Nonlocal Quantum Entanglement Of Different Particles Used To Detect Gluon Geometry

High Energy Physics was long completely isolated from foundational questions of Quantum Physics. The quip of HEP physicists was:”Shut up and calculate!”… instead of worrying about entanglement, nonlocality and the ultimate mature of reality. Well, this has now changed, big time. For the first time, quantum entanglement was used to probe gluon geometry inside nuclei. Gluon, which are bosns, have “color” hold the quarks together inside hadrons, but it turns out they can come out a bit. [1]

The STAR detector, itself about the size of a house, is the first detector sensitive enough to measure the entangled properties of the daughter particles arising from a relativistic heavy ion “near-miss” interaction. This early 2023 result is the first to demonstrate entanglement between two non-identical particles. (Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory)

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Many will find baffling that matter waves from different types of particles can be antangled. Here is my take on it:

Careful considerations show that quantum physics is obtained by simplifying the facts and logic of classical mechanics as much as possible (warning: textbooks often say the opposite… without proof!)

Consider for example spin. Instead of an arbitrary angular momentum axis for each of two entangled particles, as classical mechanics has it, consider just one axis… for both particles, at the same time! And instead of continuous angular momentum, reduce angular momentum to just two values (+ or -)… for that one axis! Out of that most simplified description, this barebone reality, nonlocal entanglement of spin (photon polarization or silver atoms…), or nonlocal entanglement of two states systems in general, is obvious… being germane to the most simplified, aka, “quantum”, description of the system.

The spaces one gets that way, by simplifying the classical descriptions, “quantizing” them, often with discrete outcomes, have as basis the quantum outcomes (“states”). To compute therein, use the simplest math: complex numbers and linear algebra operating on amplitude waves. As evolution equations, use the simplest partial differential equations, where evolution is driven by energy. And so on.

Simplifying to the max a barebone description of the electron with the simplest amplitude wave is how Dirac got his equation, out of which popped antimatter, and precise measurements…

The metalogic of quantum mechanics as the simplest description of classical mechanics extends throughout… As long as one is willing to generalize the notion of space (for example electrons live in 4 dimensional complex space).

In other words, far from weird, quantum physics is exactly what you would expect by making the simplest parody of reality that one can still compute with. Nonlocality pops out naturally, as soon as one realizes that many “particles” can be entangled in one outcome. That the “particles” are of different nature is besides the point… and now we have the experimental proof of that! Classical mechanics did not forbid nonlocality of quantum amplitudes, but the simplest-description axiomatics obtained by simplifying classical mechanics to the max, required it..

A spacetime foam has been evoked by relativists as the ultimate nature of reality. Now high energy physics is revealing its nature: inter alia, quantum amplitudes are transferred from one type of particle to another, in the EPR, nonlocal way. Quantum Physics happens in Quantum Spaces (aka “phase space”) spanned by Quantum Outcomes (“Quantum states”). Local, classical reality is a statistical effect from a hidden thermodynamics of nonlocal entanglement.

Patrice Ayme

Reference: Tomography of ultrarelativistic nuclei with polarized photon-gluon collisions

“We measure two outgoing particles and clearly their charges are different – they are different particles – but we see interference patterns that indicate these particles are entangled, or in sync with one another, even though they are distinguishable particles,” said Zhangbu Xu, a (Chinese) author of the study (this was a very multinational collaboration).

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[1] Gluons do not interact with photons directly, because photons don’t have color. But a photon can transform in an ephemeral quark-antiquark pair, which will interact with the gluon. Ultimately the inner geometry is revealed by the outgoing entangled yet distinguishable pions (with opposite electric charges!)

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.

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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.

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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:

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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…)

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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

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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.

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[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…

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[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.

TIME CLOSED LOOPS + QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT => Contradiction. Bonus: SQPR EXCLUDES TIME TRAVEL

In General Relativity, there are time-like curves. In Quantum Mechanics, there is Entanglement. So consider this: two particles A and B separating, while they are still entangled. Suppose A is on a time like curve. Suppose A takes 1,000 seconds in B proper time to go around its time like loop.  Suppose we activate entanglement at 999 seconds. Then, A cannot show itself exactly as if it was before, having completed its time like loop, because the entanglement with B has disappeared… No problem will the Copenhagen Interpretation fanatics sneer, we just create a new A, with a new entanglement…

Whatever. Hard to argue with the unbalanced.

Mixing time closed loops and Quantum Entanglement is a deadly mix for the conventional physics of General Relativity and the Copenhagen Interpretation….

The fact is entanglement doesn’t resist time-like loops. Ergo, those can’t happen. Or then entanglement doesn’t resist the (proper) time needed for a time-like loop: thus my own SQPR theory appears in its full glory.

