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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the three's-a-generality dept.

In 1993, physicist Lucien Hardy proposed an experiment showing that there is a small probability (around 6-9%) of observing a particle and its antiparticle interacting with each other without annihilating—something that is impossible in classical physics. The way to explain this result is to require quantum theory to be nonlocal: that is, to allow for the existence of long-range quantum correlations, such as entanglement, so that particles can influence each other across long distances.

So far, Hardy's paradox has been experimentally demonstrated with two particles, and a few special cases with more than two particles have been proposed but not experimentally demonstrated. Now in a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists have presented a generalized Hardy's paradox that extends to any number of particles. Further, they show that any version of Hardy's paradox that involves three or more particles conflicts with local (classical) theory even more strongly than any of the previous versions of the paradox do. To illustrate, the physicists proposed an experiment with three particles in which the probability of observing the paradoxical event reaches an estimated 25%.

"In this paper, we show a family of generalized Hardy's paradox to the most degree, in that by adjusting certain parameters they not only include previously known extensions as special cases, but also give sharper conflicts between quantum and classical theories in general," coauthor Jing-Ling Chen at Nankai University and the National University of Singapore told Phys.org. "What's more, based on the paradoxes, we are able to write down novel Bell's inequalities, which enable us to detect more quantum entangled states."

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-hardy-paradox-stronger-conflict-quantum.html

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:50PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:50PM (#632933)

    That "quantum" stuff is as phony as a three dollar bill. It's people making shit up that they don't understand. It's dark "science". It's just another religion, damn near as expensive as Judaism! And like the Jews, these people want to run the world!

    First we got the bomb and that was good...

    • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:42PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:42PM (#632951)

      "Flamebait"

      Whoopsie-daisy! I triggered another one of your little SJWs! I feel so very sorry!

      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Grishnakh on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:16PM (4 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:16PM (#632968)

        You only got that because there's no "-1 Stupid" moderation available, which is what you deserve.

        Got any LED lights? There's your proof that quantum physics is real, moron.

        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:22PM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:22PM (#632973) Homepage

          Requesting for next April Fool's day - a "-1, Stupid" moderation option.

        • (Score: -1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:35PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:35PM (#633000)

          Bullshit! They just make that shit up because they don't how it works! I swear!You people believe in the stupidest shit. All that tuition money.. gone to waste! The "Stupid" mod goes to you! I get the "truth" mod from anybody who knows the actual truth... Christ! No wonder Trump won the election!

          • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:54PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:54PM (#633019)

            Trump won the election because Bernie got shafted from the Hellary owned DNC.

          • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by jimtheowl on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:47PM

            by jimtheowl (5929) on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:47PM (#633032)
            He won because of too many -5 Stupid people like you voting.

            They don't know how it works, yet they can make it in the first place.. brilliant.
    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:19PM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:19PM (#633040) Journal

      First we got the bomb and that was good...

      I believe that, troll parent or not, it would be wrong not to reply with "Because we love peace and motherhood" to such an obscure cultural reference.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:18PM (#632993)

    hey! maybe we can get a anti-hydrogen-slash-hydrogen tank now that doesn't blow up every time we want to read
    the gauge ...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:39PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @07:39PM (#633002)

    Might this explain the matter/antimatter paradox?

    • (Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:23PM (2 children)

      by jimtheowl (5929) on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:23PM (#633042)
      Do you mean the matter-antimatter asymmetry problem?

      Do you think it does?
      • (Score: 2) by Bobs on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:05PM (1 child)

        by Bobs (1462) on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:05PM (#633054)

        I think maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t.
        You may think that the two alternatives would
        cancel each other out, but it turns out they don’t.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jimtheowl on Monday February 05 2018, @12:01AM

          by jimtheowl (5929) on Monday February 05 2018, @12:01AM (#633072)
          By "two alternatives" do you mean matter and anti-matter? They are not alternatives, as, they can both exist. They just can't be put together without annihilating each other. By cancel each other out, do you mean that they should exist in the same quantities? And by "you would think they cancel each other out" of course that is not the case, because the Universe would not exist. So in that context, I supposed that the proposed experiment could provide insight in some of the observed asymmetry of the Universe, yes. I doubt that it will provide a full explanation.
  • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:44PM

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:44PM (#633068) Journal

    So you're saying that improbability drive might actually be a thing?!

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Monday February 05 2018, @08:01AM (1 child)

    by Bot (3902) on Monday February 05 2018, @08:01AM (#633195) Journal

    > that is, to allow for the existence of long-range quantum correlations, such as entanglement, so that particles can influence each other across long distances

    What is the problem with that? It is a completely equivalent option among all the others. All rules that the universe seems to follow, until further notice, are ultimately CONVENTIONAL. You would be speculating in the domain of the meta-universe to make sense of them, and speculation is not science. Science is about the how, not the why. You cannot even say "the why" where time is not defined as an oriented vector able to distinguish cause from effect.

    The universe does not need to "be a simulation" just because things act at a distance. Sure, the collapsing quantum effects affected by observation are essentially lazy evaluation, the action at a distance implies some information needing to be "stored somewhere". But these are our mental models derived from our macroscopic experience of the world. Being a simulation, vs. being the really real? it's all a matter of abstraction levels as I keep repeating around here.

    Same abstraction level? real. Different abstraction level? conceptual or meta. Real for the chess piece is the position of all pieces in an instant of the abstraction called game. No other things are real, including the real world representation we use to keep the abstraction going. Real for us is what can be perceived and influence us. If action at a distance is included in the protocol, so be it. If it's not, no problem.

    Remember that things like occam's razor, everything should be as simply modeled as possible, actually are additional constraints, so apply occam's razor to itself too.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:15AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:15AM (#633222)

      The universe does not need to "be a simulation" just because things act at a distance.

      Nobody claimed that, as far as I can see. But I'd like to correct you in one point (that is also a correction to the article): Just because things appear to act at a distance.

      Quantum entanglement is in no way proving action at a distance. It is just that if you try to apply a classical picture then you inevitably have to add an action at a distance to that picture to make things work. If you are happy with quantum mechanics just working differently, you'll see it's just non-classical correlations. In particular, you cannot use it to transmit information (and indeed, you can derive some fundamental properties of quantum mechanics from that very fact). So the more reasonable assumption is that there is no action at a distance, but our classical intuition just doesn't work at that level.

      Which isn't too surprising, given that our brain evolved to interpret events at a macroscopic level. Our survival never depended on an understanding of quantum mechanical processes. And certainly nature was not tailor-made for our brain to intuitively understand.

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