Test Your Physics Comprehension

[grip]

Explain the following below to us in a super concise, short paragraph of laymen terms, so we can comprehend it in a classical view how space/time is an illusion?


"Entanglement is much more than just another weird quantum phenomenon. It is the acting principle behind both why quantum mechanics merges the world into one and why we experience this fundamental unity as many separate objects. At the same time, entanglement is the reason why we seem to live in a classical reality. It is—quite literally—the glue and creator of worlds. Entanglement applies to objects comprising two or more components and describes what happens when the quantum principle that “everything that can happen actually happens” is applied to such composed objects. Accordingly, an entangled state is the superposition of all possible combinations that the components of a composed object can be in to produce the same overall result. It is again the wavy nature of the quantum domain that can help to illustrate how entanglement actually works.

Picture a perfectly calm, glassy sea on a windless day. Now ask yourself, how can such a plane be produced by overlaying two individual wave patterns? One possibility is that superimposing two completely flat surfaces results again in a completely level outcome. But another possibility that might produce a flat surface is if two identical wave patterns shifted by half an oscillation cycle were to be superimposed on one another, so that the wave crests of one pattern annihilate the wave troughs of the other one and vice versa. If we just observed the glassy ocean, regarding it as the result of two swells combined, there would be no way for us to find out about the patterns of the individual swells. What sounds perfectly ordinary when we talk about waves has the most bizarre consequences when applied to competing realities. If your neighbor told you she had two cats, one live cat and a dead one, this would imply that either the first cat or the second one is dead and that the remaining cat, respectively, is alive—it would be a strange and morbid way of describing one’s pets, and you may not know which one of them is the lucky one, but you would get the neighbor’s drift. Not so in the quantum world. In quantum mechanics, the very same statement implies that the two cats are merged in a superposition of cases, including the first cat being alive and the second one dead and the first cat being dead while the second one lives, but also possibilities where both cats are half alive and half dead, or the first cat is one-third alive, while the second feline adds the missing two-thirds of life. In a quantum pair of cats, the fates and conditions of the individual animals get dissolved entirely in the state of the whole. Likewise, in a quantum universe, there are no individual objects. All that exists is merged into a single “One.”

Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThis past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum...

news.yahoo.com

 

[bongsaway]

Explain the following below to us in a super concise, short paragraph of laymen terms, so we can comprehend it in a classical view how space/time is an illusion?


"Entanglement is much more than just another weird quantum phenomenon. It is the acting principle behind both why quantum mechanics merges the world into one and why we experience this fundamental unity as many separate objects. At the same time, entanglement is the reason why we seem to live in a classical reality. It is—quite literally—the glue and creator of worlds. Entanglement applies to objects comprising two or more components and describes what happens when the quantum principle that “everything that can happen actually happens” is applied to such composed objects. Accordingly, an entangled state is the superposition of all possible combinations that the components of a composed object can be in to produce the same overall result. It is again the wavy nature of the quantum domain that can help to illustrate how entanglement actually works.

Picture a perfectly calm, glassy sea on a windless day. Now ask yourself, how can such a plane be produced by overlaying two individual wave patterns? One possibility is that superimposing two completely flat surfaces results again in a completely level outcome. But another possibility that might produce a flat surface is if two identical wave patterns shifted by half an oscillation cycle were to be superimposed on one another, so that the wave crests of one pattern annihilate the wave troughs of the other one and vice versa. If we just observed the glassy ocean, regarding it as the result of two swells combined, there would be no way for us to find out about the patterns of the individual swells. What sounds perfectly ordinary when we talk about waves has the most bizarre consequences when applied to competing realities. If your neighbor told you she had two cats, one live cat and a dead one, this would imply that either the first cat or the second one is dead and that the remaining cat, respectively, is alive—it would be a strange and morbid way of describing one’s pets, and you may not know which one of them is the lucky one, but you would get the neighbor’s drift. Not so in the quantum world. In quantum mechanics, the very same statement implies that the two cats are merged in a superposition of cases, including the first cat being alive and the second one dead and the first cat being dead while the second one lives, but also possibilities where both cats are half alive and half dead, or the first cat is one-third alive, while the second feline adds the missing two-thirds of life. In a quantum pair of cats, the fates and conditions of the individual animals get dissolved entirely in the state of the whole. Likewise, in a quantum universe, there are no individual objects. All that exists is merged into a single “One.”

Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThis past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum...

news.yahoo.com

As soon as the tab of acid I just took kicks in, I'll be happy to explain in layman's terms.

 

[lemmiwinx]

Einstein didn't believe in spooky action at a distance and neither do I. Don't mess with special relativity or it will come back to bite you on your ass.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Test Your Physics Comprehension​

Explain the following below to us in a super concise, short paragraph of laymen terms, so we can comprehend it in a classical view how space/time is an illusion?