Let me give another logical axis on the subject: While particle A goes along the putative closed time loop, entanglement with B, the particle A is entangled with, from an action at B, at any moment, can break the entanglement with A, breaking the time loop with an event (what I call a “Quantum Interaction”) extraneous to it.

In any case, one, or both of the two pillars of Twentieth Century physics collapses…

One may naturally ask what happened in my own Sub Quantum theory, SQPR.

In SQPR the entanglement from B to A is not instantaneous (contrarily to the usual Quantum Mechanical formalism, which has the entanglement propagating instantaneously, just as Newtonian Mechanics had gravitation instantaneously propagating… until Laplace made gravitation into a field with a finite propagation speed, 80 years later, or so (that implied gravitational waves, as Laplace pointed out in the first edition of his book).

This being said, that finite propagation speed doesn’t mean the entanglement can’t break the loop. Generally it will: entanglement moves at 10^23c, whereas a typical time loop is found around a Black Hole, over small dimensions. Hence SQPR gives a definite answer: time loops can’t exist. Indeed an object is a continual succession of delocalization-relocalization-entanglement-collapse entanglement. Hence any inchoating time loop would broken instantaneously… So the scenario pushed by some specialists of Relativity, and spread by Hollywood, that Black Holes would enable time travel is impossible.

Philosophically, the approach is interesting: generally General Relativity, Celestial Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics are viewed as having nothing to do with each other. That traditional view is well-known. A famous theoretical physicist was proclaiming it as recently as last week. As I heard it again, last week, I was pondering how can one be so famous, and so wrong in the precise field in which one is famous… (In a nutshell: General Relativity comes from Relativity, which itself comes from Photon Mechanics, also known as “Electrodynamics”, which is the simplest form of Quantum Mechanics…)

Then it dawned to me that this stupid meta-idea, that General Relativity and the Quantum have nothing to do with each other, is so well anchored that none of the fools out there may have thought to force them in the same logical box… Moreover, entanglement appeared only in 1935, with the EPR paper (and Schrodinger naming entanglement “entanglement”, directly in English), so it escaped the furious debates between De Broglie and Einstein on one side and Bohr, Heisenberg, and the entire Copenhagen school, on the other… Thus, I added entanglement to loops… No need to “shut up and calculate…”

Distant ideas gather much energy, when they are made to crash into each other…

Patrice Ayme

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Some may sneer: how likely is it that Patrice fell on a major idea in physics so obvious that even normal physicists can understand it? Well, it would not be the first time something similar happens. Actually, way worse has already happened. And no, I am not alluding once again to the discovery of E = m by Jules Henri Poincaré in 1899, and attributed to Einstein…

Remember the Bohm-Aharonov effect? This says that a change of potential P will have an effect on Quantum Mechanics driven particles, even if the field F that P gives rise to (F = dP) is unchanged. That was thought of in 1959, and immediately checked experimentally on electron interference through the famous 2-slit. The idea should have been obvious. The most basic equation on Quantum Mechanics is the De Broglie-Schrodinger equation (usually attributed only, erroneously, to the latter…) This is basically: i(dwave)/dt = P. So the variation of the wave as a function of time, multiplied by the square root of (-1) is equal to… the potential. All the immense minds of QM, including Einstein, De Broglie, Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Sommerfeld, Born, Von Neumann, Ehrenfeld, Fermi, the Curies, Dirac, Feynman, Yukawa, Schwinger, Tomanaga, Wigner, Weyl, etc. look at the equation, and didn’t realize the potential mattered…

The Aharonov–Bohm effect was chosen by the New Scientist magazine as one of the “seven wonders of the quantum world… Out of vengeance, probably, the rogue David Bohm, and Aharonov, didn’t get the Nobel anymore than those who discovered the spin of the electron…

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The conclusion you escaped so far: Recently discovered (June 2019) Sub Quantum Mechanics, in conjunction with Quantum Entanglement, introduces an arrow of time at a Sub Quantum level…. making all previous considerations on the subject obsolete… 

“Proof” That Faster Than Light Communications Are Impossible Is False

There are theories everywhere, and the more ingrained they are, the more suspiciously they should be looked at. From the basic equations of relativity it is clear that if one adds speeds less than the speed of light, one will get a speed less than the speed of light. It is also clear that adding impulse to a mass will make it more massive, while its speed will asymptotically approach that of light (and, as I explained, the reason is intuitive, from Time Dilation).

