Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Quantum Entanglement and Worm Holes


I have always been fascinated by quantum entanglement. It bothered Einstein so much that he called it "Spooky action at a distance." and wrote a paper that started a continuing discussion between him and Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Here is a paragraph from Wikipedia describing this phenomenon

"Quantum entanglement is a label for the observed physical phenomenon that occurs when a pair or group of particles is generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the pair or group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. The topic of quantum entanglement is at the heart of the disparity between classical and quantum physics."  

The phenomenon shows that when a lab measurement is performed such as determining the "spin" of an entangled particle, the spin of the other entangled particle immediately changes to the opposite state no matter how far away it is. Einstein claimed that there must be local properties of the particle that cause this, since nothing can go faster than the speed of light. Bohr claimed that it was due to a collapse of the wave state of the particles that occurs when the lab observation is performed. But this was still controversial until the 1950's, when the Irish physicist, John Bell, established that you could determine experimentally that entanglement is not due to local properties. Some people even say that Bell's paper was the most important discovery in modern physics. Entanglement has been shown to occur between photons, electrons, buckyballs (which are large objects) and even a diamond.  But what exactly is this phenomenon is unknown and still mysterious. To me this has in fact always been the most mysterious thing in nature. 
An interesting far out idea is that time is an emergent phenomenon that occurs because of the nature of entanglement, and there is actually some experimental evidence for this. 

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I have always been fascinated by quantum entanglement. It bothered Einstein so much that he called it "Spooky action at a distance." and wrote a paper that started a continuing discussion between him and Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. 

The phenomenon shows that when a lab measurement is performed such as determining the "spin" of an entangled particle, the spin of the other entangled particle immediately changes to the opposite state no matter how far away it is. Einstein claimed that there must be local properties of the particle that cause this, since nothing can go faster than the speed of light. Bohr claimed that it was due to a collapse of the wave state of the particles that occurs when the lab observation is performed. But this was still controversial until the 1950's, when the Irish physicist, John Bell, established that you could determine experimentally that entanglement is not due to local properties. Some people even say that Bell's paper was the most important discovery in modern physics. Entanglement has been shown to occur between photons, electrons, buckyballs (which are large objects) and even a diamond.  But what exactly is this phenomenon is unknown and still mysterious. To me this has in fact always been the most mysterious thing in nature. 

An interesting far out idea is that time is an emergent phenomenon that occurs because of the nature of entanglement, and there is actually some experimental evidence for this. 

So what is a worm-hole? An Einstein–Rosen bridge, or wormhole, is a postulated phenomenon within General Relativity, Einstein's theory that gravity is not a force but is a warping of space-time due to objects with mass.  The idea is that wormholes can join points distant either in time or in space. If an object is massive enough, it can create a funnel-like hole in spacetime so steep that not even light can escape from it—a black hole. In principle, two widely separated black holes can connect like back-to-back trumpet horns to make a shortcut through spacetime called a wormhole

This is not totally crazy but is discussed in modern physics as a theoretical possibility, with the major problem being the amount of negative energy of "exotic matter" (dark energy, whatever that is?) required to keep it open. 

Some time ago, due probably due to my ignorance of modern physics, I  had the idea that entanglement could be due to a wormhole connecting the two particles and also that black holes may create worm holes. I claim no priority since it is an obvious idea (especially if you read science fiction, like I do).   






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