Photons, And All Particles, Delocalize In Flight

Abstract: That photons delocalize in flight was so obvious, Huyghens described them as waves four centuries ago. That’s reinforced both from the math of Quantum Mechanics, and traditional diffraction math. Let alone 2023 Quantum Entanglements of Pions. Time to erect bolder hypotheses to try to understand what’s really going on.

***

That a photon is received as a photon, a single localized energy-momentum jolt, or quantum, explains the photoelectric effect’s characteristics, so we should accept that localized impact. This was Einstein’s hypothesis, and because it explains the photoelectric effect, one should assume it to be true. Einstein deserved his Nobel… And indeed, since then many experiments, including those of Nobel Haroche, have dealt with the single photon impacting or influencing something… In a very localized way.

HOWEVER, localization on impact doesn’t mean that, in “flight” the photon, or any particle is localized as much [1]. It just means that the photon behaved as if it had… “collapsed”. Einstein assumed localization in flight, I call it Einstein’s error. Modern QFT has discreetly strayed away from Einstein, as the “particle” has become an excitable Quantum Field (hence nonlocal) subjected to renormalizing perturbation theory. Moreover, Basic Quantum Mechanics assumes delocalization, but then claims only the math delocalize, not the whatever-is-going-on physically, about which CIQ (Copenhagen Interpretation Quantum) can say nothing.

Yes, maybe CIQos can say nothing, but smarter minds can make hypotheses, and then try to find out if observed effects derive from these hypotheses… Details that normal Quantum mechanics does not predict, like Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

The evidence, from diffraction, is to the contrary of the gratuitous and unnecessary Einstein’s in-flight-localization hypothesis. Both from the grossest observations (namely deflection by a pinhole/slit) and from the way the mathematical treatment of said pinhole/slit works… Because those classical mathematics of diffraction work, indeed, but they assume DELOCALIZATION… to make the computation. So the computation’s result being correct, one feels inclined to believe that its mathematical axiom, delocalization, is also correct… as a physical axiom.

Recently published research (February 2023) shows complicated quantum entanglement transmission in cascade between pairs of unrelated and distinguishable pions of opposite charges, which thereafter interfere at a large distance, enabling the exploration of gluon geometry inside nucleons… More evidence of extreme delocalization, and a new sort of what I call Quantum Interaction.
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2023/02/05/nonlocal-quantum-entanglement-of-different-particles-used-to-detect-gluon-geometry/

As seen below the usual classical computation for diffraction assumes re-emission, thus delocalization, all along the throat of the slit:

Patrice Ayme

[1] SQPR assumes that “particles” in flight don’t really exist (de facto, so does QFT). The “particles” instead are of type NL + L, where NL is the NonLinear part, and L the Linear part (corresponding to the amplitudes of traditional Quantum Mechanics). L guides NL during dispersion (outward momentum from the singularization/particle state… the opposite of collapse, when the momentum goes towards the singularity). A mathematical description may involve a wave acceleration proportional to its amplitude… So that L can become unstable and grow into a NL, after interacting with another L from another “particle”.

How localized is NL? The Quantum Eraser experiment of Kim and Al., in 1999, indicates that NL is somewhat localized, at least in its apparatus… But it’s very far from a particle. Moreover, as NL feeds L, so to speak, one expects NL to get ever more nonlocalized…

Gravity Theory So Far

Buridan held that planets turned around the sun from inertia, pulled in by what would become gravity (circa 1350 CE). No doubt studying canon balls’ trajectory helped in the following centuries. By 1600 CE Kepler knew that masses attracted each other, and exactly reciprocally so… and inversely to the distance between them (it’s actually the square of the inverse). Gravity was theorized to be described by: Mm/dd… M and m being the masses of the object, and d the distance. Boulliaut aka Bullialdus, a French priest cum physicist suggested this. 

Bulliadus had a neat little reasoning still valid nowadays, in strict analogy with light. Bullialdius hypothesized that gravity was carried by particles emitted by the mass and was proportional to the density of said particles. That’s called the “inverse square law” as the force it depicts is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Bullialdus reasoning may look naive… But we have not progressed much since!

Bulliadus was made one of the initial members of the Royal Society, and has a crater on the Moon. Newton testified to the priority of Bullialdus during his quarrel with Hooke about who invented what). Newton more or less proved the equivalence of that law, plus the basic laws of mechanics…. with Kepler’s three laws.

Newton thought that instantaneous gravitation as he had it, made no sense whatsoever (he wrote in a letter).

The Turin born Simon de Laplace corrected this a century later, making gravity progressive, inventing in the process field theory and gravitational waves.

In June 1905 Henri Poincaré published relativistic gravitational waves. They have to propagate at c, the speed of light.

In the following decade, Einstein, with the help of his friends, including Besso and Hilbert, wrote down a relativistic version of Newton’s theory. One main ingredient is that time slows down next to masses, so star light deflection next to the sun is doubled, as light spends more time  next to the sun, giving it more time to be deflected, etc. Another is that light follows geodesics of 4 dimensional space whose (Ricci) curvature K = T. Where T is the energy-momentum tensor.

The first order approximation of Einstein’s gravity is the classical Laplacian-Poincaré version.

But what “causes” Mm/dd? We don’t know yet. QED doesn’t really help. 

Quantum ElectroDynamics (QED) reproduces the classical Coulomb potential (1/d) (giving the 1/dd force) with exchanges of virtual photons. The same is to be expected for gravity with virtual gravitons. Does that mean that virtual photons exchange “create” the 1/dd force? Not really: a critical examination of what happens says otherwise: QED starts with installing the “Proca Lagrangian” in the path integral. That Proca Lagrangian contains the Maxwell equations which contain in turn the Coulomb potential. So QED demonstrates its own hypothesis as far as (1/dd is concerned)…(That doesn’t mean QED is useless: it’s a perturbative theory which predicts some perturbations with great precision, and those are extremely technologically relevant!) 

Nevertheless it seems that we are progressing spectacularly from what is, for common high energy physicists, an unexpected direction . 

I hold that the true architecture of the world is given by Quantum Entanglement… And the progress there is spectacular: particles of different nature have been entangled.

SQPR hypothesizes that Quantum Entanglement has a finite range: if true it gives immediately Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Moreover, SQPR changes the nature of the vacuum. However the relationship with the 1/dd factor stays mysterious… So far, then, one can’t produce an explanation really deeper than Bullialdus offered…

Patrice Ayme.

The QUANTUM Is NOT “WEIRD”. Instead The Quantum Is The Most Abstracted Classical Mechanics

QUANTUM PHYSICS IS THE SIMPLEST ROOT OF CLASSICAL REALITY IMAGINABLE

Abstract: Quantum Mechanics is the simplest imaginable description of the world obtained by reducing all what is known from Classical Mechanics to its simplest parody. Simplest space, simplest math, simplest equations, etc. The organizing metaprinciple of QUANTUM PHYSICS IS Classical MECHANICS MADE AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE. We will focus on the simplest, two state systems.

***. 

Simplicia: Physicists usually describe Quantum Mechanics as “weird”. You are the first one to claim Quantum Physics is NOT weird.

Tyranosopher : In his famous Lectures on Physics, Feynman describes Classical Mechanics as a “shadow” of Quantum Mechanics, or a mnemotechnical trick. Well, he was wrong, there is more to it than that. It took me many decades of deep study of the Quantum to find that in truth, arriving from the first approximation of Classical Mechanics, Quantum Physics is not philosophically weird, but the LOGICAL ROOT of Classical Mechanics. Let’s suppose you were God, and you wanted to devise the simplest barebone theory as a basis for Classical Mechanics… What would you find? Quantum Physics! 

