The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It

[Nevilledog]

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Dan Garisto
@dangaristo
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Most of the time, claims that a scientific discovery changes the way we see reality are hugely overblown. But the Bell tests done by John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger really did. Here's my day two story on this year's Physics Nobel.

scientificamerican.com
The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It
Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality
12:24 PM · Oct 6, 2022

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead, the evidence shows objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement. As Albert Einstein famously bemoaned to a friend, “Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”

This is, of course, deeply contrary to our everyday experiences. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the demise of local realism has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Blame for this achievement has now been laid squarely on the shoulders of three physicists: John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. They equally split the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.” (“Bell inequalities” refers to the pioneering work of the Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell, who laid the foundations for this year’s Physics Nobel in the early 1960s.) Colleagues agreed that the trio had it coming, deserving this reckoning for overthrowing reality as we know it. “It is fantastic news. It was long overdue,” says Sandu Popescu, a quantum physicist at the University of Bristol. “Without any doubt, the prize is well-deserved.”

“The experiments beginning with the earliest one of Clauser and continuing along, show that this stuff isn’t just philosophical, it’s real—and like other real things, potentially useful,” says Charles Bennett, an eminent quantum researcher at IBM.

*snip*

[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. Fascinating..

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Wounded Bear]

3. Cool stuff! Thanks for the link...nt

[W_HAMILTON]

4. More evidence that we are living in a simulation?

I know that people have hypothesized such, basing it on how many video games only render graphics when you are looking in that particular direction or whatever.

Granted, this is all above my pay grade and more just fun conspiracy theories to me -- you know, back when conspiracy theories were about bigfoot and aliens and not fucking Hillary Clinton and stupid shit that conservative dregs have devolved the whole genre into nowadays.

Also, theoretically, why can nothing travel faster than light? That seems to put a severe limitation on our potential future endeavors. And I thought that the universe was expanding faster than the speed of light, but maybe I am mistakenly remembering that from some documentary...

I don't know, just a hodgepodge of random ideas that this made me think about...

[Kaleva]

6. The way I understand it, the space between galaxies is expanding faster then the speed of light

This expansion is powered by dark energy

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/03/whats-the-difference-between-dark-matter-and-dark-energy#:~:text=In%20short%2C%20dark%20matter%20slows,%2C%20absorb%2C%20or%20emit%20light.

[anarch]

38. "dark energy" being code for "meh, some kind of weird shit we don't understand"

but yes, this is true and confounding to people who like things to be wrapped up neatly and easily explained

[Earth-shine]

7. Nothing can travel faster than light (in local space) because of Einstein's "E equals MC squared"

As an object approaches the speed of light, it becomes asymptotically heavier eventually approaching infinite mass. It would take infinite energy to propel it faster.

Very distant galaxies are indeed moving away from us at faster-than-light speeds because the space between them and us is expanding carrying everything in it with it.

It seems that expansion (dark energy) is a natural property of space.

[triron]

8. In a given spacetime light speed is the limit but

Spacetime itself can expand faster than light speed. Thus if a spaceship could envelope itself in a local Spacetime it could move through the surrounding space faster than light, ie warp speed.

[brush]

5. Guess that tree falling in the forest that we didn't hear...

never fell and was never there.

[Kaleva]

9. Our brains transform what our senses detect into objects, smells or sensations

Light is picked up by our eyes, turned into electrical signals that are sent to the brain which turns them into images

[brush]

12. That's a good summary of what the scientists seem...

to be saying. But doesn't that fall apart when you go up to an object and touch it, and it really is there?

[Jack the Greater]

20. I had in mind a semi that crosses the center divider, heading straight for you

... but touching something works, too.

[Kaleva]

36. But remove all the senses and the universe no longer exists.

[brush]

49. I don't get that. If one person doesn't have senses, it's still there.

[Kaleva]

51. Kinda like the Universe outside the observable boundry

We'll never see it or confirm it's there.

[brush]

52. It's there. We're in it. The Earth is in it. Call it the universe of whatever else...

you want to call it. If you question it's existence you question we exist, and we know that's not true.

[Kaleva]

53. But we can never prove it's there

Scientists can only theorize about it because space is expanding faster then the speed of light, any signals emitted by galaxies beyond the boundary will never reach us.

I love watching vids on YouTube about this stuff even though some of it is way beyond my comprehension.

[brush]

54. Like I said, call it whatever you want to call it, we're here...

we exist, which is undeniable, and that means it exists as we are a part of it.


