h a l f b a k e r yThe leaning tower of Piezo
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Ooh. (+)
<grabs popcorn, gets comfy> |
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//intercept messages with a microscope// I'm not following
how a microscope would help here. |
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It's not clear, in any event, why they'd be using quantum
entanglement, except for cryptography - in which case we'd
not be able to disencode it. If you were thinking that QE
can be used to communicate faster than light, well,
apparently it can't. |
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But my main question was how a microscope would help. |
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I am not sure about the name of the device which measures the spin of a particle. |
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Just expanding (or commenting) on [Max]'s contribution a
little. |
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Best I can figure the whole idea that it can appears to have
arisen from a mismatch in the interpretation & use of the
words used by those who know what they're talking about
(when they talk about quantum entanglement, I'm not one)
in trying to explain the phenomena to the layman. |
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In short, some less than Stella intelligence's (of which I am
one, often) jumped on what they thought was being said
(but wasn't) & got excited about something that isn't real. |
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//But my main question was how a microscope would
help// |
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Because if it did work in the fashion proposed there would
only be two points in space where you could intercept the
message (where it was sent from or where it was received)
because you have to be observing the spin of one of the
particles & there's no connection that we know of (waves or
anything) travelling between them that can be observed
or intercepted. |
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If your at neither location there would be nothing to see,
not with a telescope, a microscope or even a little piece of
cardboard with a slit in it. |
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But that aside as [Max] said it can't be used to send
messages anyway apparently. |
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Except for the microscope part this is a good idea. Quantum entanglement is 10,000 times faster than light speed [link] |
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I think the thing to do is look for something big that is quantum entangled like a star or a pulsar that is obviously located next to a giant prism. |
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hark! a giant prism. It's photons can be adjusted 10,000 times faster than light! They want to talk to us! |
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//Quantum entanglement is 10,000 times faster than light
speed [link] // That statement makes no sense, and in
any case it doesn't let you send data faster than light. |
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//Quantum entanglement is 10,000 times faster than light
speed// //statement
makes no sense// |
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Really? you had all the rest of what [beans] said & that was
the
(one) bit of it you felt an overwhelming desire to comment
on,
how odd :) |
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My first thought was a monstrous array of a little pieces of cardboard with a slits in them, to maximise reception. |
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Thinking more on the subject, it would probably be easier to sneak a webcam into whatever facility the aliens are using to transmit from. Or to. |
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If I understand correctly, the "many worlds" theory best
explains quantum entanglement, and also makes it clear
why you can't send information faster than light. |
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In many parallel universes, pairs of photons are
generated; in each universe, the polarization of the first
photon is random, but the polarization of the other is
always at right angles to the first one. When you observe
one photon, you decide which of the universe's you're in;
and then of course when you observe the other photon it's
polarized at right angles to the first one. |
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Analogy: in many parallel universes, a man mails one
glove to Bob and the other glove to Alice, choosing at
random. If Bob looks and finds he's got a left glove, he
has collapsed into one universe; and in that universe,
Alice must have received a right glove. No spookiness.
Well, not much. |
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//Bob looks and finds he's got a left glove// |
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Taking aside for a moment the fact the glove is
instantly incinerated (iirc?) when bob looks to see
which one he has (as we can only determine which particle
we
have by
methods that necessarily destroy it, did I get that right?). |
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If Bob chops the thumb off & sews it back on the other side
to make a right glove Alice's glove wouldn't magically
become
a left glove (or does the analogy break down here?) so you
can't use them to exchange signals between Alice & Bob. |
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Or is that wrong? doesn't really matter if it is because we
can't spin the particle back & forth anyway (can we?). |
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Actually you can, but it takes some fancy cueing, and make sure the black doesn't go in-off in the middle pocket. |
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There's still the incineration issue even if you can. |
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Plus (from
a
brief Google) "It is possible to flip one particle's spin in an
entangled pair but that does not effect the spin of the
other"
so I guess the glove analogy does hold up pretty well all the
way through. |
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So even if performing a measurement didn't
destroy the quantum coherence (as it does) we still have
nothing we
can
use to send messages with. |
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The incineration issue (a) isn't an issue and (b) doesn't
necessarily exist anyway. |
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Huh? not that it matters when flipping one doesn't flip the
other, but how so, have we got some way to measure it that
doesn't destroy it now? |
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There are plenty of ways of measuring entanglement
properties that either don't, or don't necessarily, "destroy"
the property. |
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[mb] perhaps you will think this works: |