Simplicia: God is useful after all! What do you mean by barebone?

Tyranosopher: Logically barebone: the fewest and simplest axioms animated by the simplest logic. Take for example angular momentum. Classically, Angular Momentum can take any value in any direction: a classical massive object can rotate this way or the opposite, and more or less, along any axis, and can be measured again and again, ad vitam eternam: that’s a lot of freedom. 

Simplicia: To make Angular Momentum barebone, if you were God, what would you do? 

Tyranosopher: Instead of Angular Momentum having any value, you would decide, as God, that Angular Momentum could have JUST TWO VALUES: clockwise, or anti-clockwise. Then, instead of being able to point its axis in any direction, as God, you would decide ONE SINGLE direction is enough. And moreover, you measure it JUST ONCE. So barebone Angular Momentum takes only two values, and in only one direction, one time: and it turns out that this is the simplest version of Quantum Spin. When Quantum Spin is reduced to a two state system (automatically entangled).

And it is what the Stern Gerlach theorem reveals for silver atoms. Similarly for photons.   

Simplicia: What do photons and silver atoms have in common?

Tyranosopher. Photon polarization and silver atoms are both two states’ systems. Apply the simplest mathematics to them, and you get the same mathematical, hence physical result. So they both exhibit nonlocality, entanglement, etc.

Simplicia: What are these “states”?

Tyranosopher: Quantum States are the outcomes of experiments with set-ups sensitive to Quantum effects. The presence of states is all very relative, or as Quantum Foundations theoreticians say, CONTEXTUAL. There is a theorem saying one cannot have non-contextuality.

Simplicia: Please elaborate.

Tyranosopher: Once again, suppose you are god, and you look at angular momentum or polarization. As I said, the simplest situation where something non-trivial happens is if you have built, or found, a device with two outcomes only: spin up, or spin down. Or polarization horizontal, or vertical. Each of these two distinct outcomes is called a state. Label these two distinct outcomes: I+> and I->. Then what’s the simplest non-trivial computational setup you can invent?

Simplicia: A vector space where I+> and I-> are the basis vectors?

Tyranosopher: Exactly. Let’s consider H, the complex vector space with basis I+> and I->.

Simplicia: Why complex?

Tyranosopher: Because you are God and you want to use the largest commutative field and that’s the complex numbers, called C. There all algebraic equations can be solved, with the help of the square root of (-1), called i.  Turns out that this has all immediate deep physical meaning

Simplicia: Complex numbers, also called imaginary numbers, are natural?

Tyranosopher: Yes the number i corresponds to the rotation by pi/4, an angle of ninety degrees, around the origin in the plane.

Simplicia: What’s the connection of complex numbers and (i) with physics?

Tyranosopher: A photon is characterized by its momentum, which is a vector p which points in a direction, and has a frequency E. (hE, p) is the energy-momentum of the photon. It tells you where the photon is going and with how much energy. However, that does not characterize the photon fully. Experiments already conducted by the Vikings show that the photons have polarization.

Simplicia: The Vikings were physicists?

Tyranosopher: They navigated the North Atlantic, going from islands to islands, all the way to America. They needed to know where the sun was, say at noon, to know where the north was. The weather is often so cloud covered there, that one can’t say where the sun is, for weeks on end. Fortunately, the Vikings had stones which gave the direction of the sun. That’s because the atmosphere partially polarizes sunlight.

Simplicia: So the complex numbers characterize polarization?

Tyranosopher: A photon is made of an electric field paired to a perpendicular magnetic field, both perpendicular to momentum p. It’s enough to know where the electric field points to know the polarization. A complex number gives you polarization.

Simplicia: Why can’t a single real number give you that, like, you know, the angle?

Tyranosopher: Complex numbers give you more information. Let’s backtrack. God is trying to build the most powerful yet most complex mechanics possible. By considering complex numbers, you augment the power, but also the simplicity, because all algebraic equations, the ones with powers, are solvable. So, in an important way, C, the complex plane, is simpler than the real line R. Physically speaking it also turns out that quantum waves multiply, to make quantum amplitudes, which are probability waves, and probabilities multiply, but only as complex waves. 

Simplicia: So let’s recapitulate. You reduce angular momentum to simply + or -, plus or minus… instead of a continuum of numbers. You also reduce the direction of angular momentum to a single one, the one along which you measure it. You then build a vector space with I+> and I-> as base vectors, and you simplify maximally by choosing complex numbers instead of real numbers.

Tyranosopher: Absolutely. Isn’t it funny that complex numbers are actually both simpler and more powerful than real numbers? Complex numbers live in a plane and contain in their description light itself!

Simplicia: Are you identifying the complex plane with light?

Tyranosopher: Take a complex plane P, brandish it in space, and pick up a (complex) number N in it. That represents all the information we have on a photon.

The perpendicular to P through its origin gives you the direction of the photon, the norm c of N gives you the frequency and the angle a of c gives you the polarization. So the information (P, c(exp ia)) gives you the photon fully. You can’t do that with real numbers 

Simplicia: Photons are points in flying complex planes?

Tyranosopher: Yes, but we are not finished. 

We have this complex vector space H = C (I+>, I->)… that means it has two basis vectors. Consider a vector v in that space. It has coordinates in function of I+> and I->; the square of the norms of those coordinates are real numbers. They express the probability of v being in state I+> versus in state I->. 

Once again the guiding meta-principle here is the same: make it the simplest for getting a non-trivial result, depicting reality which is what we know, namely that any experiment will give either I+> or I->.

Then we introduce another ingredient: that light and matter behave in a wave-like fashion. So make the coordinates of v into waves depending upon space and time. Also, at the simplest, when v is operated upon, it will give another vector w. To go simplest again from v to w, one should use a linear operator.

Simplicia: Is that the famous “matrix mechanics”?

Tyranosopher: Exactly.

***

Simplicia: What of weird effects like tunneling, and Quantum Entanglement?

Tyranosopher: Tunneling comes from the wavy nature. It would require a bit more elaboration to explain as one needs to introduce energy and how it affects waves. Basically, not all of a sudden, hence (probability of presence) waves penetrate a bit, that’s tunneling. 

Simplicia: And what about nonlocality? 

Tyranosopher: The nonlocal nature of Quantum Entanglement is in plain sight. The simplest is two particles sharing the same two state spin system with total spin zero. :Choose an axis of measurement, call it Z. Then measuring gives the spin of the other particle along Z automatically even 4 lightyears away. But choosing Z was an act of will. So will acted 4 lightyears away.

Simplicia: Minds change the universe light years away?

Tyranosopher: Yes, indeed. Sub Quantum Physical Reality assumes that the propagation of that change is progressive.

Simplicia: What if the distances are too great?

Tyranosopher: Then entanglement fails, and, or Dark Matter and, or Dark Energy are created. That’s what I say.

Simplicia: Does spacetime make some sort of foam at the smallest scale?

Tyranosopher: It’s worse than that. It’s a topological foam, and it’s nonlocal. There again, as God, you would have been confronted with the following problem: how to describe the infinitesimally small? 

Simplicia: By making the infinitesimally small ever smaller.