If you don't like the word universe, give us another one that encompasses everything there is.

[Delphinus]

37. Great question.

There is so much to think about in this thread. Like, the poster who replied to you - is it similar to the way Geordi La Forge saw things with his visor?

[keithbvadu2]

10. The more we learn, the more we find that we don't know yet.

The more we learn, the more we find that we don't know yet.

Oceans, medicine, the great expanse of space, the little bitty space within the atoms.

[Bluethroughu]

11. If looking at the night sky is viewing the past light..

Someone or something is standing somewhere viewing up at our galaxy light from the past.

So where are we?

Right where we want to be.

[Ferrets are Cool]

13. Can someone smarter than me please explain what they have proven?

As simply as possible.

Thanks

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

15. That is not possible, Einstein is no longer alive. nt

[oioioi]

40. That information can possibly be transmitted faster than the speed of light

[triron]

50. Try to find a lay man's explanation of Bell's theorem.

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

62. I think I have found it stated simply

From
https://www.quora.com/Is-non-locality-of-quantum-entanglement-proved-beyond-any-doubts

John Bell proved a remarkable theorem, which is a mathematical result whose validity is quite independent of quantum mechanics or experiment. It states, roughly, that in any local realistic theory there is a strict upper bound on the correlation that can be measured between properties of separate particles. This limit is precisely quantified by Bell’s inequality.

Bell’s theorem is certain. The question is, do the correlations in our universe violate those inequalities or not?

Experiments have demonstrated with great confidence that entangled particles actually have correlations that violate Bell’s inequality. The logical implication is that our physical world cannot be understood as being a local realistic world.

So, they proved that entangled particles violated Bell's inequality.

John Bell began his now famous paper with the sock example in the following link.
This link should help understand Bell's inequality.
https://hackaday.com/2015/11/11/what-do-bertlmanns-socks-mean-to-the-nature-of-reality/


So, a real world example of how you might predict the 2nd sock when you know things about the 1st sock and some other correlations.

But when pairs are entangled, you can predict with more accuracy than what seems possible in the classical sense.
They, or at least 2 of the 3 winners, proved that this higher accuracy is real. It seems to break our reality of locality or realism.


I believe, that
Alain Aspect and John F. Clauser
were awarded for helping to "prove"
and Anton Zeilinger
was awarded for helping to put to use.

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

14. Nothing SPOOKY about entangled beach balls

Last edited Fri Oct 7, 2022, 01:17 AM - Edit history (1)

Let's entangle 2 beach balls.

If you shoot 2 beach balls toward each other in space, they will glance off of each other and be entangled.
They will have opposite spin direction and equal spin speed.

If someone, who was not watching until 10 minutes later, measures the spin speed and spin direction of one of them, they would instantly know, faster than light could reach the other beach ball, the spin speed and spin direction of that other ball.

Nothing spooky about that.

[Jack the Greater]

21. ... providing the two beach balls had exactly the same mass, shape, size, coefficient of friction

etc etc etc

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

29. Nice Points

Those things would very much influence the speed of the spin and the direction and momentum of the balls.
I do believe the spins directions would not be variable based on those features.

I should have prefaced the thought experiment with those caveats.

[Hortensis]

46. Or just providing that we knew what they were. Or maybe something

else would provide additional info needed.

Thanks for the discussion. And for the explanation, Don'tbelieve.

[Iggo]

22. The speed of deduction is faster than the speed of light? Nice!

(I have no idea what I’m talking about…)

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

27. lol

Yes, I noticed that discovery when I was writing it. I thought it would be my inside joke! lol

[Hekate]

16. Imagine that!

[colsohlibgal]

17. Fascinating

What is reality? The discoveries continue to lean more weird yearly. Could it all be a simulation, who knows. One thing that boggles the mind is that there is a parallel earth out there, an impossible distance away for anytime soon, where we all are. What is not proven yet but not ruled out is that there are zillions of alternative earths out there....breaking off daily as things happen.

[dalton99a]

18. Kick

While studying at Columbia in the 1960s, Clauser became interested in designing practical experiments to put quantum mechanics to the test. But his ideas weren’t always well-received in the field, he said.

Leading physicist Richard Feynman, who won his own physics Nobel in 1965, “kind of threw me out of his office,” Clauser said. “He was very offended that I should even be considering the possibility that quantum mechanics might not give the correct predictions.”

