Friday 10 July 2009

Spukhafte Fernwirkung

Hello Readers,

If you tried reading those words and succeeded, you can speak German pretty well. These words were spoken by a very famous person, about the topic I am about to deliver!

Einstein thought entanglement was a "spooky action from a distance". This is also the idea that he played with until his passing. He thought it was so impossible that if he didn't find the truth of the matter, he would change professions.

At the basics, entanglement is very simple. 2 subatomic particles can "share information". Here's where Einstein got angry. The mathematics show that at any distance, the "information" is sent instantaneously. That is, faster than the speed of light (that was precisely when Einstein stopped making hair appointments).

Remember that I said "electrons are weird little buggers"? Well, there are smaller subatomic particles. Let's say, sub-subatomic particles. These wee things that make up the other wee things (smaller building blocks for the neutrons, protons and electrons). These are leptons, quarks and bosons. Bosons are the force particles aka the particles that help hold atoms together. Quarks are the fundamental masses of the subatomic particle. Leptons are what gives a subatomic particle its spin.

It's weird to think about but all subatomic particles have a spin to it. Scientists have actually given it a numerical value of 1/2 or -1/2 (up or down). The spin of the particle is what information is sent. (A bit of romance ahead) Each subatomic particle has a counter part somewhere in the universe. They are "related" to each other. If an electron has spin up, then its counterpart has a spin down value to it.

That doesn't sound to weird, so why did Einstein freak out? Say these particles were separated to either side of the universe, what do we have? We have one spin up lepton on the far left (for visual purposes) and one spin down to the far right. If the spin changes (which it can) than the other changes to oppose it, instantly.

This concept has helped the idea of quantum teleportation. Scary to think that we could travel faster than the speed of light. But in order for us to travel quickly, we need to build a "holding" bin to put the opposite spinned subatomic particles in.

I hope you have enjoyed my 3 part series on Quantum Mechanics. Any and all comments and questions are welcome. As always if you have an idea for this blog, don't be afraid to tell me, via comments as well.

Happy reading!

4 comments:

JPoisson said...

This article is the start to something new and big. Yes human teleportation (waits for audience to settle down) Now hear me strait In order for us to teleport we have to broken down to sub atomic levels or smaller then reconstructed back together....

Great Article Keith, a little shorter then what i thought you could of went with it but well thought out. by the way what is the meaning of the German title?

Keith said...

The title is "spooky action from a distance". Einstein said this. We sure do need to be broken down either atom-by-atom or into the subatomicly. There will obviously be MANY failure attempts but if we can make a digital copy that is flawless than it can be done.

our.man.jonesy said...

Of course, being broken down into a quadzillion little pieces and re-constructed on the other end sounds very much like dying, and construction of a copy on the other side. This appreciation of full-on teleportation (rather than quantum teleportation) leaves much to be desired.

Indeed, unless the quantum mind hypothesis bears out (à la Roger Penrose), genuine continuation of consciousness might be best kept by walking rather than being beamed about.

Anonymous said...

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