Tyranosopher: That was tried in biology. It was called the homunculus theory: a human being would start as a tiny reproduction of itself. In truth what happens is that bacteria divide, so they never get that small, and animals… more generally eukaryotes, start with molecular (DNA, RNA) and cellular formations which enter in a constructive dialogue with the environment (some of which is self-created). So basically sophisticated life doesn’t start as itself at all, but in a  nonlocal way. Same thing for spacetime and particles.

Simplicia: Does Quantum Entanglement hold objects together?

Tyranosopher: It has been difficult to find when, where and how an object switches from Quantum behavior to Classical behavior. It is imaginable that Quantum Entanglement holds objects together. After all the more massive an object, the higher the probability that an entangled state will collapse. Collapse is the glue.

Simplicia: How so?

Tyranosopher:  De Broglie associated a matter wave to every single massive object.

Simplicia: Are photons massive?

Tyranosopher: Yes they are, in the sense of inertial mass. Poincaré published and taught in 1899 that a photon has inertial mass m = E/cc. That’s coming straight out of electromagnetism. Photons of course have no rest mass, because they are never at rest. But they contribute to gravity as E/cc, from the axiom: inertial mass = gravitational mass (Einstein called that the “Principle of Equivalence”).

Simplicia: Let’s go back to matter waves. 

Tyranosopher: An object of mass M has wavelength L = h/M, where h is Planck’s constant. A deep question is how that L is generated. Clearly L should be equal to a sum, what is called an integral in mathematics: Sum(m(i)), where m(i) are the zillions of zillions of particles constituting M: all the gluons, quarks, photons, electrons inside. However, the sum should be extended to entanglement itself. I mean what’s called the “particles” are actually the states. Most of the time Quantum systems are actually delocalized Quantum fields.

Simplicia: Are Quantum Entanglement and Delocalization the same? 

Tyranosopher: No. QE is an example of delocalization. Sometimes 

Simplicia: What happens to mass during these delocalizations?

Tyranosopher: Good question! The experience has not been made. Einstein postulated, in 1905, as an axiom that a photon was localized always… and this may have led him to the EPR thirty years later, and introducing the doubt of “spooky action at a distance”… He was a bit arguing with himself.

From the introduction section of Einstein’s March 1905 quantum paper “On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the emission and transformation of light”, Einstein states:

“According to the assumption to be contemplated here, when a light ray is spreading from a point, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever-increasing spaces, but consists of a finite number of “energy quanta” that are localized in points in space, move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as a whole.“

This statement has been called the most revolutionary sentence written by a physicist of the twentieth century. However, it’s probably not completely true, and I have called it “Einstein’s Error“. First, Quantum Field Theory, and even QED, its predecessor, which Einstein tried, but failed to learn, has replaced “particles” by (delocalized) Quantum Fields: no more localized particles at a point. Moreover, and worse, if one believes the Quantum amplitudes that one computes with have some physical reality, as SQPR, Sub Quantum Physical Reality, believes, Einstein is not completely correct, and the difference is Dark Matter, and Dark Energy. Indeed, in SQPR, Sub Quantum Physical Reality, some mass-energy is spread out. Experimentation will have to decide, although the existence of DM and DE is massive proof enough for me. But this is all speculative, whereas deducing Quantum from Classical, as the maximal non-trivial abstraction from Classical, the original subject of this essay, is not.

Simplicia: Feynman often put philosophy is a bad light.

Tyranosopher: Feynman, like, Mach, Boltzman, Planck, Einstein, De Broglie, and all great physicists, was a philosopher. Dirac deduced his equation for the electron field according to the principle of abstraction from Classical Mechanics and simplicity. Dirac looked for the simplest Partial Differential Equation the square of which would be the relativistic mass-energy-momentum formula for an electron. That’s the Dirac equation! It produced correct quantum electrodynamics, spin and anti-matter! It was deducted according to the general machinery I advocate! So in a way the method I exhibited here to deduce Quantum Physics had already been used, at least in particular cases.

Simplicia: Is your own SQPR deducted similarly?

Tyranosopher: Yes, from classical obvious to fully abstracted and still obvious. Newton said, in a private letter, that it was madness to suppose that the gravitational interaction was instantaneous. A century later, Laplace filled in the idea, making gravitation into a field, and thus predicting gravitational waves. SQPR assumes that Quantum Entanglement, like Delocalization in general, is a field with finite speed: present Quantum Mechanics assumes that QE and nonlocality propagate at infinite speed. This finite speed assumption produces Dark Matter and Dark Energy quasi-instantaneously.

***

Conclusion: This is as it should be: after all, Classical Mechanics is the appearance, the first order approximation, and Quantum Physics what generates that appearance. One can deduce Quantum Physics from Classical Mechanics.  One just has to expand the notion of “deduction” beyond what Feynman was familiar with. A love of wisdom helps with science, as it allows us to expand what logic means.

Patrice Ayme

ENTANGLEMENT, FASTER THAN LIGHT COMMUNICATIONS, CAUSALITY, etc.

Abstract: Faster Than Light Particle Transfer? Not Possible According To Special Relativity. But Faster Than Light Communications? Some Day, Probably. Using Quantum Entanglement… Not Particle Transport.

TYRANOSOPHER: Folklore based on a vague reasoning of Einstein says Faster Than Light Communications are impossible (a variant supposedly breaks the universe… see below). Having read Einstein carefully, yours truly determined that Einstein’s reasoning was flimsy (Albert himself hints at that in his original paper).

Most of Special Relativity stays intact if Faster Than Light Communication, FTLC are possible. ALL the equations, and thus the verifying experiments of Special Relativity stay intact. (See towards the end answers to objections).

Simplicia: Many people will write you off because you wrote off Einstein. They won’t read any further.

Tyranosopher: OK, I will detail in another essay my objections to the packaging of Special Relativity which forbids FTLC with great details. Below is just a sketch.

Now about Einstein: he is not God. Actually, there is no God. When I was young and naive, I approved (all) of Einstein’s critiques of Quantum theory, a theory to which he crucially contributed as number two, Planck being number one. Planck said emission of radiation was in grains, quanta, and explained two facts this way. Einstein explained that supposing absorption of radiation also came in quanta explained the photoelectric effect. Planck condemned the latter, but Einstein was right. Then other physicists contributed. The next huge conceptual breakthrough was De Broglie’s matter waves. Then CIQ (Copenhagen Interpretation Quantum) arose with correct physics, admirable math, but a sick un-realistic metaphysics. De Broglie objected and rolled out a realistic model of fundamental physics. Einstein seconded De Broglie, but they were overwhelmed by the launch of QED by Dirac. Then all sorts of strange and marvellous high energy zoo, then QFT, etc.

Nevertheless, after exchanges with Karl Popper, Einstein wrote the EPR paper on nonlocality, in 1935… EPR criticized Quantum Physics and its nonlocality from the “realistic” point of view. I am also all for Sub Quantum Physical Reality (SQPR), but I have an axiom neither De Broglie nor Einstein had. Science progresses one axiom at a time…

However, as the decades passed, and I deepened my understanding, I realized that Einstein’s admirable work was not as revolutionary and crazy as needed. 

Simplicia: The funny thing is that Einstein discovered nonlocality in the 1935 EPR paper. Which is one of the top ten papers in theoretical physics, and very hot today, as Quantum Computers use nonlocality.

Tyranosopher: Einstein was honest enough to not throw nonlocality out of the window. Maybe his conversation with the philosopher Karl Popper helped: Popper did contribute to the discovery of nonlocality. Einstein called nonlocality “spooky action at a distance”.

Simplicia: Now nonlocality is a proven experimental fact.

