Bolting Though The Fifth Dimension

While Bolt was blowing away the 100 meter mark , another  speed record  fell, with far more portentious consequences . An entangled pair of photons  ran an information relay at better that ten thousnd times the speed of light , and those who managed the race may end up with another sort of gold medal , for  passing a milestone on the road to multiple worlds.

Physicist Nicolas Gisin and colleagues report in Nature that pairs of quantum-entangled photons sent  from the university  University of Geneva through fiber-optic cables to two Swiss villages 18 kilometers apart changed polarization not just  identically, but  faster than synchronized atomic clocks could detect. 

Whatever was affecting the photons seems to have happened so nearly instantaneously that t the phenomenon influencing the particles had to be traveling at least 10,000 times faster than light.  Since that can't happen in four dimensions of space and time, the experiments show that entanglement might be controlled by something existing beyond it.

 Gisin says that once the scientific community "accepts that nature has this ability, we should try to create models that explain it." This doesn't demonstrate spooky action at a distance directly, but does provide a lower bound-the speed is truly superluminal. And out of this world.

 

Comments

[Mark Wadsworth]

Being supremely unqualified in this (i.e. I've read a book by Carlos Calle and one by Stephen Hawking) didn't the quantum chaps always say that this might be possible?

[DensityDuck]

True, but it's "possible" that when I go home tonight Brooke Burke will be waiting in my bed. This is extremely unlikely and nobody has proposed a mechanism by which this might occur...but it is possible.

[Brian Warren]

This story is taken from an experiment done in 1997, and clearly cites the following article written July 22, 1997: http://www.cebaf.gov/news/internet/1997/spooky.html

The original article refutes the idea of "superluminal" transmission of information:

"Whatever the nature of the connection between entangled particles may be, nearly all physicists agree that it cannot be used to transmit messages faster than the speed of light. All it can do is assure that a random choice by one entangled particle is instantly echoed by its distant partner. This is not the same thing as transmitting information, the experts say, and therefore it does not violate relativity theory."

[Russell Seitz]

Wrong, Brian- Gisin's new experiment was conducted this year and appears in the current issue of _Nature_.

[Nathan Okun]

The above implies that quantum mechanics somehow "violates" Relativity in this instantaneous transition at a measurable distance. That is not true. Relativity states that nothing can MOVE faster than light. To "move" you have to cover a distance in some time -- have a VELOCITY. What has the term "velocity" got to do with entanglement? Nothing!! The two entangled particles are NEVER moving relative to each other ACCORDING TO THEM! "Distance" is not a property in the entanglement process, so quantum mechanics, an extremely reactionary set of rules, simply ignores distance altogether in that process. The analogy is a chess king and a chess knight. To BOTH of them, they move to ADJACENT squares! The knight completely ignores (cannot sense them during a move)the squares in-between its original square and the 8 possible destination squares, the same number of squares a king can move to. WE see the in-between squares, but NOT the knight! Thus, it is NOT "moving" through those intermediate squares and cannot be said to be moving "faster" than the king in some esoteric manner. The knight and king take the SAME TIME to make their moves (zero here). Ditto with entangled particles, no matter "where" they might be RELATIVE TO US (they never have moved relative to each other). Relativity and quantum mechanics DO NOT violate each other. They simply are not on the same "TV channel" wavelength so only one applies at a time here.

[DensityDuck]

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED!

[mulberry bags]

He is a good friend that speaks well of us behind our backs.

[Hermes Birkin]

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