Partial entanglement

Guest · Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 3:45 am Post subject: Partial entanglement

I would like to posit an idea I've been turning over in my head for the
past month or so. I've been thinking about entanglement, and the
assertion that one particle copied into two separate-and-equal parts,
ie a photon both passing through and reflected from a 50% reflective
surface, will be entangled such that a measurement of the properties of
one will instantly "affect" the properties of the other - or at least
instantly affect the second particle's unobserved/observed status
(whether it changes the particle's "self-observed" properties or not is
impossible to determine).

What if entanglement isn't merely for elementary particles split into
separate and equal copies of themselves? What if entanglement could
exist for larger objects (and, from what I've been reading recently, it
*can*, hence the "teleportation" of a proton across the Rhine). And
what if the unobserved portion of the split object's properties could
be entangled separately from the visible portion - that is, not every
observation is a complete observation of an object's entire
Schroedinger Waveform (I hope that's the right term).

There could be partially collapsed objects around us all the time - you
see a red surface outside the window, but all the parts you don't see
could be anything; it's only conjecture and probability that leads you
to believe when you see an eye in a keyhole that it's part of a human
face.

But where, you ask, comes the entanglement?

Quite simply, the initial creation of the Universe. From a single
particle-like body, which presumably contained some very elementary but
immensely energetic waveform, many perfect copies of the original (but
with less energy, of course) split. This is just speculation on my
part, of course. But if these particles then continued splitting, over
and over, and had properties that caused them to clump together in
first simple, then complex ways depending on their energy level... why,
then you could have different forces condensing out of the Single
Force, along with particles to carry them; like a Lego set built out of
many identical blocks, or a monochromatic picture made of many tiny
on/off pixels. The unit of existence could be a single energy/mass
particle - or, possibly, a single mass particle and a single type of
energy associated with it.

Thus, if every copy of this particle is perfect in every way but
amplitude, and the conglomerations of the particles are also identical
in every way (ie, they're similar collections of like particles), then
everything in the Universe is still entangled, *and unobserved* on some
level - the level beyond which we've not yet seen. Higher energy.
Smaller particles.

What happens when someone first observes a quark-gluon plasma and
measures its properties? Why, then all quark-gluon plasmas everywhere,
everytime, instantly bear the same properties. And so on. Just like the
first person to observe a proton knew (well, justifiably believed) that
all protons everywhere had the same properties.

And what happens when - if - we're able to create energetic enough
collisions to split matter into a shower of "quintessence" particles?
Why, the collapse of the entire wave function of the Universe, and the
instant knowledge of the nature of all space and time - at least, what
it's made of; we can only speculate as to the arrangement of the pieces
beyond the range of our telescopes.

Please, anyone who has greater verifiable knowledge of these matters
than I, critique this idea and tell me if it holds any water, and if
(as I'm pretty sure) it has holes, or is totally leaky, please tell me
why, and which knowledge I might need to avoid making the same errors
in future.

Thanks! I'm not trying to be a smartass, I just had a cool idea that I
thought might be fun to expose to the powerful microscope of the
sci.physics.* community. I'd just like to hear what anyone has to say
on the subject, really - I love to speculate about these things, but
what I'd really love would be to *know* about them.

Auriam · science forum beginner Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1

C'mon, I'd really appreciate a reply from someone; I know there must be
a reason there aren't more "disentanglement" effects occurring all the
time from first-time observations of previously unobserved (and
unobservable without high-energy accelerators) phenomena. Perhaps I'm
misunderstanding the use of "observation" in the matter of
entanglement; whether it refers to any physical interaction with the
observer's system (ie, the rest of the universe), or specifically to
the act of *human* observation of the entangled particles.

In the first case, there would be no large-scale effects from human
observation of previously non-human-observed phenomena; large-scale
phenomena occur all the time which involve uncountable microscale
phenomena, and each interaction "counts" as an observation. In the
second case, which may be more philosophical than scientific, the
effect may only be on the observer's understanding of what is being
observed, while the objective physical system does not change - and
cannot be changed merely by the act of human observation.

Am I making any sense? And if this group is only for true technical
discussions of particle physics, by and for particle physicists, please
direct me to a more general-interest group in which I may post. Thank
you.

Chris · science forum Guru Wannabe Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 298

I don't undertand it. Entanglement is to do with particles I know but the
theory is to do with quantum mechanics. I don't undertsand it. It bad
enough doing collisions between alpha particles in quantum mechanics without
entanglement. It is not what it seems. Special relativity is not violated.
If you have two electrons they are fermions and they must have opposite
spins, up or down. If one changes the other does to. Entanglement hops
between fermions so if the two electrons separate then association changes
two two other electrons.

According to the theory the phase wave of matter travels instantly and all
matter waves occupy the whole universe, so two entangled electrons that were
separated and stayed entangled must therefore know instantly that state of
another.

If this was true then the state of one could be changed over here and then
instant communication will occur.

However the act of changing the state of one breaks the connection and then
no communication can occur.

If teleportation occured then it was at the velocity of light I would have
thought.

But then I am ignorant and will not say anything I say is right. My degree
only had ordinary quantum mechanics in it and I did not really understand
it.

So I'll shut up. If you want to know take a physics degree, specialise with
a MSc in elementary particle physics and then dream up a project to do as a
PhD, once you've got that youll be an administrator in a large factory of
industrial empire or run your own firm....

And then you'll die. Like me.

Bye bye

Chris.

"Auriam" <auriam@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1115152733.321959.112260@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Google