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Aspect placed polarizers in front of the detectors for each photon beam, including a switching device in front of one that changed the angle of polarization every 1/10 billionth of a second. This time interval was too short for any signal travelling at the speed of light to pass between the detectors.
The result from Aspect's experiment was that whatever happened to the first photon to arrive at its detector was reflected by its twin--thus confirming quantum theory expectations and refuting the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen objections.
The distance between the detection systems in Aspect's laboratory experiment was not great but this same experiment has since been confirmed by workers in Switzerland who used the fiber optic cable system connecting two villages that are separated by a large mountain.
An important result of this work was the demonstration of "non-local" effects, meaning that the entwined photons remain entwined and react to one another even though separated by a distance greater than can be traversed by any signal travelling at the speed of light. Quantum physicists believe that such non-local effects are independent of time and space and would occur simultaneously even if the photons were at opposite ends of the universe--a distance equivalent to about twenty billion light years or more.
The work initiated by Aspect has been confirmed and extended in experiments using correlated properties other than polarization of light. Rarity and Tapster, for example, used momentum as the correlated property, this being the one originally suggested by Einstein et al.
A question many ask is whether there is some kind of conscious agency operative throughout the universe that is being revealed to us at the quantum level.
An impressive example of how some external "Universal Intelligence" appears to participate and even regulate what the experimenter is permitted to know is illustrated in work done using the left or right component of the spin of an electron and an up or down component of electron spin2. Instruments are available to separate left spinning from right spinning electrons and up spinning from down spinning. So if the right spin group is separated, is it then possible to carry out another separation to get right spinning electrons with only an up or only a down spin component? (see illustration)
The answer to this question was no. Apparently the 'rule' is that we are permitted to know about one component of spin only. So if we know an electron has right spin we are not permitted to know anything about its up or down components.
A valid question arises, "Is it the effect of apparatus that separates the up and down spin that messes up the left/right components and nothing to do with an intelligence from 'out there' enforcing its rules?
This question was answered in an ingenious way (see Part B). The experimenter separated right spinning electrons then fed these through an apparatus to separate up from down spin--but he did not look to see what the result was. Instead he fed both streams back into a mixing box so that he lost his potential knowledge about the up/down spin component. From the mixing box the electrons again went to the left/ right separator. The result was that the right spin was completely retained.
To extend these results, the mirror reflecting the up spinning electrons so as they entered the mixing box was removed. Otherwise the experiment was identical with Part B. But since only "down" electrons went to the mixing box, the experimenter appears to have knowledge of both the right and the down components of spin--for why would simply deflecting the up electrons have any physical effect that would cause randomization of the right spin? (see Part C). However it did! When these electrons were passed through the right from left separator, the left/right spin was completely randomized!!
It is well worth while pondering upon these results and making sure they are well understood. The apparatus used was a constant throughout. The only possible interpretation appears to be concerned with what the observer is allowed to know and it is difficult to see how anything other than an intelligence 'out there somewhere' applied the rule prohibiting simultaneous knowledge of both up/down and left/right spin attributes.
In recent years, quantum effects have graduated to the "real world" in experiments not only with work with sodium atoms but also with what are called Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC's). Proposed early in the twentieth century, these BEC's were expected to occur when gases condensed to a solid state at extremely low temperatures and in such a way that they formed a giant molecule with its millions of atoms all in a single state of super-positioning. Only very recently has it been technically possible to achieve the very low temperature conditions in which BEC's will form. In one reported experiment two such condensates, both large enough to be visible to the naked eye, were brought together in a way that permitted their wave components to form an interference pattern with one another.
Finally and apparently irrefutably, though mysteries remain, the quantum world and the "real" world have been shown to be components of one and the same reality.
Science was a primary catalyst that led the world to embrace Laplace's concept of the mechanical universe in which all things are predetermined through cause-effect relationships,
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