Tyranosopher: Yes the “SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE” which initially was a purely theoretical fact coming out of the axiomatics of Quantum Theory has been PROVEN over distances of many kilometers. One has to know the crucial difference of QUANTUM SPIN versus classical spin to see nonlocality clearly.

Chinese scientists have measured a minimum speed for this “spooky action at a distance”. I call it the QUANTUM INTERACTION, and assign to it a finite speed, TAU. This supplementary axiom contradicts Quantum Theory. 

Instead, classical Twentieth Century Quantum Physics says that Quantum Entanglement proceeds at infinite speed.

So this supplementary axiom of propagating finite speed nonlocality should be experimentally testable. I claim the proof of a finite speed for the Quantum Interaction is all around us: Dark Matter and Dark Energy are the results of this experiment, conducted for free by the universe itself. Amen.

Simplicia: What do you mean that nonlocality has been proven? Your friend Ian Miller, who is a physical chemist, denies a proof was achieved.

***

Tyranosopher: I admire Ian, he is a renaissance man, but don’t understand his arguments in this particular case. There are countless variants and proofs under the label “Bell’s theorem” in a jungle of tweaked axiomatics. Ian uses the classical Noether’s theorem… which doesn’t apply to Quantum situations. For once I will use an authority argument. The Nobel was given to nonlocality in 2022, and should have been given at least two decades ago to Alain Aspect. That could have helped physics.

To understand the simplest quantifiable proof of nonlocality one has to know about Quantum Spin and what has been experimentally discovered. Quantum Spin does NOT behave like Classical Spin. Classical Spin can be measured in all directions simultaneously, but Quantum Spin can be measured in only one direction at a time, and that erases preceding measurement.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2022/11/10/proof-of-no-local-hidden-variables-from-magnets/

Building up on Einstein’s 1935 EPR, the simplest Quantum Entanglement which can be studied over a distance was elaborated by David Bohm in the 1950s and then studied in detail by a very small group of physicists, including CERN theoretical high energy physics head, John Bell, in the 1960s, to produce an experimentally testable inequality… which was given the Physics Nobel for 2022.

Simplicia: OK, many people have thought this instantaneous nonlocality could be used for Faster Than Light, FTL.

Tyranosopher:  Maybe. But one has to distinguish FTL and FTL Communication. FTL for massive objects is impossible, except by transporting a space bubble, which is pure science fiction of the extravagant type.

However if SQPR is correct and TAU is finite, one should be able, theoretically speaking, to create energy imbalances at a distance, after an elaborate technological setup, and thus create FTLC channels. 

***

QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT SEEMS TO PRODUCE FTLC: 

Suppose we produce a state of total spin zero shared by two particles. (Particle streams, in practice.)

We keep one going in circles around Earth, and send the other to Proxima Centauri, 4 lightyears away.

Now say that, after 4 years, we measure the spin in the z direction in the Earth neighborhood, and we find |+>. Then we know that the other particle has spin |-> at Proxima.

So our measurement at Earth created a spin down at Proxima… Instantaneously. 

Now, with particle streams and synchronized clocks one could easily transform this into an FTL Morse code….

Except for one Quantum difficulty: we do not know how to get a |+> state to start with. We have the same probability to create a |-> state…We can’t make a stream of I+> states to start with, so we can’t type our FTL Morse code to start with! It’s as if we told a cosmic monkey in another room to type, but he can’t select letters. 

***

Hence the impossibility of Faster Than Light Communications rests only upon claiming to know something we know nothing about: can one NEVER EVER prepare, and, or NEVER EVER select Quantum states before measuring them? In other words, do Quantum States have tails? 

There is a so-called “Non Cloning” [of states] theorem…But the “proof” has a loophole (it depends upon assuming a unitary operator, thus denying there are quantum tails, exactly what it wants to prove) In truth, it’s an experimental problem: if what the prestigious French physicist Devoret at Yale and his collaborators is true, it has been possible to prepare some (contrived) Quantum states… but, SO FAR, it has not been possible to prepare Quantum states which happen to be ENTANGLED.

***

When some physicists pretend Faster Than Light Communications are impossible, they pontificate, because, in truth, we don’t know. And science doesn’t progress one pontifex at a time, but one correct intuition at a time. The intuitive case for FTLC is growing as the Quantum amazes us ever more.

***

What we know is that something we thought to be completely impossible, SWAPPING QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT, is not only possible, but now so amply demonstrated that it is central to various developing Quantum technologies. 

***

SQPR assumes particles have complex structures, a linear part (the guiding wave) and a nonlinear part (the “particle”), the entire structure being unstable and prone to contracting at TAU, the collapse and entanglement speed. 

***

However, Quantum Swapping shows that, somehow, one can have Quantum Interactions without collapse, namely the propagation of QE.

***

Thus it is starting to smell as if one could interact with a particle’s extended presence without inducing collapse, and then select the type we like…

***

Simplicia: Hence FTLC should be possible?

Tyranosopher: FTLC through Quantum Entanglement would not contradict Relativity, because it would not change anything to light clocks, or for the equation Force = d(mv/(1-vv/cc))/dt. There would be no mass transport.

***

It all smells as if FTLC will become possible. That does not mean that Faster Than Light matter transport should be possible. The latter is impossible without warp drives.

Simplicia: Wait, don’t go. It is well known that FTL Communication leads to the breakdown of causality, and thus, sheer madness. Consider the excellent video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0M-wcHw5A

Tyranosopher: Yes, beautiful video. Minkowski spacetime diagrams. Einstein didn’t like them, he didn’t like either Minkowsky or “spacetime”. It was reciprocal: Minkowsky, who was Einstein’s physics professor at Zurich Polytechnic, ETA, called Albert a “lazy dog” and made sure he couldn’t get an academic appointment. Instead a friend got Einstein a job at the Patent Office in Bern.

Simplicia: Can we get to the point? You don’t like spacetime as a concept, so what?

Tyranosopher: Notice that they draw these spacetime diagrams all over the galaxy’s real space, in various places, and then they draw a contradiction. 

Simplicia: Yes, so what?

Tyranosopher: Relativity was invented by Henri Poincaré to describe local effects. Basically local speed makes local time of the speeding object run slow. A fast traveling light clock goes slow when going along the direction of the speed, at the speed. From there after quite a bit of half hidden logic, plus Michelson Morley type experiments which showed the undetectability of speed within a ship cabin not looking outside (the original Galileo imagery), one deduced length also contracted, and so did the local time of the moving device.  

Simplicia: Thanks for the two sentences recap of Relativity.

Tyranosopher: The slowing down of the local time was amply confirmed with fast particle like muons, and in a slightly different context, GPS computations crucially depend upon time contraction of the orbiting satellites.

Simplicia: And then? Why are spacetime diagrams bad?

Tyranosopher: Spacetime diagrams are tangent space objects. They are, at best, local approximations. Extending a spacetime diagram to Vega has degraded meaning. Einstein knew this, he mentioned somewhere that General Relativity violates the constancy of the speed of light. And that’s fairly obvious as light could be put in orbit around a black hole. Now the silly ones cry that time would be in orbit around said black hole, and bite its own tail, etc.  Grandchildren would kill all their grandparents, etc. Silly stuff: they confuse local and global, although that’s the bedrock of differential geometry. Differential geometry is locally flat (aka “Euclidean”) and globally curved (or even twisted). But this is not even the worst…

Simplicia: How come this is all not well-known.

