Testing Einstein's 'Spooky Action at a Distance'

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http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/17/274531.aspx

BACKWARD RESEARCH GOES FORWARD
Posted: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 8:41 PM by Alan Boyle

University of Washington physicist (and science-fiction author) John Cramer is moving forward with his experiment in backward causality, thanks in part to tens of thousands of dollars in contributions sent in by his fans. Although Cramer emphasizes that his lab is looking at “nonlocal quantum communication” rather than backward time travel per se, the gadgetry he’s assembling could settle a controversy surrounding a seemingly faster-than-light effect that Albert Einstein thought was downright spooky.

Boiled down to its basics, the experiment involves splitting laser light into two beams, so that characteristics of one beam are reflected in the other beam as well. That's an example of what physicists call quantum entanglement. Specifically, Cramer has been planning to fiddle with one of the entangled laser beams such that it takes on the property of waves or particles. If one beam behaves like particles, the entangled photons of light in the other beam should behave like particles, too.

So what happens when the beams go their separate ways, and you conduct a wave-vs.-particle measurement on one beam? When someone else checks the other beam, the same measurement should yield the same result. In fact, you could visualize using the wave-vs.-particle toggle as a means for communicating information, sort of like Morse code. Theoretically, you could check one beam to receive a message instantaneously from whoever is fiddling with the other beam - even if you're separated from the receiver by millions of light-years.

That's what Einstein considered "spooky action at a distance." Such an effect could send information faster than light beams could travel, running counter to special relativity - and thus Einstein thought the effect was impossible to achieve. However, the evidence is mounting that quantum entanglement actually happens.

Cramer planned to start out by testing this kind of communication through quantum entanglement - that's the "nonlocal communication" part of the experiment. If that worked, Cramer would go even further: He would send one of the entangled beams (call it Signal A) through a circuitous detour - say, a few miles of fiber-optic cable - then fiddle with it when it came out of the cable. If the principles behind nonlocal communication held true, the evidence of that fiddling should be detected at a corresponding place in the other entangled beam (call it Signal B).

Now brace yourself for the backward-causality part: Because Signal B followed a shorter route to its detector, the fiddling in Signal A could theoretically show up in Signal B before Cramer actually fiddles with Signal A. It would be as if Cramer's actions had an effect that worked backward in time.

If Cramer detected that effect, the findings would raise the kinds of paradoxes you might see in science-fiction novels or "The Twilight Zone." What if you detected a signal from the future, but then decided not to send the signal? (That's called the "bilking paradox"). What if you received the text of a best-selling manuscript from yourself in the future, had it published, then saved a copy so you could send it to yourself in the past? (Cramer calls that the "immaculate conception paradox.")

"Perhaps the fact that there are such paradoxes is nature's way of telling us that our experiment isn't going to work," Cramer said.

Nevertheless, Cramer is anxious to find out whether it might work - and if not, why not. He suggested the framework for the experiment a year ago, and no one could come up with a reason why it should fail. Except for the money problem. ...

For months, Cramer struggled to find the funding he needed to buy the equipment for the experiment, to no avail. Then an article about his plight came out in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer - and within weeks, thousands of dollars flowed in from foundations and private donors who, for one reason or another, wanted to find out what kind of answers Cramer could come up with.

Cramer said the fund now amounts to $40,000, and now that he's back from a tour of duty at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, he's moving forward with the laser experiment. "If that laser holds out, then I think we're in pretty good shape," he told me today.

He's hoping to complete the experiment by September, when the equipment he's using will have to be moved someplace else to make room for remodeling. "It would be very nice if we could finish up by the 15th of September, but I don't know if we'll be able to do that or not," he said.

Cramer is grateful for all the donations, but he admitted that he's "a little uncomfortable" about the way things have gone so far. Usually, physicists work in obscurity, get some funding, conduct an experiment, publish the results - and only then does the publicity come, if the results are spectacular enough. The way Cramer sees it, there's been a heck of a lot of publicity already about an experiment that has yet to be done.

"We seem to be doing it sort of backwards, in a sense," he said. Then, realizing that he's been talking about backward causality, he added with a chuckle that "it may be relevant to the experiment we're trying to do."

Cramer, who is the author of two science-fiction novels and a regular columnist for Analog magazine, said the experiment represents "a rare opportunity to push the envelope of quantum mechanics." No matter how it turns out, the results will be put to good use, he said.

"If this experiment we're doing works, then I will follow up and push it as hard as possible. And if it doesn't work, I will write a science-fiction novel where it does work," he said. "It's a win-win situation."

Feel free to add your thoughts about backward causality and time travel in the comments section below, or visit our discussion board. And if you've already come up with a solution for backward time travel, fill me in on the secret ... yesterday.
Click to expand...
 
Now brace yourself for the backward-causality part: Because Signal B followed a shorter route to its detector, the fiddling in Signal A could theoretically show up in Signal B before Cramer actually fiddles with Signal A. It would be as if Cramer's actions had an effect that worked backward in time.

If Cramer detected that effect, the findings would raise the kinds of paradoxes you might see in science-fiction novels or "The Twilight Zone." What if you detected a signal from the future, but then decided not to send the signal? (That's called the "bilking paradox"). What if you received the text of a best-selling manuscript from yourself in the future, had it published, then saved a copy so you could send it to yourself in the past? (Cramer calls that the "immaculate conception paradox.")
Click to expand...

My head just exploded and my stomach turned over when I read that part.