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The aliens, 10,000 light years away send a line of quantum entangled x-axis photons like . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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You notice it is just a line of photons. The aliens have an entangled array of photons just like it. |
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Then you observe them with morse code, skipping examining some of the completely, . . - .-.- .--...-.. (etc) |
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The aliens notice your witty initial statement after only one year. |
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Fortunately you noticed they send a 2d grid of photons. |
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You just observe the bottom half of the grid for replies. The system does not regenerate or reuse, they just send out a fresh grid every 1 second or something. Communication 10,000 times faster than light. |
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Now about the detector... |
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//perhaps you will think// but none of that has
anything to do with quantum entanglement does it though so
how
does this relate to the "idea". |
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[Skewed] I just edited it to make it clearer! |
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[bean] no you didn't, it's still bollocks & not lovely bollocks
either. |
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Shoeboxes. Line many shoe box with mirrors, then fill some of them with light for a binary message, then put them on the next rocket to go into space in the direction of Alpha Centauri, so light travelling faster than light. |
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Do not be surprised if they come back saying "It is not a raining on Alpha Centauri Bb". |
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//plenty of ways of measuring entanglement properties
that either don't, or don't necessarily, "destroy" the
property// |
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So is there one that won't destroy it reasonably rapidly? |
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Even if there's a way to observe one up to a million times
before it breaks that'd still be useless (for all practical
purposes) for this wouldn't it. |
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A million times, so a gigabyte
of data at best, up to two minutes of streaming video on a
mobile
phone (but only if you don't "listen"
when no one
talks or sends). Post off one of two phones &
wait a few
thousand
or million years for it to arrive just for a two minute chat?
it's just not worth it is it. |
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Still a moot point of course when flipping one doesn't
change the spin of the other. |
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I can't help but think I'm missing something here... but a quick delve into "quantum for dummies" makes the subject look slightly fishier than most left-wing missives. |
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I can buy to an extent that "indeterminate until measured" isn't simply a tautology - as a longtime SF reader I'm used to stuff like that. |
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But, what does "measured" mean ? in context. Is it the interaction between sentience and phenomenon ? |
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And, how can you look at particle B and tell that a coallescence has taken place on particle A ? |
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Apologies for no pre-existing knowledge of the subject. |
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If you interpret it as being abount sentience, then you're in George
Berkeley territory (see link). I rather like that neighbourhood, but
it may
irritate physicists - especially the more anti-religious ones. |
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I don't interpret it at all. Sorry, I meant "intelligence" : "sentience" could be a bit of a stretch. |
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Oh god, is this more of that "If we don't see it, it didn't happen" crap ? |
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Meanwhile, back in the idea ... I think the story in [beany]'s link is
misleading because it fails to distinguish between datum and
meta-datum. If I understand this correctly (and real scientists
may like to correct me), observation (by Alice or Bob) changes
the binary meta-datum "does this photon have a determinate
polarity?" from false to true, but it does not control the datum
"which particular polarity does this photon have?". In order to
communicate, you'd need to control the latter. |
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It's a mistake commonly made by amateurs in software, resulting
in many broken spreadsheets (because Excel doesn't really know
the difference between "I don't know what this is" and "I do know
what this is, and it's zero"). |
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A quick google says that there's an "if blank" test. I didn't look any further to see if it works on cells defined as dedicated numeric. |
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The zero/missing disambiguation isn't the only member of the meta category : there's also assumed unit of measurement, verified data, out of bounds, etc. |
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I've had the "pleasure" of working with some of the standard consumer-grade framework programs (db3, lotus, excel) - none of them are terribly useful. Granted, I'm predisposed to active rather than passive programming. |
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// is this more of that "If we don't see it, it didn't happen" crap // |
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Ah yes, the so-called "Clinton Effect", often applied to embarrassing emails. |
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//there's an "if blank" test// |
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Yes, there are various of things of that kind bolted on as afterthoughts - but they weren't baked in from the outset. |
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If it is, maybe they are already within the patterns of structure. We
should look for extropic pieces of computation, i.e., viruses? |
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//think I'm missing something here// |
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Well, myself, I've begun to think that whatever the
scientists (most especially any popular TV "scientists") & the
math says it may be best to just choose some other word
than "entanglement" (any other word) to use in your own
head when you think about this. Because in this case it
doesn't really mean connected in the way most people use
it, so the word just serves to confuse
things. |
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I think that helps, but I could just be delusional. |