I am so embarrassed because my father was a world renowned nuclear physicist. He helped invent pulsed power, thermal X-ray lasers, RF permeameters, nuclear hardening and advanced nuclear weapons effects simulators that allowed us to continue testing without resorting to above ground OR underground nuclear bomb tests.

And yet NONE of us three boys inherited ANY of his math and physics prowess.
He was superior in facts, numbers and figures, we three boys are all gifted in "colors and shapes"...the artsy fartsy brains instead.
We inherited our intelligence mostly from Mom's side of the family.
I can barely manage to cope with college algebra!

 

[Loulit01]

I am so embarrassed because my father was a world renowned nuclear physicist. He helped invent pulsed power, thermal X-ray lasers, RF permeameters, nuclear hardening and advanced nuclear weapons effects simulators that allowed us to continue testing without resorting to above ground OR underground nuclear bomb tests.

And yet NONE of us three boys inherited ANY of his math and physics prowess.
He was superior in facts, numbers and figures, we three boys are all gifted in "colors and shapes"...the artsy fartsy brains instead.
We inherited our intelligence mostly from Mom's side of the family.
I can barely manage to cope with college algebra!

Nature deviates toward the norm.

 

[DrewPaul]

Explain the following below to us in a super concise, short paragraph of laymen terms, so we can comprehend it in a classical view how space/time is an illusion?


"Entanglement is much more than just another weird quantum phenomenon. It is the acting principle behind both why quantum mechanics merges the world into one and why we experience this fundamental unity as many separate objects. At the same time, entanglement is the reason why we seem to live in a classical reality. It is—quite literally—the glue and creator of worlds. Entanglement applies to objects comprising two or more components and describes what happens when the quantum principle that “everything that can happen actually happens” is applied to such composed objects. Accordingly, an entangled state is the superposition of all possible combinations that the components of a composed object can be in to produce the same overall result. It is again the wavy nature of the quantum domain that can help to illustrate how entanglement actually works.

Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThis past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum...

news.yahoo.com

You believe entanglement is manifestation of the double slit experiment? Any thoughts on quantum computing such as will it become a reality?
What about multiverse theory and other worlds theory? Are they real or made up to explain our reality?

 

[VySky]

 

[AmNat]

snipped for character limit

The most pertinent fact wrt to explaining that text is that reporters do not know, and should never be presumed to know, what they are talking about.

As for the physics, the basic point is that probabilities in QM do not add in the same way as in CM. Classically, if a particle can follow path A or -A, and either of these paths can (with different but nonzero probabilities) yield outcomes B or -B, then P(B) (probability of B) will simply be:

P(B) = P(A and B) + P(-A and B)

In QM, the probability is given as the square of the absolute value of something called the wave function, such that:

P(B) = |Psi(B)|^2
P(A and B) = |Psi(A and B)|^2
P(-A and B) = |Psi(-A and B)|^2

Where Psi can have complex values (whereas probabilities are always positive and real). In QM the wave functions, rather than the probabilities, add linearly, such that:

Psi(B) = Psi(A and B) + Psi(-A and B)

This means that the overall probability of B happening is given by:

P(B) = |Psi(B)|^2 = |Psi(A and B)|^2 + |Psi(-A and B)|^2 + Real(2*Psi(A and B)*Psi(-A and B)) = P(A and B) + P(-A and B) + Real(2*Psi(A and B)*Psi(-A and B))

Where Real() is a function that selects for the real part of an expression, e.g.:

If z = a + bi, then Real(z) = a

This is where the analogy with ocean waves comes in: if two waves in the ocean meet, they can either add together (if they peak at the same place) or cancel each other (if one peaks in the other's valley). Likewise, the exact spatial relations involved will determine whether two wave functions add to each other or cancel each other out (IOW whether the third term in the probability equation is positive or negative).

What entanglement means is that if the state of two particles is casually connected, they must be treated as a single system. E.g. if you have Particles X and Y, and set up an experiment such that one must go to the left and the other to the right, your possible outcomes are that X went left and Y went right, or that X went right and Y went left. The fact that either could've gone left doesn't mean that "X and Y both go left" is a possible outcome.

As the energy levels in a system increase, the wave functions become narrower in space, making them less likely to add with or cancel each other. Imagine extremely narrow ocean waves (so narrow they were essentially holes and towers jutting into and out of an otherwise flat sea). The narrower they were, the less likely they'd be to interfere with each other. Likewise, entangled systems exhibit less interference than their component parts do individually. If you entangled a particle with an arbitrarily large number of other particles (say, all the particles making up a measuring device) you'd find that no detectable interference occurs, the third term in the probability equation becomes infinitesimally small, and the classical probability equation would be reproduced.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Nature deviates toward the norm.