The subject is not all sci-fi: modern cosmology brazenly assumes that space itself, after the alleged Big Bang, expanded at a speed at least 10^23 c (something like one hundred thousand billion billions time the speed of light c). The grossest, yet simplest, proof of that is simple: the observable universe is roughly 100 billion light years across, and it is ten billion years old. Thus it expanded at the minimum average clip of ten billion light years, every billion years. 100c/10 = 10c, according to standard cosmology. One could furiously imagine a spaceship somehow surfing on a wave of warped space, expanding for the same obscure reason same obscure reason as the Big Bang itself, that is…) 

The question naturally arises whether velocities which are greater than that of light could ever possibly be obtained in other ways. For example, are there communication speeds faster than light? (Throwing some material across will not work: its mass will increase, while its speed stays less than c.)

Textbooks say it’s not possible. There is actually a “proof” of that alleged impossibility, dating all the way back to Einstein (1907) and Tolman (1917). The mathematics are trivial (they are reproduced in my picture below). But the interpretation is apparently less so. Wikipedia weirdly claims that faster than light communications would allow to travel back in time. No. One could synchronize all clocks on all planets in the galaxies, and having faster than light communications would not change anything. Why? Time is local, faster than light data travel is nonlocal.

The problem of faster than light communications can be attacked in the following manner.

Consider two points A and B on the X axis of the system S, and suppose that some impulse originates at A, travels to B with the velocity u and at B produces some observable phenomenon, the starting of the impulse at A and the resulting phenomenon at B thus being connected by the relation of cause and effect. The time elapsing between the cause and its effect as measured in the units of system S will evidently be as follows in the calligraphy below. Then I use the usual Relativity formula (due to Lorentz) of time as it elapses in S’:

Equations help, but they are neither the beginning, nor the end of a story. Just an abstraction of it. The cult of equations is naive, interpretation is everything. The same thing, more generally, holds for models.
As Tolman put it in 1917: “Let us suppose now that there are no limits to the possible magnitude of the velocities u and V, and in particular that the causal impulse can travel from A to B with a velocity u greater than that of light. It is evident that we could then take a velocity u great enough uV/C^2 will be greater than one.
so that Delta(t) would become negative. In other words, for an observer in system S’ the effect which occurs at B would precede in time its cause which originates at A.”

I quote Tolman, because he is generally viewed as the one having definitively established the impossibility of faster than light communications. Tolman, though is not so sure; in his next sentence he turns out wishy washy: “Such a condition of affairs might not be a logical impossibility; nevertheless its extraordinary nature might incline us to believe that no causal impulse can travel with a velocity greater than that of light.”

Actually it is an effect those who have seen movies running in reverse are familiar with. Causality apparently running in reverse is no more surprising than the fact that two events at x1 and x2 which are simultaneous in S are separated by:  (x1-x2) (V/square root (1-VV/CC)). That introduces a sort of fake, or apparent causality, sometimes this before that, sometimes that before this.

(The computation is straightforward and found in Tolman’s own textbook; it originated with Henri Poincaré.^[9][10] In 1898 Poincaré argued that the postulate of light speed constancy in all directions is useful to formulate physical laws in a simple way. He also showed that the definition of simultaneity of events at different places is only a convention.^[11]) . Notice that, in the case of simultaneity, the signs of V and (x1-x2) matter. Basically, depending upon how V moves, light in S going to S’ takes more time to catch up with the moving frame, and the more so, the further it is, the same exact effect which explains the nil result in the Michelson-Morley interferometer; there is an underlying logic below all of this, and it’s always the same).

Tolman’s argumentation about the impossibility of faster than light communications is, in the end, purely philosophical and fully inconsistent with the closely related, and fully mainstream, relativity of simultaneousness.

Poincaré in 1900 proposed the following convention for defining clock synchronisation: 2 observers A and B, which are moving in space (which Poincaré called the aether), synchronise their clocks by means of optical signals. They believe to be at rest in space (“the aether”) from not moving relative to distant galaxies or the Cosmic Radiation Background and assume that the speed of light is constant in all directions. Therefore, they have to consider only the transmission time of the signals and then crossing their observations to examine whether their clocks are synchronous.

“Let us suppose that there are some observers placed at various points, and they synchronize their clocks using light signals. They attempt to adjust the measured transmission time of the signals, but they are not aware of their common motion, and consequently believe that the signals travel equally fast in both directions. They perform observations of crossing signals, one traveling from A to B, followed by another traveling from B to A.” 