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In layman's terms (well.. mine) the two particles aren't
connected, from the moment you separate them they have
no effect on each other at all. |
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[Max] I think put it very very succinctly with his gloves
analogy, go look at what he said. |
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What it boils down to is you have two paired particles one
spin-up & one spin-down, you separate them then look at
one to see which of the pair it is, whichever one you just
looked at you know what the other one is (of course)
because it's the other one of the pair (so far so obvious). |
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But then some humorous chuckle-head said, "I know, lets
call it "entanglement", throw around a few phrases like
"spooky action at a distance" & look a bit worried, we'll
get decades of mileage out of this taking the piss, it'll be
hilarious", that's my theory anyway. |
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//But, what does "measured" mean ?// |
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I think it normally means throwing the particle at a wall
very very
hard & then looking at the impression it made to see what
it was
(because the particle is too small to be seen itself so you
can only measure
it indirectly), this tends to destroy it. |
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[Max] tells me there're ways
to look that don't destroy it, but I don't know what
they are.. or if he's just playing tubular bells with
my appendages. |
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At a quantum level, "measure", "interact" and "change" are
synonymous. |
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// I think that helps, but I could just be delusional // |
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At least this thread has some activity! |
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Yes, but we think you'll find that every time you observe it, it changes, so that you're never sure what its status actually is - in accordance with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. |
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It must have be hell to behind Heisenberg in the queue at the Cambridge University canteen..."The chicken...no...the beef...errr..." etc |
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"Is that sliced beef ? It looks like sliced beef ... oh, no, it seems to have changed ... what is it now ? Are there vegetables... ?" |
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He probably starved to death, because he could decide what he wanted to eat, or when he wanted to eat it, but not both. |
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He'd have been better off just stuffing cats into boxes... |
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The cat is neither dead nor alive... but technically edible in either circumstance. |
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So you have the two photons, that are not photons because they are now this photon-photon entangled complex, that can be stretched a fair distance. If someone measures, the entanglement complex collapses. How fast does it collapse? and does each end that gains the unentangled photon back, knows it's collapsed? |
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Not even close, or this would be saying entanglement is nothing tangible and only a definition. All the big companies would be wasting their money. And also if that was true then, possibly a definition this simple could be encoded in binary bypassing all the complexity that actual happening entanglement entails. |
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In this analogy, there is no physical action. In reality, the forming of an entanglement is an action. It is different to two single photons. An action that generates a new state of the physicality. |
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I don't think there can be a macroworld example but if there was
it would be like the two tickets would physically change state and become a linked together form. Maybe a giant tissue with corners spanning the ticket holders waving in the wind. Until it collapsed back into the two tickets. |
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Being a disc with a square edge, there is a tiny but non-zero probability that on a smooth, flat surface, the coin can land on its edge and stay there in a stable state. |
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However, a lens, with an edge that tapers to zero thickness (effectively a blade) cannot balance on that edge as even the smallest disturbance in its metastable condition will cause it to topple onto one face or the other. |
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Take care not to cut yourself when flipping it. |
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Except that in Flatland, you can't "flip" a die. |
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In your world, a die can be rotated in any of three dimensions as it translates along the t axis. A Flatland die can only be rotated around its axis within the plane, because it can't rotate "through" or "outside" the plane. |
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Or, and I know this might be a bit unconventional, we can
just accept quantum physicists are all a bunch of tossers
talking a load of useless or irrelevant (or both) bollocks in
pursuit of the next grant cheque stop wasting our time
listening to them & go for a pint instead. |
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It's just a thought, but probably leads to a more
satisfying & productive evening than listening to a quantum
physicist tell you with a few hundred polysyllabic words in a
lot convoluted sentences carefully crafted to obscure the
bottom line to the point you forget it's there or never
notice it in the first place that he doesn't actually know (or
at least isn't completely sure) what he's talking about..
bunch a people who throw things up & down from one hand
the lot of em, accept the one in the wheelchair, he was OK,
couldn't throw things up & down anyway. |
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I get the states. One white lottery ticket spun with one black ticket making a grey entanglement. But this is the EM field, quantum foam the stuff photons are made of. |
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Quantum computing wants the design entanglement to collapse to an answer not to fall back to the states that were put in. Wouldn't it be like having a number and word on each lotto ball and because of how the balls are programmically dropped into the entanglement rotation, a collapse would spit them out magically with the numbers and words switched between balls. Which means the quantum realm which generated the entanglement structure has given a computational solution. |
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