This. Is. BEAUTIFUL!

[kickaha]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/292378_timeguy15.html

Now that's elegant science. Create one pair of entangled photons, send #1 immediately to a particle/wave detector, send #2 through a 50ms delay to a second detector that can force the state to be particle or wave, and see if you can also force #1 to be one or the other... 50ms before you alter its twin.

Elegant. Simple. Outstanding.

Comments

[actsofcreation.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I wish I could tell from the article exactly what they were doing...

As it stands it's a bit of a miss-mash...

It seems like they are taking two entangled photons (lets call them Pinky and Brain) and trying to measure an aspect of Pinky's state (and by extention Brains state) 50 ms before they force Brain into a particular state. For this to be interesting, they need a setup for measuring Pinky's state that in isolation would always produce a value A, but because of forcing Brains state produces a value B instead.

They seem to want A and B to be wavelike or particlelike. Maybe I've just not kept up, but all of the entangled parameters I was aware of centered around a conservation law. I don't remember there being a conservation law that would entangle 'wavelike' vs 'particlelike'.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Shhhh, you'll scare the laypeople.

Yeah, I noticed that too - I suspect there was a detail that the interviewer missed in translation. Still, assume that the detector is for something as 'simple' as spin up/down, and you can alter Brain into one or the other. If you can demonstrate that you can control Pinky via Brain, then... well, it'd be neat. :)

[actsofcreation.livejournal.com]

Surely naming photons after beloved cartoon characters mitigated the 'scare the laypeople' effect :)

Being photons, spin is clearly out... one might in principle use polarization...

Frankly though, controlling Pinky via Brain would be kind of scary... causality makes the trains run on time...

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

LOL You're right, spin was was a bad example. :) (Gawd, it's been a while.)

And I think it'd be a *beautiful* thing if it were proven that retrocausality existed... and then we could find absolutely no practical use for it. My inner physicist would siiiiiiiiiiing...

[zen-oven.livejournal.com]

that is the shiznit.