In 1904 Poincaré illustrated the same procedure in the following way:

“Imagine two observers who wish to adjust their timepieces by optical signals; they exchange signals, but as they know that the transmission of light is not instantaneous, they are careful to cross them. When station B perceives the signal from station A, its clock should not mark the same hour as that of station A at the moment of sending the signal, but this hour augmented by a constant representing the duration of the transmission. Suppose, for example, that station A sends its signal when its clock marks the hour 0, and that station B perceives it when its clock marks the hour t. The clocks are adjusted if the slowness equal to t represents the duration of the transmission, and to verify it, station B sends in its turn a signal when its clock marks 0; then station A should perceive it when its clock marks t. The timepieces are then adjusted. And in fact they mark the same hour at the same physical instant, but on the one condition, that the two stations are fixed. Otherwise the duration of the transmission will not be the same in the two senses, since the station A, for example, moves forward to meet the optical perturbation emanating from B, whereas the station B flees before the perturbation emanating from A. The watches adjusted in that way will not mark, therefore, the true time; they will mark what may be called the local time, so that one of them will be slow of the other.^[13]“

This Poincaré (“–Einstein”) synchronisation was used by telegraphers as soon as the mid-nineteenth century. It would allow to cover the galaxy with synchronized clocks (although local times will differ a bit depending upon the motion of stars, and in particular where in the galactic rotation curve a star sits). Transmitting instantaneous signals in that networks would not affect causality. Ludicrously, Wikipedia asserts that faster than light signals would make “Bertha” rich (!!!). That comes simply from Wikipedia getting thoroughly confused, allowing faster than light signals for some data, and not for other data, thus giving an advantage to some, and not others.

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Quantum Entanglement (QE) enables at-a-distance changes of Quantum states:

(It comes in at least three types of increasing strength.) Quantum Entanglement, as known today, is within Quantum state to within Quantum state, but we cannot control in which Quantum state the particle will be, to start with, so we cannot use QE for communicating faster than light (because we don’t control what we write, so to speak, as we write with states, so we send gibberish).

This argument is formalized in a “No Faster Than Light Communication theorem”. However, IMHO, the proof contains massive loopholes (the proof assumes that there is no Sub Quantum Reality, whatsoever, nor could there ever be some, ever, and thus that the unlikely QM axioms are forever absolutely true beyond all possible redshifts you could possibly imagine, inter alia). So this is not the final story here. QE enables, surprisingly, the Quantum Radar (something I didn’t see coming). And it is not clear to me that we have absolutely no control on states statistically, thus that we can’t use what Schrödinger, building on the EPR thought experiment, called “Quantum Steering” to communicate at a distance. Quantum Radar and Quantum Steering are now enacted through real devices. They use faster-than-light in their inner machinery.

As the preceding showed, the supposed contradiction of faster-than-light communications with Relativity is just an urban legend. It makes the tribe of physicists more priestly, as they evoke a taboo nobody can understand, for the good reason that it makes no sense, and it is intellectually comfortable, as it simplifies brainwork, taboos always do, but it is a lie. And it is high time this civilization switches to the no more lies theorem, lest it wants to finish roasted, poisoned, flooded, weaponized and demonized.

Patrice Ayme’

Technical addendum:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

As Wikipedia itself puts it, weasel-style, to try to insinuate that Einstein brought something very significant to the debate, the eradication of the aether (but the aether came back soon after, and there are now several “reasons” for it; the point being that, as Poincaré suspected, there is a notion of absolute rest, and now we know this for several reasons: CRB, Unruh effect, etc.):

“In 1892 and 1895, Hendrik Lorentz used a mathematical method called “local time” t’ = t – v x/c2 for explaining the negative aether drift experiments.[5] However, Lorentz gave no physical explanation of this effect. This was done by Henri Poincaré who already emphasized in 1898 the conventional nature of simultaneity and who argued that it is convenient to postulate the constancy of the speed of light in all directions. However, this paper does not contain any discussion of Lorentz’s theory or the possible difference in defining simultaneity for observers in different states of motion.[6][7] This was done in 1900, when Poincaré derived local time by assuming that the speed of light is invariant within the aether. Due to the “principle of relative motion”, moving observers within the aether also assume that they are at rest and that the speed of light is constant in all directions (only to first order in v/c). Therefore, if they synchronize their clocks by using light signals, they will only consider the transit time for the signals, but not their motion in respect to the aether. So the moving clocks are not synchronous and do not indicate the “true” time. Poincaré calculated that this synchronization error corresponds to Lorentz’s local time.[8][9] In 1904, Poincaré emphasized the connection between the principle of relativity, “local time”, and light speed invariance; however, the reasoning in that paper was presented in a qualitative and conjectural manner.[10][11]

Albert Einstein used a similar method in 1905 to derive the time transformation for all orders in v/c, i.e., the complete Lorentz transformation. Poincaré obtained the full transformation earlier in 1905 but in the papers of that year he did not mention his synchronization procedure. This derivation was completely based on light speed invariance and the relativity principle, so Einstein noted that for the electrodynamics of moving bodies the aether is superfluous. Thus, the separation into “true” and “local” times of Lorentz and Poincaré vanishes – all times are equally valid and therefore the relativity of length and time is a natural consequence.[12][13][14]“

