What is the consensus on spooky action at a distance? How does it work in principle? Is the jury still out on this? What is it?
what is "spooky action at a distance"? I've never heard of it before and google searches are being less than... definite...
The phrase was first coined [I think] by Albert Einstein in his doubts re quantum mechanics, and may have been first used in one of his famous debates with Neils Bohr...although not to sure on that count. Basically it means that whatever measurement you impose on a sub atomic particle will effect in the same manner a similar particle on the other side of the Universe. It is also known as "quantum entanglement" It happens that's all we know...why?? I'm not sure if anyone knows the answer to that as yet.
There is a quantum level of nature where events take place that we can't actually observe. We interpret what is happening where and when we can't observe based on what we can observe about particles. For example, we can not measure and quantify both the location and momentum of a particle at the same time with complete certainty. The more accurately we measure the location, the greater the uncertainty we have about its momentum. Some observations that we can make aren't easily explained given what we know about particles in the standard particle model, their states, wave-particle duality, and entanglement with its superposition of states. In the early 1900's these unexplained experimental results, and theoretical explanations revealed the strange world of quantum mechanics, where "spooky action at a distance" became the catch phrase to express the mysteries about what caused the unexplained events in the quantum realm to occur. There are various interpretations of quantum mechanics, but the math is the same regardless of the interpretation. The typical "spooky action at a distance", like Paddoboy mentioned, is seemingly faster than light communication between entangled particles.
Spellbound, these Links may help : - the ^^above quoted^^ from, and more at : http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-entanglement-speed-10000-faster-light/26587/ The gizmag article references this "paper": - the ^^above quoted^^, as well as the full paper available for "free" reading at : http://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.0614v1.pdf Spellbound, these Links should give you a "starting off point" for further knowledge on the subject, depending on how much research/learning you want to devote to it.
Quantum mechanics and the Standard Model can explain the influence of EM, electroweak, and strong nuclear forces in fantastic detail, but as for "spooky action at a distance", like the force of gravity, you need not to be looking to anything in atomic structure other than its foundation, which is the Higgs mechanism. The force of gravity is something that derives of the Higgs mechanism to impart inertial mass to certain bits of matter, and the energy that is conserved when it is imparted to the vacuum energy itself as a by-product, or "Loophole", as in a "Loophole in a physical law, that is. It is true and consistent with the standard model that the Higgs mechanism is not directly responsible for gravitational mass. But inertial and gravitational mass are equal for matter, and this is why. But if it is the intention of particle physicists to continue looking for the infamous spin-2 graviton, and expecting it to be something that imparts the force of gravity by interacting directly with matter, or that it is a part of matter itself somehow, I think they will come up empty. Is the wind "spooky"? You can't see it, but it blows stuff around. Is time-space and vacuum energy "spooky"? You bet it is. Science doesn't even have a handle. This should have been analyzed over 50 years ago. Just imagine what Einstein could have done with the Higgs mechanism, had he known about it when relativity was born. The jury is still deliberating. Give them some time. This is going to be good.
I didn't write my post particular well on a recent news article, however it's worth following the links provided in the article that I quoted from: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?142202-The-mome-raths-outgrabe
Let's say for the sake of argument that we have a pair of entangled particles, say, electrons and we send both of those PARTICLES as fast as we can (close to the speed of light) in opposite directions. Some years later a distant observer receives one of those particles an determines its spin, a which point the spin of the entangled one that was sent in the opposite direction will also be instantly known. Could we not perform the same experiment with a pair of balls (a red one and a green one), seal them in boxes and send them off the same way. When a distant observer opened one of the boxes and observed it contained a green ball, then INSTANTLY he knows that the one in the box at the other end is green. What, exactly, is spooky about this? Entanglement is not required to do the second experiment, and it yields the same result without magical or spooky action at a distance, so what's the point? Is there any reason to suppose that some information has traversed space at 10,000 times the speed of light? The particles themselves could not be separated any faster than that, and the information exchanged is nothing more than an elaborate hat trick.
