Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cogsci.berkeley.edu!kube From: kube@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Paul Kube) Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.physics Subject: Aspect Experiment, Bell's inequalities, and Meaning of QM Message-ID: <19028@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Tue, 26-May-87 00:31:12 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.19028 Posted: Tue May 26 00:31:12 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 27-May-87 00:39:39 EDT References: <1275@cci632.UUCP> <766@klipper.cs.vu.nl> <650@pbhyc.UUCP> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: kube@cogsci.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Paul Kube) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 30 Keywords: aspect superluminance hidden variables Bell's inequality Xref: mnetor sci.philosophy.tech:73 sci.physics:1449 In article <650@pbhyc.UUCP> djo@pbhyc.UUCP (Dan'l Oakes) writes: >In article <766@klipper.cs.vu.nl> biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) writes: >>... So the >>information that you observed your particle must have travelled in >>zero time to the other half-wit. FTL information transfer. > >... Physicists >become so used to manipulating equations that they confuse them with >the particles they describe. >... The particle >has been spinning very happily left all along. OK, it's time somebody brought up Bell. Starting from the assumption that there is no superluminal linkage in your apparatus and that particle pairs are in definite states while unobserved, relationships among probabilities of observed particle state conditional on apparatus configuration are entailed. It's too sad for words, but certain of these relationships (Bell-type inequalities) are strongly contradicted by experiment. So, everybody, what do you want to give up: the impossibility of FTL information transfer, that the particle was spinning happily left all along, or the relevance of mathematics for physics? Oakes sounds like he might opt for doing without the last, but it's interesting to note that the Bell inequalities don't depend on the formalism of quantum mechanics at all (though QM does correctly predict the observed probabilities). --Paul kube@berkeley.edu, ...!ucbvax!kube