… Except of course, absolute relativity of length and time is not really true: everywhere in the universe, locally at rest frames can be defined, in several manner (optical, mechanical, gravitational, and even using a variant of the Quantum Field Theory Casimir Effect). All other frames are in trouble, so absolute motion can be detected. The hope of Einstein, in devising General Relativity was to explain inertia, but he ended down with just a modification of the 1800 CE Bullialdus-Newton-Laplace theory… (Newton knew his instantaneous gravitation made no sense, and condemned it severely, so Laplace introduced a gravitation speed, thus the gravitational waves, and Poincaré made them relativistic in 1905… Einstein got the applause…)

CONTINUUM FROM DISCONTINUUM

Discontinuing The Continuum, Replacing It By Quantum Entanglement Of Granular Substrate:

Is the universe granular? Discontinuous? Is spacetime somehow emergent? I do have an integrated solution to these quandaries, using basic mass-energy physics, and quantum entanglement. (The two master ideas I use here are mine alone, and if I am right, will change physics radically in the fullness of time.)  

First let me point out that worrying about this is not just a pet lunacy of mine. Edward Witten is the only physicist to have got a top mathematics prize, and is viewed by many as the world’s top physicist (I have met with him). He gave a very interesting interview to Quanta Magazine: “A Physicist’s Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality.

Edward Witten reflects on the meaning of dualities in physics and math, emergent space-time, and the pursuit of a complete description of nature.”

Witten ponders, I answer.

Quantum Entanglement enables to build existence over extended space with a wealth exponentially growing beyond granular space

Witten: “I tend to assume that space-time and everything in it are in some sense emergent. By the way, you’ll certainly find that that’s what Wheeler expected in his essay [Information, Physics, Quantum, Wheeler’s 1989 essay propounding the idea that the physical universe arises from information, which he dubbed “it from bit.” He should have called it: “It from Qubit”. But the word “Qubit” didn’t exist yet; nor really the concept, as physicists had not realized yet the importance of entanglement and nonlocality in building the universe: they viewed them more as “spooky” oddities on the verge of self-contradiction. ..]

Edward Witten: As you’ll read, he [Wheeler] thought the continuum was wrong in both physics and math. He did not think one’s microscopic description of space-time should use a continuum of any kind — neither a continuum of space nor a continuum of time, nor even a continuum of real numbers. On the space and time, I’m sympathetic to that. On the real numbers, I’ve got to plead ignorance or agnosticism. It is something I wonder about, but I’ve tried to imagine what it could mean to not use the continuum of real numbers, and the one logician I tried discussing it with didn’t help me.”

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Well, I spent much more time studying logic than Witten, a forlorn, despised and alienating task. (Yet, when one is driven by knowledge, nothing beats an Internet connected cave in the desert, far from the distracting trivialities!) Studying fundamental logic, an exercise mathematicians, let alone physicists, tend to detest, brought me enlightenment. mostly because it shows how relative it is, and how it can take thousands of years to make simple, obvious steps. How to solve this lack of logical imagination affecting the tremendous mathematician cum physicist Witten? Simple. From energy considerations, there is an event horizon to how large an expression can be written. Thus, in particular there is a limit to the size of a number. Basically, a number can’t be larger than the universe.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/largest-number/

This also holds for the continuum: just as numbers can’t be arbitrarily large, neither can the digital expression of a given number be arbitrarily long. In other words, irrational numbers don’t exist (I will detail in the future what is wrong with the 24 century old proof, step by step).

As the world consists in sets of entangled quantum states (also known as “qubits”), the number of states can get much larger than the world of numbers. For example a set of 300 entangled up or down spins presents with 2^300 states (much larger than the number of atoms in the observable, 100 billion light years across universe). Such sets (“quantum simulators”) have been basically implemented in the lab.

Digital computers only work with finite expressions. Thus practical, effective logic uses already only finite mathematics, and finite logic. Thus there is no difficulty to use only finite mathematics. Physically, it presents the interest of removing many infinities (although not renormalization!)

Quantum entanglement creates a much richer spacetime than the granular subjacent space. Thus an apparently continuous spacetime is emergent from granular space. Let’s go back to the example above: 300 spins, in a small space, once quantum entangled, give a much richer spacetime quantum space of 2^300 states.

Consider again a set S of 300 particles (a practical case would be 300 atoms with spins up or down). If a set of “particles” are all entangled together I will call that a EQN (Entangled Quantum Network). Now consider an incoming wave W (typically a photonic or gravitational wave; but it could be a phonon, etc.). Classically, if the 300 particles were… classical, W has little probability to interact with S, because it has ONLY 300 “things”, 300 entities, to interact with. Quantum Mechanically, though, it has 2^300 “things”, all the states of the EQN, to interact with. Thus, a much higher probability of interacting. Certainly the wave W is more likely to interact wit2^300 entities than with 300, in the same space! (The classical computations can’t be made from scratch by me, or anybody else; but the classical computation, depending on “transparency” of a film of 300 particles would actually depend upon the Quantum computation nature makes discreetly, yet pervasely!