T: Long ago I gave a seminar along these lines at Stanford. Many of the best and brightest were in attendance, Hawking, Penrose, Yau, Susskind, etc. and not too happy from what I said. But my point about General Relativity making no sense without Quantum is viewed as trivially obvious nowadays.

Simplicia: So you are saying one can’t just rotate the spacetime axes of a moving spaceship and make deductions?

T: One can make deductions, but one can’t make deductions where local time of a moving ship becomes global time, as in the video I linked above. Earth can synchronize time with Vega, Henri Poincaré described how that can be done. But one can’t synchronize time with a moving spaceship (as those who claim to have demonstrated that FTLC breaks causality to). 

If one sends an FTL message to a moving spaceship, it does not get it in our past. It gets it in our future. Our past and our future are local… to us, and… Vega, if we synchronized time with Vega. A really silly mistake. 

Simplicia: Please stop insulting fellow intellectuals, or they are not going to be fellows anymore. And why did you link to a false video?

Tyranosopher: Right, let me rephrase this: it has been known since the onset of Relativity that at speed simultaneity is violated. So cause and effect can look inverted in a moving ship relative to what they are in a co-moving frame. That’s basic.The video misses the point, although it looks so reasonable, with great graphics.

Therefore, in the Special Theory of Relativity, causality can only be established and defined in the co-moving frame. (Same for mass, let be said in passing. Even the otherwise excellent Richard Feynman makes that mistake in his lectures. The video I linked above makes that mistake).

So claiming Faster Than Light Communications violates causality is erroneous! 

***

Simplicia: If and when do you think we can realize FTLC?

Tyranosopher: We are tantalizingly close. Some physicists (Devoret) adorned with prizes, glory and long careers claim that they can detect the preparation of a Quantum jump, and even that they can revert it. If that’s true, and we can apply that kind of selection to Quantum Spin, FTLC could be installed with Mars before humanity lands on the planet.

Simplicia: Are you serious?

Tyranosopher: Absolutely. 

Patrice Ayme  

A TRUTH IS The SUM Of ALL LOGICS LEADING TO IT

What is a truth? A sum over all logics leading to it. So even lies, errors, delusions, and emotions can be part of a truth. Truth even includes all the falsehoods excluding it, just as light is defined by dark. 

Love is good, worth dying for, and how one came to be, but it’s also endorphins and how we survive. Truth and logic everywhere, and universal attractors of logic, in the differentil topological sense, are elements of truth… And yes, this includes errors, not just logical errors, data errors, but also emotional errors. Paths not to follow become themselves data points.

Thomas Edison’s response to a question about his many ‘experimental failures.’ “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

The truth about the concept of energy is itself, as modern physics has it, but all the histories which led to it. It’s not just a question of how we got there as a civilization, but also often how we got there as growing neurologies, personally. Some errors are so natural to do, they should be taught, just as shoals have to be pointed out on maritime maps.

This is why truth, any truth, is hard to get to: truth is always a hydra made of many minds (each logic having a mind, a mentality, and  emotionality of its own). Even a concept as mistakenly seemingly simple as an electron [1].

This is why censors should never be used: they cancel a piece of logic, and thus mutilate the truth.

Censors should never be used, except in the case of war, of course [2].

This general, abstract approach to truth may sound remarkably similar to the “sum over histories”, the path integral method of Quantum Physics. This is no accident, the same object, reality itself, having the same causes. Any physical event, says Quantum Physics is, in some sense rich in computational consequences, a sum over histories, and, as we talk about wave emplitude here, by “sum” is meant a sum not in the sense of adding numbers, but in the richer sense of interfering waves.

In  the parable of the elephant, blind men describe various pieces of the elephant, in many different ways. The point is that the elephant is all that, and more. I propose to replace a set of three dimensional objects (here pieces of a pachyderm) by a set of logical systems. A logic can be incredibly general, and includes all categories (in the mathematical sense of the term).

The truth about an elephant is made of all the known logics leading to descriptions of the elephant, including the history of how its DNA evolved… (As new science will evolve, new logics, hence new truths about elephants will appear…)

But then getting to a truth is flowing along a logic which leads to it. It’s always going to be only part of the truth, because many other logics also get there… But the point is that, to approach a truth, one has to get along with the program of a particular logical-emotional logic flowing on its own like a river.

That means that any approach to truth is, and must be slanted, to use Emily Dickinson’s word.  Most of the time, an immense variety of logics, each represented below by a  particular colored arrow, points and constitute, as a set, what is meant by a particular truth. Truth is an inward and outbound hydra happily squirming in the boiling ocean of imagination made real:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

***

[1] Even a concept as mistakenly seemingly simple as an electron in (Quantum and, or Classical) physics is such an hydra (yes even in Classical physics; consider near fields, advanced and, or retarded potentials, etc.; in QFT, electrons have become even intractable: fields…)

***

[2] Censors should never be used, except in the case of war, of course. I listened, read and studied the arguments of tyrant Putin and his obsequious Orcs. I know them well, their lies are parts of the logics leading to the war they lead in Ukraine.

P/S: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant —” muses on how to tell the truth, pleading for delivering truth not too directly. Truth would only overwhelm the recipient. Instead, she advocates to get at the truth in a sort of roundabout way, telling it gently or bit by bit, so as not to shock people with its “brilliance.”

So I gave a very different… slant on the subject of truth, turning Emily Dickinson on her head and transforming her in a drilling apparatus —one of America’s most influential poets weaponized—the poem showcases her skill with vast abstract ideas in succinct lines (in contrast to my firestorming style). Like nearly all of Dickinson’s poems, and many a great thinker’s work, it was not published until after her death. It was written sometime between 1858-1865.

Proof Of NO LOCAL Hidden Variables From Magnets

Abstract: Looked at it the right way, the Stern Gerlach experiment with three consecutive magnets oriented various ways, show that there can’t be LOCAL hidden variables. No need, to exhibit nonlocality, for the precise, but obscure logic of the Bell Inequality. The argument here is less mathematically precise, but more intuitive.

***

Stern-Gerlach Magnets (SGM) reveal an aspect of the Quantum, namely the quantization of (some sort of) angular momentum. SGM launched in 1922 the saga of Quantum Spin (it turns out to be connected to deep pure geometry which had been developed independently by Élie Cartan, a decade earlier). Drive an electron, or (appropriate) atomic beam through a SGM, and one will get two dots, one up, one down. Whatever the axis of the SGM [1]. (The SGM is just a magnetic field with a specific linear direction.) 

That means, at the emotional level that, at the smallest scale, spin, the electronic (sort of) angular momentum, or the orbital (sort of) angular momentum, reduce to UP and DOWN. First surprise. (This is actually the case of Spin 1/2, the simplest, such as for an electron; we are trying to learn the most from the simplest case.)

Say the first SGM is vertical (magnetic field along “z axis”) and a second SGM is horizontal (mag field along “x axis”). Call them respectively SGMV and SGMH. So SGMH produces LEFT-RIGHT beams. Put SGMH across the UP beam coming out of SGMV. One could call that beam SGMV (UP). Once goes through SGMH, one will get 50-50 LEFT-RIGHT. No surprise there.

Now say one selects the RIGHT beam coming out SGMH. Call that beam SGMH (UP; RIGHT)… because first the beam went up, then the beam went right.  

Naively one would expect, from classical mechanics, that SGMH (UP; RIGHT) to have kept a memory of its initial source as SGMV(UP). 

That would be to assume that beam SGMV (UP) and its descendant SGMH (UP;  RIGHT) to have kept some memory, in other words that some that the beams through the first SGMV and then the second SGM to harbor some LOCAL HIDDEN VARIABLES.