If the experiment yields the results that Einstein called "spooky", this would throw all of our current knowledge of quantum physics into disarray, and much worse - unimaginable paradoxes we once thought impossible become real possibilities. But, seeing that there's already some evidence pointing that way...

Oo;;
 
This is cool. I can send my self signals into the past containing current Pokemon news, my past self will post the future news, and then I will have all of the exclusives! :D
 
That is assuming a. you can afford this cool thingy and b. there are pokemon news in the future.

This sounds really cool, and "paradoxy" (for lack of better terms). If this works out ... dang ... it's mind boggling.
 
Nevertheless, Cramer is anxious to find out whether it might work - and if not, why not. He suggested the framework for the experiment a year ago, and no one could come up with a reason why it should fail.
Click to expand...
This is the part of the article I enjoyed best. It reflects that Cramer is "a true scientist" -- he will not rest nor assume that the fight is lost, no matter how likely he believes it to be lost, until he has actually exhausted all of the resources at his disposal in fighting the good fight. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

I'm sure there are plenty of physicists laughing their butts off at this "nutjob of a sci-fi author," but really, he's more scientist than the lot of them if he's the first person to actually try this out. This is an experiment that should have been performed, documented, and discussed over 50 years ago; why it hasn't is unacceptable, and it'll be very fun to look at the results since (as Kramer put it so nicely) we win either way.

If his experiment fails, millions of electrical engineering students will have to go back to the drawing board to try and explain the perceived phenomenon of "quantum entanglement." If his experiment succeeds, then it could open up a whole new door for telecommunications.

Bring it! :D :)
 
I hope this works...the only problem, other than the expenses, would be the fact that we may still be unable to fix things in the past...before we had the technology.
 
Yeah, that's true.
We may just never be able to fix things in the past. D:
 
Meh Who needs it, I know I'm gonna be a millionaire one way or another. :D
Sounds confusing, i heard about it last week, it's not really time travel, it's time texting, nonetheless it's still cool.
It'll be a success and he'll receive a billion messages from the future describing how he fucked up the world lol.
 
Lol. I'd text myself the winning lottery numbers. xD
 
I believe it's been proven that you can't transmit classical information faster than the speed of light even using a quantum channel. Yes, there is quantum "information" being transmitted faster than the speed of light and even backwards in time, but the point is that quantum information and classical information are not the same thing.
 
Stupid question, I know, but...what IS the difference? I could make assumptions/guesses, but then I just end up convincing myself I know something I don't really know.
 
It is difficult to explain. For example, consider a pair of entangled electrons which are known to have opposite spins. If you measure one and find that it spins up, then when the other one is measured, it will necessarily be spinning down. Even if it was measured ten light-years away a fraction of a second after you measured your electron. But no classical information has been transmitted: you can't force your electron to be spinning a particular direction (thereby encoding a classical bit) and maintain the entangled state.
 
Sorry to bump and double post, but...

Isn't this experiment supposed to be finishing up soon? :D I am anxious to hear what happens.
 
It's funny you bring that up because I came across this about a week ago.
Scientists are looking for any possible way to exploit this link and I think we may have promising results, but the road to using quantum entanglement still has a ways to go before it ever reaches the public domain.

In essence, trying to use quantum entanglement via the traditional bit is moot. We can't exactly process the data lest we sever the entanglement the atoms were trapped in. If we wanted to use the quantum entanglement phenomena with future computers, we'd have to rewire their basic architecture. Actually, we'd have to make everything from scratch but I think the exhaustive efforts would pay off for achieving instant, far reaching communication.

Where a traditional bit can only be a 0 or 1, the quantum bit (qbit) can be 0, 1 or both. Basic logic will have to be recoded if it were to take advantage of the qbit but I'm sure something will come of it.
 
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Zhen Lin said:
I believe it's been proven that you can't transmit classical information faster than the speed of light even using a quantum channel. Yes, there is quantum "information" being transmitted faster than the speed of light and even backwards in time, but the point is that quantum information and classical information are not the same thing.
Click to expand...

Rayne said:
In essence, trying to use quantum entanglement via the traditional bit is moot. We can't exactly process the data lest we sever the entanglement the atoms were trapped in. If we wanted to use the quantum entanglement phenomena with future computers, we'd have to rewire their basic architecture. Actually, we'd have to make everything from scratch but I think the exhaustive efforts would pay off for achieving instant, far reaching communication.

Where a traditional bit can only be a 0 or 1, the quantum bit [qbit] can be 0, 1 or both. Basic logic will have to be recoded if it were to take advantage of this 3 bit game but I'm sure something will come of it.
Click to expand...

Firstly, let me say I'm not too familar with the subject matter, so please correct me if I say something wrong.

Taking what has been said in the above two posts, this would mean that quantum entanglement can be used to potentially send data backwards in time. While quantum channels (which I presume will be used in quantum computers of the future) can send classical data, there's no reason why someone will not utilise them for sending quantum data; I believe that it is possible to send meaningful information, which is transmitted by present technologies by traditional bits, in quantum bits; if it's possible, then I don't see why we can't possibily use it as a faster-than-light (and backwards in time!) means of communication.
 
No, it is not possible to send classical information - that is, information meaningful to us quasideterministic non-microsopic beings - down a quantum channel. If it were then QM would be inconsistent with special relativity (EPR paradox), but QM is in fact consistent with special relativity. Classical information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, at least not with our current understanding of physics.
 
Actually it did.

Call me lazy, but I don't feel like going into great length about the article right now, but most of it is nearly self explanatory.
 
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