Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory

[norml]

Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: December 27, 2005

Einstein said there would be days like this.



Akiko Nishimura for The New York Times



Here Kitty, Kitty

A Quantum Sampler (December 26, 2005) This fall scientists announced that they had put a half dozen beryllium atoms into a "cat state."

No, they were not sprawled along a sunny windowsill. To a physicist, a "cat state" is the condition of being two diametrically opposed conditions at once, like black and white, up and down, or dead and alive.

These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing whatever it was they were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should one of them realize, like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn't fall until he looks down, that it is in a metaphysically untenable situation and decide to spin only one way, the rest would instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test tube or across the galaxy.

The idea that measuring the properties of one particle could instantaneously change the properties of another one (or a whole bunch) far away is strange to say the least - almost as strange as the notion of particles spinning in two directions at once. The team that pulled off the beryllium feat, led by Dietrich Leibfried at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Boulder, Colo., hailed it as another step toward computers that would use quantum magic to perform calculations.

But it also served as another demonstration of how weird the world really is according to the rules, known as quantum mechanics.


snip


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27eins.html

[tatertop]

1. spellbinding

[papau]

2. That is a WOW - Congrats to the team that pulled it off! :-)

:-)

[niyad]

3. "magick"-the art and science of bending matter at will. anybody who is

in the least bit metaphysical has no problem with these concepts. nice to see that science is finally beginning to catch up with us.

[soothsayer]

5. When physics and metaphysics merge into "reverent science"

we'll all be better off.

[rman]

8. how many people outside of science have actually demonstrated

"bending matter at will"?

[Orrex]

9. Me

Why, I'm bending my elbow right now, through sheer force of will. Amazing!

[roguevalley]

4. god, this is great. Magick indeed. :)

[Dr.Phool]

6. Isn't that Schroedingers cat?

I thought he was dead. Or alive. Depending on where he was at.

[melody]

7. Schrödinger's Cat Trumps Pavlov's Dog

I love it. The mystery continues.

[Occulus]

10. Schrodinger's Cat was a thought experiment

used to illustrate why quantum mechanics can be taken as absurd in some ways, if I recall correctly. It was never intended to be actually performed, but... these guys took it literally, and did it.

Now, the only question I have: can't the spin state of a particle be considered "information"... and if so, doesn't this mean that information can travel between quantum particles at FTL velocities due to their entanglement?

Are we talking "instantaneous" transmission of "information" here? Or am I missing something?

[melody]

11. We're talking effects determining causes :-)

Yes, Schrodinger's cat was a Gedankenexperiment. In this case, they've done something a bit more concrete than what Bohm attempted with Einstein Podolsky Rosen. Actually, at this point, strictly speaking, everything is still conjecture, but it suggests non-locality yet again. Maybe it says our questions aren't finely tuned enough to arrive at the answers?

[tocqueville]

12. picture of Schrödinger's cat after the experiment

[melody]

13. poor little cupcake :(

Schrödinger is remembered. His kitty cat becomes just another casualty in the annals of scientific discovery. At least he got a bath afterward.

[Duer 157099]

14. Quantum entanglement

So glad I finally found the happy place on DU. I swear I gotta stay out of LBN and hang out here instead.

I also finally just read about this experiment, and am trying to untangle it in my head.

1. Was Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment meant to ridicule the concept, or, was it meant to demonstrate how such quantum effects could not/do not manifest on a gross level? I heard an interview with a scientist involved in the NIST study, and he said something to that effect, that the optimal experiment would move from 6 atoms up to the level where they cease to observe the phenomenom, and then we'll finally know where that magical cut-off is.

I think all these so-called thought experiments are heading for trouble...

2. I can accept (by not trying too hard to understand) the superposition state. I used to think it was purely mathematical, just statistics, but it seems that actual measurements indicate that it's a real state (which brings up the question: how do they measure it without collapsing it?). Is the entanglement process something like synchronization, or entrainment?

[Dead_Parrot]

15. It was meant to show

...the underlying battiness of the whole thing, but in wonderment rather than ridicule. If you want to go a stage further, google "Wigner's friend" and abandon any hope of sanity... :D

Niels Bohr summed it up nicely: "If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them."

[Duer 157099]

16. Re Wigner and his friend

I didn't know there was an actual name for this concept, but it is the logical extension.

My quantum physics is quite rusty, I've forgotten which experiment shows that it isn't the actual measurement itself that collapses the wave function -- or is it? If so, then Wigner's point is moot, so it must not be so.

Which experiment was it, anyone?