But that’s not the case. 

Indeed, please run SGMH (UP; RIGHT) into a second SGMV (that is a Stern Gerlach Magnet parallel to the first magnet SGMV… Call that second vertical Stern Gerlach Magnet SGMV2 One gets fifty-fifty UP and DOWN coming out of SGMV2. It is as if the initial Stern Gerlach, SGMV, never happened. (This set-up is presented in Feynman Lectures on Physics III, Chapter 6, Spin 1/2)

So if there were local hidden variables carried after SGMV that is in the beam SGMV (UP), they got somehow completely eradicated by getting into the beam SGMH (RIGHT).

So these proposed local hidden variables do not stay hidden inside the “particle”: an outside agent can erase them…. Thus those putative local hidden variables aren’t really “local” anymore: the environment impacts them, outside of the particle, and drastically so, just as the potential impacts the phase of an electron in the Bohm-Aharonov experiment… non locally.

***

One can rerun the experiment, by using both beams SGMH (RIGHT) and SGMH (RIGHT), mixing them up. Then it turns out that SGMV2 deflects ONLY UP. So simply going through magnet SGMH, WITHOUT selecting a beam (either SGMH(LEFT) or SMGH (RIGHT)) doesn’t do anything: a collapsing of the Quantum space available to the Quantum wave, selecting either left or right space, is what does something.

Conventional Quantum Physics, newish, path integral version, phrases this by saying one can’t say which path has been followed [2] to keep the information SGV UP or SGV DOWN.  Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum (CIQ) simply says that selecting beam SGMH (RIGHT) is a measurement thus collapses the wave function… SQPR says roughly the same thing.

In any case, this eradication of the influence of SGMH on the “particle” by just keeping open the OTHER beam, which the putative local hidden variable “particle” is by definition NOT taking, is itself a NONLOCAL effect, thus once again demolishing the “LOCAL Hidden Variable” concept. (One could say that one beam is entangled with the other…)

The advantage of this conceptual approach is that it exhibits directly the nonlocality… without hermetic complications [3]. It also shows the interest of a more philosophical rather than purely formalistic approach to physics.

Patrice Ayme
***

[1] Wolfgang Pauli in 1924 was the first to propose a doubling of the number of available electron states due to a two-valued non-classical “hidden rotation“. In 1925, George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit suggested the simple physical interpretation for spin of a particle spinning around its own axis… But clearly that doesn’t fit what is observed. Pauli built a mathematical machinery which reflected the observed GSM behavior. It turned out to be a particular case of deep mathematical work from the French mathematician Élie Cartan who was born and initially educated in the small Alpine coal mining village of La Mure, and rose through merit in the republican educational system. It’s a bit like taking the square root of space. I don’t understand it, neither did the extremely famous mathematician Atiyah…

It is easy to be blinded by the math. But actually the math describes an observed physical behavior. Now this behavior may arise from deeper geometrical reason 

***

[2] In SQPR, the “particles” are preceded by the linear guiding waves. Blocking some of them triggers “collapse”. By selecting SGMH (RIGHT) one clearly collapses the linear guidance.

***

[3] Stern Gerlach Magnets also directly illustrates Spin, as did in the first few lines above (magnetic field —> two dots!) The Pauli machinery is often how Spin is introduced in Quantum Physics courses, but that, philososophically is confusing the formalism derived from what is observed with the observation itself.

REALIZATION NEEDS LOCALIZATION. NONLOCALITY Gets Nobel Prize

Finally! The most surprising discovery of the last two centuries in science was not the Quantum (that had been sort of anticipated by the Greeks who thought they had demonstrated the existence of atoms, literally non-divisibles; the photon is the atom of light…), nor was it DNA (the discovery that there are laws of inheritance is hundreds of thousands of years old, and make ever more specific with time, as humans learn to breed characteristics, etc.).

NONLOCALITY was an enormous surprise because it contradicted everything… even mathematics, come to think of it deeply enough.

The old approach, which had become crystallized by the ancient Greeks was that the world was made of indivisibles, atoms in nature, points in mathematics. So granular nature and extreme precision.

As my own dad once told me on his own, while I described the Quantum to him, in English translation:”the idea that one can get ever smaller and nothing changes can’t possibly be true”.

What NONLOCALITY says is that if one gets small enough, one ends up somewhere else!

This shatters the expectation that smaller is no different. Instead:

1) smaller is somewhere else.

2) Properties and matter as we expect it, do not exist at a small enough scale. REALIZATION NEEDS LOCALIZATION.  

(the mathematics of QM requires this. Einstein and company objected to the notion, as they put it, that the “Moon does not exist if no one looks at it”… That was an exaggerated objection;  there is a qualitative difference between a very small object and a very large one… At least in SQPR; the drawing from the Swedish Academia is also exaggerated… However, it makes the general idea, clear, in first approximation:

This gives the rough idea: the smallest properties, when at the Quantum scale, do not exist until an interaction has occurred. A lot of open question are connected to this: what of energy-momentum? Does it spread all over, or stays concentrated as in what I called Einstein’s Greatest Error? SQPR has an in-between position: most, but not all, of the enrgy-momentum stays concentrated. It is this lack which created Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

4 October 2022

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 to

Alain Aspect

Université Paris-Saclay and

École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France

John F. Clauser

J.F. Clauser & Assoc., Walnut Creek, CA, USA

Anton Zeilinger

University of Vienna, Austria

“for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”

Entangled states – from theory to technology

Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.

The ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications. There is now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication.

One key factor in this development is how quantum mechanics allows two or more particles to exist in what is called an entangled state. What happens to one of the particles in an entangled pair determines what happens to the other particle, even if they are far apart.

For a long time, the question was whether the correlation was because the particles in an entangled pair contained hidden variables, instructions that tell them which result they should give in an experiment. In the 1960s, John Stewart Bell developed the mathematical inequality that is named after him. This states that if there are hidden variables, the correlation between the results of a large number of measurements will never exceed a certain value. However, quantum mechanics predicts that a certain type of experiment will violate Bell’s inequality, thus resulting in a stronger correlation than would otherwise be possible [0].

John Clauser developed John Bell’s ideas, leading to a practical experiment. When he took the measurements, they supported quantum mechanics by clearly violating a Bell inequality. This means that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a theory that uses hidden variables [1].

Some loopholes remained after John Clauser’s experiment. Alain Aspect developed the setup, using it in a way that closed an important loophole. He was able to switch the measurement settings after an entangled pair had left its source, so the setting that existed when they were emitted could not affect the result [2].

Using refined tools and long series of experiments, Anton Zeilinger started to use entangled quantum states. Among other things, his research group has demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to one at a distance.

“It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technology is emerging. We can see that the laureates’ work with entangled states is of great importance, even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics,” says Anders Irbäck, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

***

Clauser (and others with him, not mentioned by Nobel Com. took entanglement seriously. At the tme it was viewed as a curiosity, not really physics. As a top physicist in my department said:”Serious people don’t do these things, it just gives headaches!”

Personal notes: [0] This depends upon the fact that measuring the spin of a particle in one direction affects the measurement of the spin of the same particle in another direction… which is certainly not the case in Classical Mechanics: if one finds the rotation of a particle in direction x it does not affect a subsequent measurement in direction y…

[1] Nobel Com should have said: quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a theory that uses LOCAL hidden variables.

And what does “LOCAL” mean? Topology as defined using the speed of light for metric. In other words, nonlocal hidden variables are permitted, and this is what SQPR, a SUB QUANTUM Physical Reality uses.

