuff. Schrodingers cat and all those cliché concepts of that area.

[twilyth]

I never really did think the speed of light can't be beaten.

Hmm... so how does this instantaneous communication happen? Kinda like sub-space communication in Stargate?

That is a very interesting and somewhat frightening question. It could mean that space is an illusion and therefore so is distance and possibly even time. Instantaneous communication implies either that every point in space is connected to every other point in a way that transcends our perception of space or that every point is identical to every other point and reality truly is an illusion.

These are my own guesses, but I think I've seen similar comments in a few documentaries and/or articles.

The wormhole idea is a form of FTL (faster than light) travel that exploits the idea of warped space-time (IIRC). Non-locality means that time and distance are irrelevant. Nothing is actually travelling anywhere. If that were the case, the phenomenon would be local, not non-local. In other words, travel implies passing through or across an intervening distance at a certain rate of speed and in a certain amount of time. But for QM non-locality, time and distance are irrelevant.

One's normal impulse is to see non-locality as a type of information tranmission. But if that were the case, it would be a local phenomenon since the intervening distance had been transversed in some way. QM non-locality says that there is a sort of "communication" but that the distance between two entangled particles is irrelevant. Whether the distance is an inch or a megaparsec, the communication will happen in precisely 0.000 seconds. So either no "distance" is transversed, or it is transversed but at an infinite speed - i.e., speed = distance/time = oo/0 (infinity over zero).

[biohead]

lololol lets just all have a beer in the tenth dimension now why don't we.

i'll read the article and ask my professors about this stuff.