EQNs make (mathematically at least) an all pervasive “volume” occupying wave. I wrote “volume” with quote-unquote, because some smart asses, very long ago (nearly a century) pointed out that the Quantum Waves are in “PHASE” space, thus are NOT “real” waves. Whatever that means: Quantum volumes/spaces in which Quantum Waves compute can be very complicated, beyond electoral gerrymandering of congressional districts in the USA! In particular, they don’t have to be 3D “volumes”. That doesn’t make them less “real”. To allude to well-established mathematics: a segment is a one dimensional volume. A space filling curve is also a sort of volume, as is a fractal (and has a fractal dimension).

Now quantum entanglement has been demonstrated over thousands of kilometers, and mass (so to speak) quantum entanglement has been demonstrated over 500 nanometers (5,000 times the size of an atom). One has to understand that solids are held by quantum entanglement. So there is plenty enough entanglement to generate spaces of apparently continuous possibilities and even consciousness… from a fundamentally granular space.

Entanglement, or how to get continuum from discontinuum. (To sound like Wheeler.)

The preceding seems pretty obvious to me. Once those truths get around, everybody will say:’But of course, that’s so obvious! Didn’t Witten say that first?’

No, he didn’t.

You read it here first.

Granular space giving rise to practically continuous spacetime is an idea where deep philosophy proved vastly superior to the shortsightedness of vulgar mathematics.

Patrice Ayme’

QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS MAKE TIME AN ARROW

Through Wave Collapse and the ensuing Entanglements it sometimes brings, QUANTUM PHYSICS CREATES A CAUSAL STRUCTURE, THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE, THUS, AN ARROW OF TIME.

Actually it’s more than a simple causal structure: it is an existential structure, as localization creates materialization, in the (Sub-)Quantum Theory I advocate. (It’s a theory where there are no dead-and-alive cats, but particles in flight are not particles… Contrarily to what Einstein thought, but more along the lines of Niels Bohr, horror of horrors…) It also means that time, at the smallest scale, is a nonlocal entanglement. This is not a weird new age poetry, but pretty much what the raw formalism of Quantum Physics say. I throw the challenge to any physicist to contradict this in any way. It’s completely obvious on the face of it.

You read it here first, as they say (although I may have said it before). Is time absolute? How could time be absolute? Where does the Arrow Of Time (Eddington) come from? Is there something else which grows with time?

The old answer is entropy, traditionally denoted by S.

Boltzmann’s equation S = k log P says that entropy augments during the evolution of a system. P indicates the number of states accessible by the system. Entropy was a construction from later Nineteenth Century physics, a successful attempt to understand the basic laws of thermodynamics (mostly due to Carnot).

A big problem for classical thermodynamics: what’s a state? That’s not clear.

However Quantum Physics define states, very precisely. However, very specifically: a situation, defined in space-time, what Bohr and Al. called an “experiment” (rightly so!) defines a number of possible outcomes: the latter become the “states”, a basis for the Hilbert Space the “experiment” defines.

Classical statistical mechanics does not enjoy such precisely defined states. So why not to use the states of Quantum Physics? Some could object that Quantum “experiments” are set-up by people. However Quantum Interactions happen all the time, independently of people. As in the Quantum experiments set-up by people, those Quantum Interactions grow something: Quantum Entanglement. ( Self-described “Quantum Mechanic” Seth Lloyd from MIT has also mentioned that entanglement and the arrow of time could be related.)

Quantum Entanglement has a direction: from where singularization (= localization = the collapse of the Quantum wave packet) happened first, to the distant place it creates the geometry of (yes, entanglement creates geometry, that’s why it’s so baffling to specialists!) 

Quantum Physics, Or, More Precisely, What I call QUANTUM INTERACTIONS are irreversible processes. Hence the Arrow Of Time

So we have two things which grow, and can’t be reversed: Time and Wave Collapse/Quantum Entanglement. I propose to identify them. (After all, Maxwell proposed to identify electromagnetic waves and light, just because they are both waves and went at the same speed; it turned out to be a magnificent insight.)

Quantum Wave function collapse is time irreversible (actually, the entire Quantum Wave deployment is time irreversible, because it depends only upon the geometry it’s deployed in). The mechanism of wave function collapse is philosophically a matter of often obscure interpretations, and arguably the greatest problem in physics and philosophy.

My position here is perfectly coherent: I believe the Quantum Waves are real. (So I do not believe the waves are waves of ignorance, and an artefact, as some partisans of Quantum decoherence have it). Those objective waves are real, although not always in one piece (that’s how I generate Cold Dark Matter).

