Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
Physicists in China just broke a new record by achieving quantum entanglement with 18 qubits, surpassing the previous record of 10. This significant breakthrough puts us one big step closer to realizing large-scale quantum computing.
It's hard to find a stranger, more exotic phenomenon than quantum entanglement — the idea that two entangled particles, or qubits, can influence each other's state instantly even when they're light-years apart.
Even if you separate entangled particles by billions of miles, changing one particle will induce a change in the other. This information appears to be transmitted instantaneously, with no violation of the classical speed of light because there's no "movement" through space.
Source: China breaks quantum entanglement record at 18 qubits
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday July 07 2018, @07:12AM (2 children)
Bell's Theorem [wikipedia.org]
-- John Stewart Bell [wikipedia.org]
I guess another perspective would be that no information was actually transferred at all. It didn't happen :) One would think Quantum mechanics is bullshit, except the experiments keep producing such interesting results.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:17AM
Indeed.Note that by looking only at some of the entangled particles, there's absolutely no way to detect whether a measurement was done on one of the other particles. And if all you are given is that a measurement has taken place, but neither what has been measured, nor what was the result of the measurement, there is no way to figure out any of that information from the non-measured particles.
Information transfer is only needed as an explanation if one assumes that the underlying physics is essentially classical (so-called hidden variable theories). That's what Bell's theorem says: You cannot have a hidden-variable theory without faster-than-light information transfer. But as soon as you let go the prejudice that the world has to follow essentially the same rules that hold at macroscopic levels, you no longer need superluminal information transfer.
As an analogy, consider the stars as seen from Earth. As long as you claim that the Earth is at rest, you must come to the conclusion that the stars, being very far away, must be moving much faster than light in order for them to orbit the earth once a day. But as soon as you let go the prejudice that the Earth is at rest, you'll see that no superluminal star movement is required; the apparent movement of the stars is caused by the local rotation of the Earth.
The problem with quantum mechanics is that it is unlike anything we know from our macroscopic, classical world. This is unlike the rotating earth, where we can experience what happens when objects rotate, in particular when we are part of the rotation, and thus it is not too hard to imagine the Earth rotating, too, even though we cannot perceive that rotation directly. But none of the objects we experience in our daily life behaves like quantum objects, so we just cannot experience quantum mechanics. We can see its effects in measurement results, sure, but there's a difference between, say, seeing a car moving at high speed, and being presented a readout of the speedometer of that car.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday July 07 2018, @11:52AM
I lean towards compatibilism, so I don't believe that determinism prevents free will. This is briefly because for any given decision, from our own point of view, there is in the end only one final outcome that we choose. We choose based on information from our external environment combined with our brain's internal state including the effects of emotions and whims. If the universe is deterministic, it just means that physics will always produce exactly the "right" choice for our decision. So determinism does not bring discomfort or a lack of freedom.
In my limited understanding of entanglement, I struggle to see what it has to do with free will. You can't use it as a way to communicate information of your own choosing, so you can't use it to violate causality. It's just a correlation.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Saturday July 07 2018, @12:10PM (8 children)
When even science journalists now apply "i.e." and "e.g." incorrectly, what hope is there of a majority of English writers learning their correct meanings? Perhaps it is only important for those two medical fields; in which case why say "a number"?
This really, really annoys me.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 07 2018, @03:13PM
Well, two is a number, isn't it? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday July 07 2018, @05:58PM (6 children)
It comes as a great surprise to an ever greater number of people that words mean things.
In this case, the Latin words "Id est". They mean "That is".
Their use in TFS/TFA makes little to no sense--unless the reader, like the writer, does not believe that words have more or less fixed meanings, in which case, it makes perfect sense, and even if it simultaneously doesn't, a "you know what I mean" get-out-of-reality-jail-free card should apply.
I fear for the future of interpersonal communication, because words are one of the keys to that.
It would be sort of like not worrying about what numbers mean, and then trying to do math, and not really worrying about the results.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday July 07 2018, @07:20PM (5 children)
They don't. Although that fact shouldn't be celebrated.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday July 07 2018, @08:09PM (4 children)
If what you say were true, it would not be possible to compile a thesaurus nor a dictionary, not be possible to communicate with others using words. That's where we are headed, but it's not where we started, and indeed, we aren't doomed yet; there is hope, as GGP shows.
I feel sorry for you and for the other people who believe like you do. I would also ask you to stop screwing up our words--things established by convention can be torn down by lack of convention, which your beliefs provide--but you probably wouldn't know what the request meant given that you don't believe that words have more or less fixed meanings.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday July 07 2018, @09:10PM
Big yawn
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08 2018, @04:11AM (2 children)
You ever compare dictionaries published decades apart? Ever read through a word's etymology in the OED? How do you figure we aren't still speaking some Original Language (ignoring theories involving divine intervention)?
Language changes over time. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by requerdanos on Sunday July 08 2018, @02:01PM (1 child)
I hear this in defense of all kinds of bad ideas, but this is the first time I have heard it used to claim that "That is" legitimately means "For example".
There are, ironically, no words.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday July 08 2018, @09:55PM
Thank you for finding some and saving me the trouble. It's nice to know I'm not the only Soylentil concerned with such details.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday July 07 2018, @01:22PM (1 child)
Researchers determined this experimentally, did they? Light-years, billions of miles away?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 07 2018, @03:54PM
They just scaled down a model of the universe to do it on.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 07 2018, @03:53PM
Since the start of their tests, I've had particles entangled in my pubic hair. Wash, seems like they are gone, but minutes later, they're back. Why are the Chinese so interested in my pubic hair?