[2] Aspect thus showed that there was such a thing as a QUANTUM INTERACTION, and it propagates faster than light. The big question is how fast. In excess of 10^23c 

The notion of Quantum Interaction is important. Once one agrees (with Newton) that no interaction can be instantaneous, and once one has identified Quantum Collapse with it, Dark Matter and Dark Energy are near instantaneous deductions.

***

Anyway, here it is: Nonlocality has become official!

Patrice Ayme 

What Is TIME? Why Is Quantum More Fundamental Than Time?

A few obvious answers are at hand: The definition of Time shows why Quantum is more fundamental than Time. Trivial, but deep. As observed!

***.  

Time is the ticking of a light clock, a device made of two separated mirrors, between which light rebounds, providing a periodic transfer of momentum, which can be measured. That makes time a local concept. The notion dates back to Lorentz, who used it implicitly, and Henri Poincaré, who defined it explicitly, building “Relativity” around it (19C)… Many years before a celebrated parrot… 

More subtle, and so far unnoticed: Defining time from light, as we have to, there is no other way, makes time less fundamental than fundamental Quantum processes, as light is the fruit thereof, and not reciprocally. This is philosophically consequent as far as the speed of light being an absolute notion. It also means that time is less fundamental than space. Indeed, time is used as one parameter group of transformation in fundamental Quantum mechanics.

Light Clock on the left is THE definition of time: LIGHT GOES BACK and FORTH Between TWO MIRRORS . Time dilation pops out readily. When it moves, it clicks less frequently, and not at all if it approaches light speed…

The speed of light is a local, loop concept. The speed of Quantum collapse or entanglement is a global concept… which can’t be limited in any sense by a local, point-like notion (such as the speed of light).

Both Relativity and Complex Numbers pop out of the physics of light, which then constitute their physical embodiment.

***

The preceding are broad, contextual, extremely powerful (“philosophical”) arguments. They give good reasons to believe that Quantum Mechanics is more fundamental than time, and thus, would violate time.

However, the devil, physics is in the details. Can we check these broad ideas? Is there a violation of time somewhere? Yes!

CPT symmetry changing charge C, parity P, and Time T simultaneously leaves physics unchanged: it is a theorem of Quantum Filed Theory. However CP violation was observed in 1964 (Nobel 1980). That means time violation had also to occur, to compensate.

The preceding is the sort of very general reasoning physics is always driven by. A related example is an argument about antimatter. There is matter around, no antimatter (or, more exactly, ephemeral). According to the Big Bang, the LCDM model, there should be as much of one as of the other. If there is not, as we observe, the only explanation is CP violation. Thus the LCDM model, in combination with very little antimatter shows that there is time violation, time is not a fundamental symmetry. So much for time travel.

***

Notice I did not mention entropy. The second law of thermodynamics says it augments… with the number of “states”, as in thermodynamical states. However, it’s hard to define “states” … In Quantum Physics, there are “states”, of course, even “eigenstates. However those states are relative to a particular situation, the experiment at habd Niels Bohr was (rightly) obsessed about. Now one can make analogies with the surface of black holes, speak about “information”, etc… All interesting, but far-fetched hypotheses by philosophical, or mathematical analogies. I do not want to deride those, as I myself make some… of my own… I claim mine are better, as they rest on clearer and simpler, deeper principles (for example no interaction at a distance at infinite speed).

***

Where does all this want to go? If Quantum is deeper than light, and Quantum itself is enacted by Quantum Entanglement, we get to the conclusion that QE is the real architecture of the universe: both Quantum and Relativity are macro, emerging consequences… Hence the necessity for a Sub Quantum Physicsal Reality, SQPR.

We think, therefore we hope.

Patrice Ayme

P/S: Notice in passing that “quantum” was elevated from my grammar to the level of time…

ENTANGLEMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS AT A DISTANCE: POSSIBLE. It Seems to be a Technological, NOT a Scientific, Problem!

 Abstract: Usual arguments against faster than light communications are flawed. Moreover, a way to make such faster than light communications using Quantum Nonlocality is surfacing…

The title will make pontiffs scream, and deride me as beyond the “fringe”. But I am writing for the future, not the past. Pontificating physicists hold that instantaneous communication at a distance are impossible. However, a closer examination shows that there is NO deep, DEMONSTRATED scientific principles at work in the denial that superluminal communications are possible.

Instead the proponents of impossibility of faster than light pretend we have demonstrated that nothing more can be said beyond the strictest interpretation of CIQ, the Copenhagen Interpretation of the Quantum (this silliness started with an erroneous demonstration of the famous mathematician Von Neuman).

Such a matter of principle position is religiously superstitious, not based on experimentally demonstrated principles… And indications are that the preparation of Quantum Jumps/States can de detected, and reversed. If that is confirmed, it is entirely plausible that superluminal communications should be achievable by entangling particles which would have been transported classically previously… far apart, creating a superluminal telegraph.

***   

Doing physics correctly, and, more generally, doing thinking most correctly, consists in establishing what are the most significant facts and how to build the mightiest causal chains. A causal chain is mightier than another if it relates more significant facts.

Faster than light communications between mythological beings were natural. However in the 17C, Dutch astronomer Roemer discovered delays in the motion of Jupiter’s satellites best explained by a finite speed of light. Fizeau confirmed the finite light speed in the lab, using fast wheels with teeth, during the 19C… while the speed of light showed up in the equations of electromagnetism, Maxwell found out, to the point he concluded that electromagnetism was light. 

French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier determined in 1859 that the elliptical orbit of Mercury precesses at a significantly different rate from that predicted by Newtonian theory… in which the speed of gravitation was infinite, a simplification Newton found “absurd” to any “philosopher” versed in the observation of nature (how could there be any other?) Einstein and his collaborators integrated Laplace’s finite gravitational speed idea, in conjunction with the theory of Relativity, to produce a modified theory of gravitation, where gravitation travels at the speed of light.

***

WANT BETTER PHYSICS? GET BETTER PHILOSOPHY!

Out of all this came a mood: no interaction can go faster than light. For weird reasons, all crows crowing the same, and mental confusion, the mentality which evolved in the herd of most physicists was that causality would be destroyed were any communication went faster than light. 

But a mood is no proof. 

Detailed considerations of the logics used by the herd found them coming short. Basically, Relativity is local, whereas communications at a distance are… at a distance, by definition (a philosophical point)… Thus, relativity does not apply, or at least, does not apply as an ABSOLUTE principle in the matter of causality: 

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2020/08/25/kill-locality-to-save-causality-and-objective-reality/

This is the Standard CIQ, the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum is seriously nuts. Here it is above. So crazy many physicists prefer to it it the thoroughly demented Many Worlds Interpretation (MIW), which says an infinity of worlds is created during each interaction. An infinity of infinites infinitely happening? Not serious!

Quantum Physics says there is such a thing as QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT. The basic reason is that Quantum Physics computes with waves. Those waves wave in various spaces, depending on the configuration of the situation (which are Hilbert spaces, and called “configuration spaces”, because they depict the configuration of the situation). What these spaces are supposed to is controversial (Schrodinger Cat Paradox): we need a theory ordering those spaces, but never mind…

After an interaction in some cases, two particles, Alice (A) and Bob (B), can be created which are “Quantum Entangled” (Schrodinger chose the word “entangled”, in English!) What “entangled” means is that the computation of what happens, probably, with these two particles, A and B, is described by a SINGLE wave.  A measurement consists of analyzing, thus destroying this common wave [1]. THUS, measuring a feature of A creates the same feature in B. The problem is that A and B can be ten light years away [2].

