Really Cool Science article from NY Times On-line...
"Quantum teleportation depends on entanglement, one of the strangest of the many strange aspects of quantum mechanics. Two particles can become "entangled" into a single entity, and a change in one instantaneously changes the other even if it is far away."
How freaky is that? Pretty cool if you ask me - we are just starting to grasp quantum and particle physics so what will we learn in the future?
Just a random scientific bit of information...
I'm flashing back 20 years or so to the Tao of Physics (I think) where this phenomenon was described.
ReplyDeleteThe tip off to the scientists was the fact that all communication requires a signal. Simultaneity of action implies no signal:the fastest a signal can travel is speed of light, but time is still involved. If there was "communication" involved, the phenomenon couldn't be simultaneous because there would be a measurable lag time between one action and the other.
The scientists deduced that somehow the two particles were connected despite being discrete and separate. An analogy: imagine a fish in a fish tank monitored by 2 video cameras: one on the side and one on the front. If an observer watching the two monitors didn't know it was one tank and one fish or was under the assumption he was watching two tanks and two fish, the information from the monitors would lead the observer to believe there were two fish moving at exactly the same time when in reality there was only one.
The paradoxes between the very small where everything is apparently infinitely interconnected and Newtonian physics is endlessly entertaining.
Randy H
Randy,
ReplyDeleteVery nice...
don't get me started on particle vs. wave and Hidleberg's (sp?)Uncertainty Principle etc...
Physics is bad enough but quantum physics is where the real fun is...