By the way, it is the collapse of the Quantum Wave which “creates” the Quantum Entanglement At least that’s how the mathematics, the description of the theory has it! The picture it creates in one’s mind (first the wave, then the collapse, then the entanglement) makes sense. Actually I am arguing that this is how sense makes sense!

Quantum Entanglement is a proven experimental fact. All physicists have to agree with that. Thus the Quantum Wave has to be real, as it is the cause of the Quantum Entanglement! (I am pointing out here that those, and that’s now nearly all of them, who believe in Entanglement are incoherent if they don’t believe in the wave too!).

Jules Henri Poincaré had seen that time and space were not equivalent. That was meritorious, as Poincaré had proposed the original ideas of “local time” and “local space” theories, which are the fundamental backbones of Special Relativity (they are deduced from the constancy of the speed of light).

Even Einstein publicly frowned on the concept of “spacetime”, which identifies space and time; “spacetime” was proposed by Minkowski, Einstein’s own professor at the EHT… They may not have been friends, as Minkowski compared Einstein to a “lazy dog”; Einstein, of course, respected Poincaré so much, that he grabbed the entire theory of Relativity from him, including its name…

Quantum Physics does not outright treat time as equivalent to space, quite the opposite (although Quantum Field theorists have tried to, and do treat space and “imaginary time” as the same!). In fundamental Quantum Physics, time is a one parameter group of transformation, not really a dimension.

When a glass falls and shatters, Classical Mechanics is at a loss:’Why can’t it reassemble itself, with as little work?” Classical Thermodynamics mumbles:’Because Entropy augments’. (That may be a tenable position, but one will have to count the states of the glass in a Quantum way. Even then, the full energy computation will reveal a lack of symmetry.)

I say, simply:’A glass which has shattered can’t be reassembled, because Quantum Interactions, and ensuing entanglements happen.’ The resulting topology of cause and effect is more complicated than what one started with, and can’t be reversed. Quantum Interactions and ensuing effects at a distance they provide with, create a partial, nonlocal, ordering of the universe. Time. (Once a set has been physically defined, it has been thoroughly interacted with, Quantum Mechanically, and then it becomes a “well ordering”!)

So what’s time? The causal structure of the universe as determined by irreversible, causal Quantum Wave collapse and Quantum Entanglement.

Patrice Ayme’

TO BE AND NOT TO BE? Is Entangled Physics Thinking, Or Sinking?

Frank Wilczek, a physics Nobel laureate, wrote a first soporific, and then baffling article in Quanta magazine: “Entanglement Made Simple”. Yes, all too simple: it sweeps the difficulties under the rug. After a thorough description of classical entanglement, we are swiftly told at the end, that classical entanglement supports the many World Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. However, classical entanglement (from various conservation laws) has been known since the seventeenth century.

Skeptical founders of Quantum physics (such as Einstein, De Broglie, Schrodinger, Bohm, Bell) knew classical entanglement very well. David Bohm found the Bohm-Aharanov effect, which demonstrated the importance of (nonlocal) potential, John Bell found his inequality which demonstrated, with the help of experiments (Alain Aspect, etc.) that Quantum physics is nonlocal.

Differently From Classical Entanglement, Which Acts As One, Quantum Entanglement Acts At A Distance: It Interferes With Measurement, At A Distance

The point about the cats is that everybody, even maniacs, ought to know that cats are either dead, or alive. Quantum mechanics make the point they can compute things about cats, from their point of view. OK.

Quantum mechanics, in their busy shops, compute with dead and live cats as possible outcomes. No problem. But then does that mean there is a universe, a “world“, with a dead cat, happening, and then one with a live cat, also happening simultaneously?

Any serious philosopher, somebody endowed with common sense, the nemesis of a Quantum mechanic, will say no: in a philosopher’s opinion, a cat is either dead, or alive. To be, or not to be. Not to be, and thus not not to be.

A Quantum mechanic can compute with dead and live cats, but that does not mean she creates worlds, by simply rearranging her computation, this way, or that. Her various dead and live cats arrangements just mean she has partial knowledge of what she computes with, and that Quantum measurements, even from an excellent mechanic, are just partial, mechanic-dependent measurements.

For example, if one measures spin, one needs to orient a machine (a Stern Gerlach device). That’s just a magnetic field going one way, like a big arrow, a big direction. Thus one measures spin in one direction, not another.

What’s more surprising is that, later on, thanks to a nonlocal entanglement, one may be able to determine that, at this point in time, the particle had a spin that could be measured, from far away, in another direction. So far, so good: this is like classical mechanics.

However, whether or not that measurement at a distance has occurred, roughly simultaneously, and way out of the causality light cone, EFFECTS the first measurement.

