Spacetime. Wormholes. Warp Drives…. 20th Century physics, old-timer. It’s all a projection of quantum data nodes called Qubits… and 21st Century physics lets you do all sorts of cool things that Old Albert E. would not like AT ALL.
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Scott, you knocked this one out of the park. I love science fiction and to me the idea of entanglement just has to be science fiction. I just watched this episode twice and when my husband comes home I’m going to make him watch it, too. (But maybe only once.) Bill, I want that t-shirt!!!
Not to take anything away from this discussion, but Scott’s introduction isn’t entirely accurate. Entanglement is not being in two places at the same time. Entangled particles are two separate particles created at from a single event that fly off in opposite directions. These particles, because of how they are created, have intrinsic properties, such as spin, which are oppositely correlated. If one has spin up, the other has to have spin down. Thing is, each particle is in a state of superposition such that its spin is said to be both up and down, at least until it is… Read more »
Great explanation, if you ask me. Don’t many people, in an attempt to make the explanation of entanglement easier to understand, refer to the “folding” of the universe to explanation as how two entities so far away can instantaneously affect one another?
Thanks.
Yes, folding space or folding space time acting at some higher dimension has also been suggested as an explanation. Others ignore the problem (in my view) by saying “shut up and calculate”–the idea that quantum mechanics is just the calculation of probabilities and not some description of how the physical world operates.
The only “correction” I would place in this explanation is that the speed of light in a vacuum is invariant. The speed of light in a medium can vary (ie: be lower than in a vacuum). That is how cherenkov radiation is created. Particles are moving faster than the speed of light in water slow and give off the extra energy as a photon in the blue portion of the spectrum. If you go and look at a pool type nuclear reactor, there is a blue glow around the reactor. That is cherenkov radiation. Yes, I have seen it myself… Read more »
Excellent topic Confused? No worries, open guide w/cover Don’t Panic & look up “Improbability Drive”. As Bill stated, light speed is a result of our quantum spacetime tapestry, also called The Akashic Records (non-physical compendium of events, thoughts, words, emotions & intent that has ever occurred in past/present/future). So, past, present, and future may exist at the same time, as a static 4D spacetime block, where time is a dimension (similar to space) and all moments in history are equally real/fixed (not where past evaporates, nor future is undefined). Relativity theory suggests there is no universal now as simultaneity is… Read more »
Translated; How not to pick up girls.
Hey, my wife is hot. She also knows I am a geek.
The Drive of Improbability is great–but the more superior one is the SEP – Someone Else’s Problem.
Just don’t forget your towel
A few times, Scott refers to the process of “proving” a theory. I get what he means. However, in Physics, theories are never proven. They can only be dis-proven. Even if a theory works flawlessly for a century (like General Relativity), it is at best, a theory that hasn’t yet been dis-proven. Often, people Theories become Laws after sufficient testing. That is not how it works, either. Theories and Laws are entirely different things. The Laws of Physics are careful descriptions of what we observe. Like Hooke’s Law, Newton’s Laws, Stefan’s Law, etc. They describe patterns of observable behaviors. Theories are attempts to explain these behaviors… Read more »
The speed of light.
It’s not just a good idea, it’s The Law!!
The speed of light is not a limiting factor. This misconception is due to the mishandling of Einstein’s E=mc^2 formula.The c variable was never intended to be a constant! You can use this formula to calculate the impact force of a bullet replacing m with the mass of the bullet and c with the speed of the bullet. Only when you decide to make the mistake of using c as a constant for the speed of light do you end up with the ludicrous notion that infinite mass is generated out of nothing as you approach the speed of light!… Read more »
You have to look at how QBits are employed. The idea is that the QBit is 0 and 1 and the same time. Only when you sample the QBit do you actually get a 0 or 1. Put 8 of them together and you have a QByte. 32 of them make a QInteger. When you sample 32 of them you get a randomized integer number. Such random numbers are then sampled by a normal computer program. The program interprets the randomized value that it got and applies it to a problem. This can generate chemical combinations that a human researcher… Read more »
I’m pretty sure the quote Steve referred to was from Feynman.
Louis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” is a lot more fun – “I try to think of at least six impossible things before breakfast” – when you understand the author wrote the story from somewhere else in the multiverse.
The hurdle I face with quantum substitutions, etc. is the concept of Schroedinger’s cat at cat size, the whole example being an effort to explain what happens to photons existing as both waves and particles and not really “existing” until they are measured. The difference between a cat and a photon substantial.
You lost me at, “Hi everybody. I’m Scott Ott…”
I did not understand anything of what was said in this episode, and yet I found it all fascinating. Is that even possible?
I love this show.
Exactly! Thank you for sharing!