Popper and Einstein discovered this “EPR” situation. Ironically enough, Einstein, one of the founders of Quantum Physics, and an expert in fields, which are local, found Quantum Physics in contradiction with Locality. It is described that Einstein found that “spooky” interaction at a distance. However what Albert said in German was spukhafte Fernwirkung, which rather means “ghostly”, unreal… But in truth if the interaction at a distance didn’t happen, things as simple as angular momentum conservation would be violated. So it has to be there. And it is, experiments have confirmed.

Many self-described mainstream herd physicists insist that at-a-distance communications are impossible. However, their reasoning are faulty. First, as I said the argument that at a distance, faster than light would destroy causality is not correct, it rests on a shallow interpretation of Relativity, and a category mistake. But then those same physicists use what they view as the definitive argument that it cannot be done with present technology:

***

How To Achieve Communications At A Distance: A Technological, Not Scientific Problem:

Suppose we could make it so that a particular feature of A (say spin in the x direction) would always come out the same. Then it would be the same at B, and thus we could communicate. Mainstream physicists say: oh, but God plays with dice, and it is impossible to prepare Quantum States. How do they know this? Oh, because Homo Erectus couldn’t do it, and was a friend of “God”? God or Godot? 

However that is purely a technological question. Scientists at Yale, professor Devoret and his laboratory, have claimed they can see Quantum Jumps being prepared, and can reverse those preparations.  This hints that we may be able to select Quantum States by deliberate action. All what’s left then to do to achieve at a distance communications is to select pairs of particle A and B with such states where we could entangle them. 

Some will sneer this is just one APPLIED physics lab. Now it turns out that as a recent Nature article has it, Quantum Tunneling takes time (it takes no time in strict CIQ). There again, it smacks of inner, SUB QUANTIC machinery at work (Sub Quantum Physical Reality, SQPR pointing its entangling nose…)

***

So the impossibility of communications at a distance boils down to just one thing: the belief that God plays dice with the universe, as a matter of faith (ironically, Albert Einstein was explicitly against the notion, as he invented it, just to decry it; I say ironically as many of the disbelievers in superluminality on principle pretend to worship Einstein…).

How do those believers know that their faith is correct? Because they are on a personal basis with Dog?

Quantum entanglement experiments have been realized between an atom, say, and a photon. The Yale experimenters detected the preparation of a Quantum State Jump, and claimed they could reverse the preparation. Philosophically speaking, supposing the Yale experiments are thoroughly confirmed, as the nonlocality was, this means that the establishment of supraluminal networks is a matter of when, not if.

To go further in the philosophy of nature, this further demolishes the “It From Bit” philosophy of Wheeler and others. Wheeler was a famous physicist and Feynman PhD advisor… and also advisor of the guy who invented the Many World Interpretation…

To be more specific: what I allege above is that the state of the art of the edge of most probable science shows that superluminal communications is becoming just a technological problem (namely finding the right classically transportable materials to entangle and store).

But I am not pretending that that we will be capable of superluminally transport mass-energy. So, if what I am saying is right, a distinction would appear between pure information and mass-energy: information could go faster than light, but not mass-energy… at least for the foreseeable future (many thinkers have insisted there was no distinction between information and mass-energy, because, prior to this analysis, there was no way to transport information without transporting mass-energy).

I fear for my reputation not: Science advances, but the logic of mussels does not.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

P/S: In SQPR theory, the Quantum Interaction proceeds at finite speed. Thus, so will communications using the EPR and prepared states, as suggested above. But the speed will be much higher than light. Of course establishing such superluminal networks will be cosmically difficult.

***

[1] Analysis comes from thoroughly dissecting: from the Greek, ana “up, back, throughout” + lysis “a loosening, a cutting through”… No wonder the deepest thinkers are deeply resented for their thoroughly cutting…

***

[2] Distant particles which have interacted in the past, but not yet measured, remain connected, instantaneously sharing their physical states no matter how great the distance which separates them. This connection is known as Quantum Entanglement, and it underpins the way Quantum Physics turns locality into globality, the infinitesimally small do the grand and cosmic. .

Einstein thought Quantum Mechanics was ‘spooky’ because of the instantaneousness of the apparent remote interaction between two entangled particles, which seemed incompatible with some elements of Relativity.

Later, CERN Theoretical Physics head, Sir John Bell, formalised the Bohm variant of the EPR concept of nonlocal interaction by describing a strong form of entanglement exhibiting this spookiness. Bell entanglement is being harnessed in practical applications like quantum computing and cryptography.

Why Is Relativity Useful? Because Elementary Particles Tend To Be Relativistic

When one learns Relativity, one discovers that the physics of fast moving frames is different (slower). But then turns out that the speeds involved are enormous. How practical is this? Very. It turns out elementary particles move very fast. The speed of the electron in the fundamental atom, the hydrogen atom, can be readily evaluated, using conventional kinetic energy, equating it to potential energy from the Coulomb force and then estimating the size of the electron “orbital” from the Uncertainty Principle. One gets 2,200 kilometers per second, c/137. The speed of light divided by the “Fine Structure Constant”…

Nice little mix between Kinetic Energy a la Emilie du Chatelet plus Uncertainty principle, gives 2,200 km/s in hydrogen… Now, of course, in my own SQPR, the electron gets somewhat delocalized, so it all has to be taken with a grain of salt…

Now a “wild” electron will move much faster. How do we know that? Dirac contrived the simplest relativistic wave equation he could imagine an electron to satisfy. That Dirac equation predicted several (then) weird phenomena, soon observed. Even more strangely, that fit the work of the geometer Elie Cartan (15 years earlier). Now we sort of understand or more generally guess, that it has to do with taking the square root of space (don’t ask).

In any case, the success of the relativistic equation shows that, around another electron (say) electrons will zoom in and out close to the speed of light. It’s sort of proof by theory: build a theory predicting unexpected results, find those experimentally, then go back… to prove the “axioms” that way. Inducto-deducto-experimental-logical approach?

Inside nuclei, quarks move at relativistic speeds (that is, close to the speed of light…) CERN can actually measure those.

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Modern Relativity theory caused an initial stir because it revealed that time was local. There was no universal time: clocks ran slow in a fast frame. 

A statement like this has plenty of hidden theory behind it, so it could cause perplexity to some… “Fast” could cause a problem: does not Relativity say that all reference frames in uniform motion relative to each other have the same physics? So many expositions of Relativity simply say there is no problem, they sweep that “problem” under the rug. 

I love intellectual combat, so I will not. 

A little bit of history for motivation here. Albert Einstein was impressed by Mach, and his Principle. That’s why he said he tried to develop General Relativity. Mach’s Conjecture is that “local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe“. That remains a Graal, but I see the EPR, taken the way Einstein hated it, as a ray of hope.

Einstein described the Mach conjecture in 1913, in a letter to Mach: …”inertia originates in a kind of interaction between bodies”…

Einstein may have realized that all he was trying to do was to integrate, in the mathematical sense, the extremely local Poincare Relativity. So the theoretical effort of General Relativity was going from infinitesimally local to less local… But that said nothing global. So the quest should have looked hopeless, but that was all what anybody could think of. (In my opinion Quantum Physics and the Popper-Einstein EPR provides us with completely new conceptology… enabling us to start to hope globally)

Patrice Ayme