The norm?? NORM??!
HA! And DOUBLE HA!!
If it had deviated toward the norm, at least I could have some bare bones comprehension of basic bog standard physics!
I'm a moron!
I'm incapable of even understanding what @AmNat typed above, it might as well be ancient Sanskrit to me!

 

[AmNat]

You believe entanglement is manifestation of the double slit experiment? Any thoughts on quantum computing such as will it become a reality?
What about multiverse theory and other worlds theory? Are they real or made up to explain our reality?

The double slit experiment does not generally involve entanglement (except with the measuring device). Quantum computers may or may not get to the point of actually being useful, but you'll never carry one in your pocket. The "Many Worlds" theory is one answer to the so-called measurement problem in quantum mechanics. It is not, in my view, the most cogent.

 

[AmNat]

Einstein didn't believe in spooky action at a distance and neither do I. Don't mess with special relativity or it will come back to bite you on your ass.

Spooky action at a distance is an empirical fact, as demonstrated by e.g. Bell's Inequality.

 

[Ambig]

The most pertinent fact wrt to explaining that text is that reporters do not know, and should never be presumed to know, what they are talking about.

A couple of days ago, I read a local story about a local matter with which I have a lot of expertise.

The guy mangled it. No way the average reader could come away from it understanding what's going on.

 

[AmNat]

A couple of days ago, I read a local story about a local matter with which I have a lot of expertise.

The guy mangled it. No way the average reader could come away from it understanding what's going on.

This is the experience of virtually everyone who knows anything when the subject of their knowledge appears in the paper. But Gell-Mann Amnesia is ever-present:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

 

[Loulit01]

Spooky action at a distance is an empirical fact, as demonstrated by e.g. Bell's Inequality.

Ha! I watched that experiment on a doc on Amazon Prime. I'm trying to find it again to post it.

 

[Loulit01]

Watch The Secrets of Quantum Physics | Prime Video

Professor of physics Jim Al-Khalili investigates the most accurate and yet perplexing scientific theory ever - quantum physics.

www.amazon.com

Bell's Inequality start about 38:00 but the whole show's a trip.

Shut up and calculate!

 

[VySky]

 

[grip]

The answer can be derived from the last two sentences of the OP...

"In a quantum pair of cats, the fates and conditions of the individual animals get dissolved entirely in the state of the whole. Likewise, in a quantum universe, there are no individual objects. All that exists is merged into a single “One.”

We exist in a homogeneous universe of energy that only appears to contain separate objects due to the wavy motion of the underlying quantum fields.

 

[DrewPaul]

The double slit experiment does not generally involve entanglement (except with the measuring device). Quantum computers may or may not get to the point of actually being useful, but you'll never carry one in your pocket. The "Many Worlds" theory is one answer to the so-called measurement problem in quantum mechanics. It is not, in my view, the most cogent.

Is there a lot cogentness in quantum mechanics? Its funny how we sometimes think this world we didn't create should bend to our ideas of what makes sense. Many worlds is part of the multiverse ensemble of ideas. It appears science has hit a brick wall of sorts at least in astronomy. They create theories based on explaining observations but without direct evidence or in some cases inferential evidence the explanation exists. Our frame of reference is only valid from the big bang forward.

 

[AmNat]

Is there a lot cogentness in quantum mechanics? Its funny how we sometimes think this world we didn't create should bend to our ideas of what makes sense. Many worlds is part of the multiverse ensemble of ideas.

Generally there is. Quantum mechanics is just a system for predicting particle behavior. It's predictions are clear and accurate. The difficulties only arise when one tries to explain the macroscopic world as an emergent consequence of QM. It seems obvious to me that QM, which is a statistical theory (meaning it speaks only of probabilities that a particle will do this or that), is an emergent result of something more fundamental. Just as classical statistical mechanics is an emergent result of classical mechanics proper. The difficulty being that all known means of measuring a particle's state changes its future evolution, such that knowing "how will a particle in state X evolve if undisturbed" is impossible.

It appears science has hit a brick wall of sorts at least in astronomy. They create theories based on explaining observations but without direct evidence or in some cases inferential evidence the explanation exists. Our frame of reference is only valid from the big bang forward.

Indeed, though that is only tangentially related to QM. The fundamental problem with astronomy is that it has blurred the line between predicting phenomena (which are empirically testable) vs determining the history of the universe and the nature of astrophysical bodies (which are not).

 

[Mr Person]

The best way to attempt to understand this short of actually dropping your career to work your way all the way up to that level of physics is to read books by physicist-poets like Carlo Rovelli. No middlemen, be they reporters or DP posters.

And even then I don't think you could possibly truly understand it without speaking reality's true language: mathematics.