But Clauser said he was having fun working on these experiments and thought they were important — “even though everybody told me I was crazy and was going to ruin my career by doing it.”

While continuing his work at University of California Berkeley, he and the late physicist Stuart Freedman “had to build everything from scratch. There was very little money so I was basically cobbling together junk or scrap from the UC physics department,” he told the Academy.

“There’s a lot of stuff unused in storerooms,” Clauser said. “I would rummage around and say, ‘Oh, hey, I can use this.’”

https://apnews.com/article/science-us-news-c923ac7b8a76b671e73c49f20db5caaa

[Jack the Greater]

26. Who else watched the whole video

... and still did not understand?

[Duppers]

30. This has been explained to me over and over

By my physicist hubby, yet I fail to comprehend. I need 40+ more IQ pts.

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

31. at 9:10 the video gets it wrong

|

This video becomes unwatchable after the 9:10 mark.

At that point, we are only considering what happens when Alice drops in a 1 pound coin.
Those scenarios are only represented on the left hand side.


What happens when Alice drops a 1 pound coin ?

....... |...................... |
....... |...................... |
....... | Alice 1 pound . | .... Alice 2 pound
________________________________________
....... |..................... |
Bob . |...... A... B...... |...... A... B
.. 1 .. |...... r.... r....... |............ r
Pnd . |..................... |
....... |..................... |
_____________________________________ |
....... |..................... |
....... |..................... |
Bob . |...... A... B...... |...... A... B
.. 2 .. |...... r.... r....... |............ r
Pnd . |..................... |
....... |..................... |
....... |..................... |



See how the video puts rabbits for Bob on the right hand side?
That is the side that should only be considered when Alice drops a 2 pound coin.
So, those rabbits should not be there, and yet he uses the existence of those wrongly added rabbits as proof that something is wrong.

[DontBelieveEastisEas]

34. I take it back

It seems I was wrong.

So, they are saying that a specific type of coin in a specific box must always give the same animal.

Therefore, since Bob's box must produce a rabbit with both coin types in the case of Alice using a 1 pound coin, that means his box must always produce a rabbit.

my bad

[Lucinda]

19. ❤️ ✿❧🌿❧✿ ❤️

[kentuck]

23. It's just my imagination...

running away with me.

“Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking;

I have often wondered if we see the same object or scenery when we look at it?

[Jack the Greater]

25. There is general agreement among observers, of specific properties of that which is being observed

It is beautiful, big, small, green, purple, funny, adorable. But I get what propose, that we may see something different when we look at the same object. Does a Dutch windmill painting look the same to all observers? I don't see how that question can possible be answered, though, as no one has yet found a way, to my knowledge, of seeing how others see.

I am going to stop writing now, before I get lost and never find my way back.

[kentuck]

28. Sometimes I have thought that our minds are like digital cameras.

We can only see what other people have seen before us. If we see something for the first time, then the next person will see exactly what we have seen. Everything we see is just a digital projection screen of what someone else has seen.

I can imagine that when the pioneers were coming west, some of them must have thought they saw a "mountain" a long way off on the horizon? Others must have argued that it was only clouds. Somebody wanted to see a "mountain". As they drew closer and closer, they realized that it was a "mountain". Did it exist before he visualized it?

Or maybe it was just the LSD?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

56. An apple is being "observed" and "measured" constantly..,

... by the Universe, from photons and tiny particles bombarding it.

That's true whether any sentient being is involved in the process or not. An apple is too gigantic to avoid such interactions, unlike tiny particles which may avoid them without our intelligent intervention.

Same goes for Schrodinger's cat. It's absolutely either alive or dead inside a box because it's gargantuan compared to a quantum particle, whose properties are indeed probabilistic without being observed/measured (involving some kind of energy transfer) in some way.

I really wish authors wouldn't use false analogies like apples, cats or the Moon in these kinds of articles. I suppose we can pretend those objects are incredibly tiny and not constantly interacting with other particles, but it can be deceiving too.

[flying rabbit]

24. Isn't this just pointing out that

quantum physics are different from Newtonian physics? If so, it does not invalidate the latter.

[honest.abe]

32. Yes that is how I see it as well.

There is a quantum world and a Newtonian world. They interact but the physics are different.