There are some folks that suggest that our universe is a projection of a lower-dimensional space or a hologram. or something like that.. If so, c is only applicable to our perceived space, and entangled particles have their measurement taken at the same point, like a wormhole that only connects the entangled pair. Sorry to ramble, it's late for me.
Not so. The distant observer will also need to know there is another, entangled electron, and whether it is correlated or anticorrelated; in that case they would also know about what some other observer who measures the other electron will find out about its spin. Only if he already knows that one ball is green, the other is red. Without this information the experiment doesn't work. The point is that it's about what is known about entanglement by a pair of observers who measure one particle each, and what they can then know or infer about the other particle, with or without classical communication between the observers. And, you seem to be assuming that probabilities are only about what is known before or during a measurement (i.e. opening the box).
Well, that's going to be something of a problem if that knowledge can't be transmitted to them faster than the speed of light, now isn't it?
Spooky action at a distance negates the notion of local causality. Id est: It requires cause/effect relationships between events whose space-time separation requires FTL interaction. I think there is still some controversy relating to Bell’s theorem which is alleged to disprove local causality. Id est:[/b] To prove spooky action at a distance. I think one objection to the proof is based on assumptions about objective reality. This is the notion that properties of a quantum entity exist in the absence of having been measured. When the proof was first presented, I think that it relied on Von Neumann’s proof that there are no hidden variables. A so called hidden variable could contain information & thus there would be no spooky action at distance. I think the Von Neumann proof has been repudiated. I remember a proof which involved assumptions about the possible results of measurements relating to some data from a random process. This proof as presented seems questionable at best. This proof might have been dumbed down by a tech writer after listening to an expert describe a valid proof. I would not accept the proof which I saw in the article. It relied on assumptions about measurements relating to random processes which were never actually made. In fact, the assumptions referred to a random process that never occurred & hence could not have results available for measurment.
Einstein came up with the phrase to cover up that his speed of light barrier had already been broken by the development of quantum mechanics. Apparently they couldn't prove that anything was actually traveling FTL, and it could have just been some action, at a distance. Spooky, huh? (I would certainly be spooked if teams of scientist just found evidence to disprove my theory) Then somehow Einstein was able to keep his speed of light limit, even though quantum mechanics had experimental evidence it was wrong. Then no one was ever able to explain what caused it, because they where to lazy to try and find a classical model of quantum mechanics from it being too hard. Then they decided that they where just going to use statistical probabilities to describe it instead. Then they started to call any real physics that would accurately describe the quantum world as just being hidden variables. Then no one really cares about those, since explaining quantum entanglement would require hidden variables and relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible theories, there is no real theory that says that the speed of light limit is actually wrong (only experimental proof that information traveled FTL).
[1]The speed of light is a universal speed limit. [2] Quantum entanglement has nothing to do with travelling [3] Mainstream science do not understand fully why the quantum world is as it is. [4] If you know the reasons why quantum particles act as they do, you will have a Nobel prize in November. Best of Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! luck.
That means the expanded space that makes up the universe today and onwards is the same space that originated from the point from which the Big Bang emerged?
dmoe, It seems that the quote from the link you posted explains spooky action at a distance by invoking non locality. I am in complete agreement with a non-local universe.
Note this implies that quantum mechanics is perhaps distinct from an interpretation of it; a lot like how mathematics is independent of physics. Note also it's the experiments which we interpret (according to the wiki authors). Suppose that an experiment is itself an interpretation of the theory; a double slit experiment is usually set up so the distance between slits is proportional to the (classical) "size" of the quanta. Suppose that no quantum experiment exists which is not an interpretation of the theory, and there are no "unexpected" results. Why suppose any of that? It's what quantum computation tells us must be the case if we want to "process" quantum information. I might sound like I'm sawing through the branch I'm perched on, but I'm reasonably confident this paridigm has legs (although it's too early to try putting a kilt on it). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics So if the concept of what a wavefunction "is" can evolve, why not the concept of what information "is"?
