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from the not-actual-physicists,-just-theoretical-ones? dept.
Supercomputers help link quantum entanglement to cold coffee:
Theoretical physicists from Trinity College Dublin have found a deep link between one of the most striking features of quantum mechanics -- quantum entanglement -- and thermalisation, which is the process in which something comes into thermal equilibrium with its surroundings.
Their results are published today [Friday 31st January 2020] in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.
We are all familiar with thermalisation -- just think how your coffee reaches room temperature over time. Quantum entanglement on the other hand is a different story.
Yet work performed by Marlon Brenes, PhD Candidate, and Professor John Goold from Trinity, in collaboration with Silvia Pappalardi and Professor Alessandro Silva at SISSA in Italy, shows how the two are inextricably linked.
Explaining the importance of the discovery, Professor Goold, leader of Trinity's QuSys group, explains:
"Quantum entanglement is a counterintuitive feature of quantum mechanics, which allows particles that have interacted with each other at some point in time to become correlated in a way which is not possible classically. Measurements on one particle affect the outcomes of measurements of the other -- even if they are light years apart. Einstein called this effect 'spooky action at a distance'."
"It turns out that entanglement is not just spooky but actually ubiquitous and in fact what is even more amazing is that we live in an age where technology is starting to exploit this feature to perform feats which were thought to be impossible just a number of years go. These quantum technologies are being developed rapidly in the private sector with companies such as Google and IBM leading the race."
But what has all this got to do with cold coffee?
Journal Reference:
Marlon Brenes, Silvia Pappalardi, John Goold, Alessandro Silva Multipartite Entanglement Structure in the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis, Physical Review Letters (DOI: doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.040605)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by rigrig on Thursday February 06 2020, @10:48AM (8 children)
Didn't read TFA, but if I remember my high school physics correctly this is a major advancement towards FTL travel (without tedious mucking about in hyperspace).
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 4, Touché) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday February 06 2020, @12:38PM (5 children)
Thanks for this. I would have been sorely disappointment had the top comment been anything BUT this exact HHGTTG reference.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Only_Mortal on Thursday February 06 2020, @02:10PM (4 children)
But they made the classic mistake of using coffee instead of tea.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Osamabobama on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:31PM
Coffee is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. It will be fine.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by choose another one on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:02PM (2 children)
They also let it go cold. It's supposed to be a nice HOT cup of tea.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:30PM
Oh crap, I think we just invented the anti-infinite-improbability drive. We're gonna need some testing to figure out if that makes it a finite-improbability drive or a infinite-probability one.
Either way, don't put them in the same room together.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 06 2020, @10:07PM
That reminds me of my first encounter with the series, which was a German translation of the radio play. The translator obviously wanted to culturally adapt the text (tea isn't big in Germany), but obviously didn't notice that while most of the description of the infinite improbability generator was fictive, Brownian Motion was something that really exists. Which resulted in me wondering why the author would consider a well-cooled glass of beer to be the source of strong Brownian motion.
Later the puzzle was solved when I learned that the original English text used hot tea instead.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:09PM
When I was a kid, I thought it was called Brownian Motion [wikipedia.org] because tea is brown.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @03:25PM
My question is, is it a substance almost completely, but not quite, entirely unlike tea?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 06 2020, @11:00AM
Given that some of the authors work 25 miles from here, where they live coffee is pretty important. Trieste is the second Italian city after Naples for coffee consumption and refinement. Just as an aside, as in many places of Italy, they are basically their own micronation with dialect, philosophy and cultural heritage that is not shared by half of the surroundings. Even **gasp** racially they look different, clear eyes, more blondes, smaller.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @12:03PM (4 children)
Small pet peeve here. Einstein did not describe this effect as spooky action at a distance. Well he did, but he was mocking the very idea. Imagine you do some air quotes while saying 'spooky action at a distance' in a patronizing ghostly voice. That's more accurate.
Einstein thought the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics, the one we've come to accept as correct, was complete bullshit. I think this is really quite an important nuance because it reminds all of us that even the greatest of authorities in a field can get things wrong. That or he was right and we've been wrong for about 100 years now. Actually in either case it proves the point - authority is not what matters: results, logic, and evidence are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday February 06 2020, @12:22PM (2 children)
Any interpretation is BS.
Interpretation is trying to model phenomenons according to our macroscopic experience, which is the one that shapes our mental models and logic.
Problem being, logic derives from modelling, not the other way round. In other words, nature does not care about our interpretation. It feels weird that something pops up from the void? so what? but more importantly, WHY? what is the difference between an universe where entangled photons do exist and other theoretical ones where they don't?
Scientists are still reasoning like clock repairmen, in an impersonal mechanical and deterministic universe, instead of reasoning like a sysadmin logged into a port left open, that might lead to bare metal, a VM, a honeypot. You can model what you found however you like, but from the inside the ultimate nature of what you are into is undiscoverable. I mean, it is discoverable but it is not provable that the discovery is the definitive one. No matter how useful are the models. In this case previous models for heat distribution were probably very accurate. But now they are proven as mere shortcuts for a more complicated model. This is what science has always been about, until petty atheist scientophiles took over.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:04PM
This is standard trite about quantum mechanics, aka nobody can understand it stop trying feeble human mind. The problem with that is that the Hamiltonian is built up completely from classical notions (electrostatics, inverse square laws, etc.). At the last step everything is turned into an operator instead of a physical quantity and voila! We call it mysterious quantum mechanics that nobody's feeble human mind understands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @09:07PM
--Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @07:02PM
If you are going to go with Einstein being wrong, you should remember that Einstein thought his own theory of relativity was an approximation and someone else would find the right answer. So far, he's been wrong (or right?) about that too.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday February 06 2020, @12:51PM (1 child)
They mixed it up though, it's hot tea not cold coffee. https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive [fandom.com]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:21PM
and they forgot the Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain!
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @03:38PM (1 child)
Overly long summary that doesn't contain any useful information, just repeats some of the introduction from the article, followed by the question: "but how does any of this irrelevant crap relate to the title that made you read through this drivel in the first place? THE END!"
(Score: 2) by engblom on Friday February 07 2020, @09:14AM
I agree on this, and even the article is not answering this very question. Without opening the paper itself there is no way to know the answer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @08:12PM (1 child)
So where is my entangled cup of coffee and why is IT getting cold?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 07 2020, @02:16PM
Maybe the other cup is warming up now you know this one is cold.