[dalton99a]

45. Both are valid. Newtonian physics i.e. 'classical' mechanics predominates when the mass is large

large as in macroscopic objects. Basically the wave nature is no longer discernible due to the size of the object and measurements are in the deterministic realm and not the probabilistic realm. (If you see a sofa against the wall, the probability of a sofa being there and staying there is 100.00%. For light or a subatomic particle, there is a probability that it is there and there is also a probability that it resides on the other side of the wall (even when classical physics says it doesn't have enough energy to go to the other side). The probability calculations are very precise and there are practical devices that utilize this phenomenon e.g. tunnel diodes, scanning tunneling microscopes and such.

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." —Richard Feynman

[PurgedVoter]

35. These concepts are actually quite old.

For example, the belief that we exist within the mind of God, or the concept that God's active will allows us to exist, is essentially virtual reality. The concept that things related but distant can effect each other without mechanisms that we can directly see, is also fundamental in the concepts of magic.

When you consider that Physics was Natural Philosophy and Natural Philosophy was part of a range of mystic beliefs at one time, many of these ideas that we are now seeing proven, were disproved by earlier physics. Keep in mind that the endocrine system was known by mystics well before modern science could identify such things clearly. Not that all mysticism has value, but one never really knows.

When the new age gurus compete with each other declaring how little they know, since not knowing translates to knowing more, they, like so many of us miss the point. The point is, that if you are sure about something, the odds are good that you are showing the Dunning-Kruger effect. It it quite wise when we call our beliefs, beliefs. Sadly many of us elevate our beliefs and put them over facts. Even our words shift meaning. Sometimes between cultures and sometimes over time. Good luck arguing the meaning of "Dharma," the person using it may or may not know what he means, but the odds are the rest of us, however educated and informed, are wrong. Some words can shift meaning dramatically in a short time. "Narcissist," a very important word these days, did not mean what it means to us now.

Not that long ago, the word modem meant modulator-demodulator. Then when they came up with digital modems, it was clear that modem meant "connection to the phone company." The terms "Bridge," "Hub," "Router," and "Switch" all started with meanings that may or may not be valid. I have been proven wrong, and then when I stuck to what was proven, been proven wrong again as these terms have changed meaning.

To sum it all up, keep an open mind, everything is connected, but as the concept moves from mysticism and magic, to science and experimentation, the gobldy gook and mystic words of old are going to be replaced with modern mystic words that may be even less well understood and even more complicated. And then, as the field grows, all those terms will shift meaning.

[Hortensis]

44. Chatting with a friend's son a while ago, one of those guys whose

front-edge physics specialty, something to do with nanotech, was being taught by an R&D company that hired him away from school. Advanced research moving too fast for universities to keep up. He's very well paid but was concerned then that he and his specialty were likely to be obsolete in less than a decade.

Wonder if anyone's looked at lack of local reality to explain the behavior of the trumpists? Perhaps I should cut them a break as incredibly less accountable than even imagined. I've certainly always had trouble believing they're locally real.

[msfiddlestix]

39. I read the excerpt, full of praise and a couple of curious quotes, and I remain baffled.

the excerpt doesn't appear to include a direct reference defining the meaning of the titled theory.

does the article eventually explain the meaning? Or does it just go on with the praising of the storied credentials?

[Kid Berwyn]

41. Firesign Theatre knew way back whenevers.

“How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?”

[Swede]

42. Fascinating stuff.

I'm gonna have to read this again later.

[sarisataka]

43. So the philosophers have been right all along

I find it ironic the researcher says the proof that things are not always real is real.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

47. Every 100 years scientists discover everything they thought was true is wrong, here we go...

[sarisataka]

48. Everything you know is wrong

[Yavin4]

58. That's the pure beauty of science.

It can be wrong and then corrected. Unlike most established religions and the Republican party/

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

60. We are needing another Einstein/Tesla, to jump to the next level, chop, chop...

[Towlie]

57. Not The Philosophers, The Beatles!

 
←

https://www.google.com/search?q=lyrics+strawberry+fields

[Uncle Joe]

55. It sounds like our universe is a hologram

Last edited Sun Oct 9, 2022, 04:08 PM - Edit history (1)

and we would be part of it.

Thanks for the thread Nevilledog

[Liberal In Texas]

63. The holographic universe explains a lot of things.

I've been fascinated by this for a long time. I think our ability to perform and perceive complex tasks with our limited brain size can be explained if you consider that our brains and in a larger context, us, are holograms.

[triron]

59. John Bell proved mathematically that nonlocality is real

Einstein did not want to believe that nonlocality was real. John Bell showed that Einstein was wrong. The noble prizes discussed here were for experimental verification of Bell's theorem, a result of quantum mechanics.