• It is a connection between a pair of entangled particles, and when it “breaks,” the connection is no longer there.
  • But that is not how entanglement works. For starters, everything is entangled with everything else all the time.
  • So when we speak of “entanglement,” we mean taking a small system, e.g., a pair of particles, and arranging it such that, at least temporarily, that pair is isolated from the environment as much as possible. So the pair, at least briefly and imperfectly, are only entangled.
  • What gets broken is not the connection between the two but their isolation from the environment. This is called decoherence: the nice, clean correlation between the behaviors of the entangled pair is now rudely contaminated,  with all kinds of random influence from everything else in the rest of the universe.
  • Quantum gravity’s presence is key to understanding the early universe. Quantum effects cannot be ignored because gravity was so strong in the early universe (much earlier than the so-called electroweak symmetry breaking epoch).
  • Gravity is NOT derived from mass. It is sourced by a quantity called the stress-energy-momentum tensor, which incorporates mass-energy, kinetic energy, pressure, and shear stresses. This tensor is a so-called nonrelativistic perfect fluid, dominated by mass at rest. However, the early universe cannot be characterized as a nonrelativistic ideal fluid.
  1. WIMPS are the least massive supersymmetric partner particle, but CERN shows no evidence for supersymmetric particles
  2. Axions—these have never been detected. d
  3. Sterile neutrinos—ditto
  4. Primordial black holes—these are mostly ruled out, although the two intermediate black hole gravitational wave merger events are interesting.
  • Aside from that, it might be a phantom. Phantom matter refers to what seems to be matter due to gravitational effects but is dark gravity, that is, emergent gravity—extra gravity. That arises when one considers the interplay of ordinary matter and dark energy.
  • Within the Standard Model of particle physics, there are 17 fundamental quantum fields: 12 matter fields (6 quarks and 6 leptons), 4 force fields (photon, gluons, W and Z bosons), and the Higgs field. 
  • In the Standard Model of particle physics, fundamental particles are viewed as excitations (or quanta) of underlying quantum fields, with photons being the quanta of the electromagnetic field. 
  • The Standard Model of Particle Physics is scientists’ current best theory to describe the most basic building blocks of the universe. It explains how particles called quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) and leptons (which include electrons) make up all known matter.
  • In order to avoid these difficulties, physicists employ the second-quantized theory of photons described below, quantum electrodynamics, in which photons are quantized excitations of electromagnetic modes. The photon is now thought of as a particle, a wave, and an excitation—kind of like a wave—in a quantum field.
  • The particle model of matter is a theory that explains how the particles that make up a substance are arranged, and how they move and interact with each other. There are rules within the particle model for each of the main three states of matter that you may already be aware of.
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VERN BENDER
AUTHOR, HISTORIAN, CONSULTANT