This is what the famous Bell Inequality means.

And this is what the problem with Quantum Entanglement is. Quantum Entanglement implies that wilful action somewhere disturbs a measurement beyond the reach of the five known forces. It brings all sorts of questions of a philosophical nature, and make them into burning physical subjects. For example, does the experimenter at a distance have real free will?

Calling the world otherworldly, or many worldly, does not really help to understand what is going on. Einstein’s “Spooky Interaction At A Distance” seems a more faithful, honest rendition of reality than supposing that each and any Quantum mechanic in her shop, creates worlds, willy-nilly, each time it strikes her fancy to press a button.

What Mr. Wilczek did is what manyworldists and multiversists always do: they jump into their derangement (cats alive AND dead) after saying there is no problem. Details are never revealed.

Here is, in extenso, the fully confusing and unsupported conclusion of Mr. Wilczek:

“Everyday language is ill suited to describe quantum complementarity, in part because everyday experience does not encounter it. Practical cats interact with surrounding air molecules, among other things, in very different ways depending on whether they are alive or dead, so in practice the measurement gets made automatically, and the cat gets on with its life (or death). But entangled histories describe q-ons that are, in a real sense, Schrödinger kittens. Their full description requires, at intermediate times, that we take both of two contradictory property-trajectories into account.

The controlled experimental realization of entangled histories is delicate because it requires we gather partial information about our q-on. Conventional quantum measurements generally gather complete information at one time — for example, they determine a definite shape, or a definite color — rather than partial information spanning several times. But it can be done — indeed, without great technical difficulty. In this way we can give definite mathematical and experimental meaning to the proliferation of “many worlds” in quantum theory, and demonstrate its substantiality.”

Sounds impressive, but the reasons are either well-known or then those reasons use a sleight of hand.

Explicitly: “take both of two contradictory property-trajectories into account”: just read Feynman QED, first chapter. Feynman invented the ‘sum over histories’, and Wilczek is his parrot; but Feynman did not become crazy from his ‘sum over history’: Richard smirked when his picturesque evocation was taken literally, decades later…

And now the sleight of hand: …”rather than  [gather] partial information spanning several times. But it can be done — indeed, without great technical difficulty.” This nothing new: it is the essence of the double slit discovered by that Medical Doctor and polymath, Young, around 1800 CE: when one runs lots of ‘particles’ through it, one sees the (wave) patterns. This is what Wilczek means by “partial information“. Guess what? We knew that already.

Believing that one can be, while not to be, putting that at the foundation of physics, is a new low in thinking. And it impacts the general mood, making it more favorable towards unreason.

If anything can be, without being, if anything not happening here, is happening somewhere else, then is not anything permitted? Dostoyevsky had a Russian aristocrat suggests that, if god did not exist anything was permitted. And, come to think of it, the argument was at the core of Christianism. Or more, exactly, of the Christian reign of terror which started in the period 363 CE-381 CE, from the reigns of emperor Jovian to the reign of emperor Theodosius. To prevent anything to be permitted, a god had to enforce the law.

What we have now is way worse: the new nihilists (Wilczek and his fellow manyworldists) do not just say that everything is permitted. They say: it does not matter if everything is permitted, or not. It is happening, anyway. Somewhere.

Thus Many-Worlds physics endangers, not just the foundations of reason, but the very justification for morality. That is that what is undesirable should be avoided. Even the Nazis agreed with that principle. Many-Worlds physics says it does not matter, because it is happening, anyway. Somewhere, out there.

So what is going on, here, at the level of moods? Well, professor Wilczek teaches at Harvard. Harvard professors advised president Yeltsin of Russia, to set up a plutocracy. It ruined Russia. Same professors made a fortune from it, while others were advising president Clinton to do the same, and meanwhile Prime Minister Balladur in France was mightily impressed, and followed this new enlightenment by the Dark Side, as did British leaders, and many others. All these societies were ruined in turn. Harvard was the principal spirit, the Geist, behind the rise of plutocracy, and the engine propelling that rise, was the principle that morality did not matter. because, because, well, Many-Worlds!

How does one go from the foundations of physics, to the foundations of plutocracy? Faculty members in the richest, most powerful universities meet in mutual admiration societies known as “faculty clubs” (I was there!) and lots of other I scratch-your-back, you scratch-my-back social occasions they spend much of their time indulging in. So they influence each other, at the very least in the atmospheres of moods they create, and then breathe together.

Remember? It is not that everything is permitted, they chuckle: it’s happening anyway, so we may as well profit from it too. Many-Worlds physics feeds a mood favorable to ever more plutocracy, by fostering confused thinking, and that’s all there is to it. (But that, of course, is a lot, all too much.)

Patrice Ayme’