Please explain quantum entanglement.
14Oh, and try to do a better job than Wikipedia or Albert Einstein.
I just tried to read a manuscript submission on the topic of quantum physics. The very first chapter does a poor job of explaining the writer’s theory on the what/how/why of quantum entanglement. I mean, if Albert Einstein’s best stab at it was “spooky action at a distance”, how is this lady going to decipher it in 47 pages of techno babble?
Ok, go…
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.quantamagazine.org/entanglement-made-simple-20160428/
There’s cake there!
@therealjrn The cake is a lie.
@therealjrn Well, I understood the cake part. I like cake. Carrot cake particularly.
The entanglement bits though… still a bit like pecan pie to me.
@therealjrn That’s the first layman-friendly quantum thingy I’ve come across. I
probablydefinitely need coffee, but it sounded like they were implying that state, or correlations in state across a system of entangled particles, belongs to the system rather than the individual particles. That doesn’t seem like a big stretch if you’re running the particles all through some single process before measuring the things.I wonder if I’m smart enough to grind through like an undergrad textbook about this stuff… even the above article is all ambiguity, unless I missed something.
Identical twin kids are each given a candy bar to hold, but told that it belongs to the other and may not be eaten. Regardless of whether they are separated in different parts of a house, town or country, each will know when the other has taken a bite of his candy bar and will immediately complain to the nearest parental figure and retaliate in kind until both candies have been completely consumed. Spooky action at a distance.
KuoH
@kuoh I guess it’s the actual entanglement bit that’s got me off. I want to understand it as logic and reason. Maths if you like. 1 and 2 is 3 and whatnot.
But then I guess the entirety of quantum science relies on, to a degree, suspending logic and reason and counting on faith, then working backward to find logic and reason which fits the vacancy.
This is definitely a book I must pass on. I don’t have a sufficient grasp on the topic to know if this lady is insanely brilliant, or just insane.
@ruouttaurmind Don’t worry about it, all it takes is a bit of quantum tunneling to get from insane to insanely brilliant.
KuoH
@kuoh @ruouttaurmind
Not exactly
It’s about trying to find explanations for the “verifiable, yet we don’t have the conceptual means to understand within common frameworks of experience and explanation” or the “verifiable yet inexplicable”. Or similar.
Not simple “stuff to get one’s head around“. Not for you or me, and not for science writers, and not for physicists, cosmologists, and quantum specialists.
If you get the feeling that “we’re not there yet”, you’re right about that.
@kuoh @ruouttaurmind What is the context in which you are reviewing this manuscript? If it was unsolicited, then odds are much greater than 90% that the writer is crazy.
University Math departments get crazy, incorrect proofs submitted all the time.
@Limewater @ruouttaurmind If it was a peer reviewed journal submission some of the crap that gets submitted you kind of wonder how they managed to get their dissertation approved. Some of those folks can’t write their way out of a paper bag. And then some of the stuff that comes in is so polished you know they know how to “play the game”. Over the years reviewing for conferences and journals I certainly have read some poorly done papers that I struggle to figure out what they are trying to say. And some things that I think, “I wish I had thought of that!!”.
@Limewater
The writer was referred by someone whom we’ve previously published.
I wind up seeing a lot of complete nonsense that way. A writer was satisfied with us, and tells all their writer associates about their positive experience. And of course every writer we’ve published feels like they’re our most important asset, so their friend will get an inside track and special treatment. If I had a dollar for every autobiography I’ve seen over the years I would have been able to retire a long time ago.
You know those light switches at both ends of a hall or stairs that control the light? If the light is off, you know that either of them turns on the light. You also know that either of them will also turn off the light. The light is the quantum state. The switches are entangled. Not exact, but a moderately close real-world analogy.
@mythereal Now this almost makes sense. Except… those switches are joined by wires and controlled by electrons. What creates the entanglement between, say, two photons separated by X distance? That’s the “spooky” bit then, innit.
@ruouttaurmind The task wasn’t to explain how the switches communicated with each other and the light. It was to make sense of what’s happening. However, to answer your question, the laws of physics break down at the quantum level - distance no longer matters, neither does mass, and possibly even time. You can’t define or conceive of it using three-dimensional physics.
But yeah, SPOOKY!
@mythereal @ruouttaurmind reading that was like having a conversation with my son. Both hurt my head, but kinda made sense!!!
you should watch this:
and then throw this in the mix to help you get all fuzzy:
You ever get out of the shower and go to put on your underwear and somehow wind up with one leg hole over your arm, one over both legs, and your head coming out of the fly?
Sounds like a scene out of Mr. Bean, right? That’s very much entanglement. Now just do that on a quantum level.
The universe is a big fan of Rowan Atkinson.
One night, a mutual friend of a couple of photons introduces them. They find they have a lot in common. Same charge, same frequency, same wavelength, same speed, same mass, same spin, same polarization, you know what I’m talking about. It’s an obvious match. Maybe there’s some drinking, one thing leads to another, and next thing you know they’re correlated. Frankly, how can you blame them, as photons look pretty good in the dark. And photons do have a reputation for being fast.
Well, circumstances change and they move away from each other (photons are always moving), but they never forget that night, or each other. So they stay entangled unless some perturbation disturbs their relationship. (Perturbation tends to mess up relationships.)
So I would call it more awkward, or maybe even a little romantic rather than spooky.
Bottom Line: Photons are just teeny, tiny versions of us.
If you have access to PBS or Amazon Prime video, I recommend an episode of NOVA: Einstein’s Quantum Riddle. It’s kinda simplistic, but it covers the basics.
Quantum entanglement has not yet been explained by theoretical physicists and the first ones who do will earn the Nobel Prize for Physics. But just like gravity, we don’t have to be able to explain it to discover its “rules”, test them for consistency, and apply them.
As always, I’m impressed with this community’s willingness to kick around interesting subject matter.
Similar to @mehcuda67 ‘s romantic example, here’s a (rough) quote I saw on The Interwebs, regarding that inexplicable attraction one finds toward another person, that ties in with entanglement for me:
“I like to think that we and the people we’re drawn to contain stardust that originated in places close to each other at the creation of the universe, and those particles are just trying to get back together.”
I acknowledge that we are always “what we eat,” and therefore changing our stardust makeup, but nevertheless, maybe one day we’ll find that this is true, that the chaos of the universe is actually just stardust attraction physics.
@gregormehndel
/youtube Aaron Neville stardust
Seems obvious from the name “quantum entanglement”:
It’s some sort of thing you do to reignite the spark in your love life.