Quantum entanglement’s journey from ‘spooky’ to a law of nature
VERN BENDER
Quantum entanglement’s long journey from spooky to the law of nature. Quantum physics predicts that particles can become entangled. Quantum physics predicts that particles can become entangled. This suggests that two or more particles can be brought together and become fundamentally linked so that even when they’re separated, even by great distances, it’s no longer possible to describe them independently of each other.
This suggests that two or more particles can be brought together and become fundamentally linked so that even when they’re separated, even by great distances, it’s no longer possible to describe them independently of each other.
Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in quantum physics where two or more particles become connected so that their states are linked, even when vast distances separate them.
Entanglement is a correlation between objects. For example, a pair of gloves has a left hand and a right hand. Correlations give you information. If you find only one glove, you immediately know the other must be somewhere. So keep looking. You only do this because you know they come in pairs. Now consider the surface of a road. There are black bitumen areas and white line markings. These properties of being black and white are intrinsic to the materials in the road, or so we thought.
Consider we have one hundred white pebbles and one hundred black pebbles and can mix them in any ratio to 00%
Now, if you make a bag of 50 white pebbles and 50 black pebbles, what is the probability of drawing a white pebble?
Because some properties that we assume about the pebbles are wrong. Specifically, the property of being black or white is not intrinsic to the pebbles. The pebbles assume their property on measurement! This is the so-called collapse of the wave function.
Entanglement is a sleight extension of this example. Now, the probabilities are used to observe a correlation between two measurements, like the probability that two white pebbles were drawn at different locations. In classical theory, such correlation probabilities are just an extension of the pebble example that behaves the same way. However, entanglement is a superposition of correlations that collapses into a specific correlation on measurement. Even if the two particles are widely separated, their properties are still connected by entanglement. This changes how the probabilities are calculated, so the intuition gained from the pebbles doesn’t work.
Ultimately, this means our underlying reality is not one of the intrinsic properties local to each particle.
That might sound weird, but that is why they were awarded a Nobel prize for this work.
The bottom line is that quantum entanglement explains the 85% result whereas classical thinking tells us it should be 75%. Therefore, we have to reject the classical model of reality.
