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blocked the 'up' path from box 4 (Fig.2).
Hughie reasoned as follows: "Now," he said, "if these guys made the observation, they would have certain knowledge that the electrons they are playing with have down spin. They want to know if they also still have right spin. That is not in accord with my rules." He pondered about what he had done in the previous case, couldn't make up his mind, so flipped a coin, It came out that he would randomize the down spin. So when the physicists 'observed' to see what came out of step 6, Fig.2, they found both left- and right-spinning electrons. Would you believe that?
You would think the particle physicists would have had enough by now. But no. One wanted to know what would happen if they sent one of their number off to the moon, along with the electrons from box 6 of both experiments--but before anyone had looked in the boxes to see what had happened. Actually things went wrong at blast off and everything got mangled. So it was left to others to demonstrate the reality of what physicists call 'non-local effects' that take place instantaneously even though the two components are separated by up to and including infinite distance. (see the Chiao et al. reference)
To explain non-local effects a little better, let's take a two-particle system with opposite spins such that the spins cancel. If we have twin electrons of this kind, one will have up spin and the other down. But if we change the spin of one, the other changes automatically. Let's now give one electron to a particle physicist and send him to Mars. We give him a time schedule for observing the spin of his electron. We give the twin electron to an 'at home' particle physicist with the same time schedule and a list of spin states to give to his electron. Later, when we compare the results, we find the electrons are always in opposite states. Question: How did the Mars electron know when to flip? Instantaneously? That is what is meant by non-local effects.
A vacuum full of goodies?
Quantum theory has lots of other funny quirks that normal folk would not believe. The quantum vacuum is one of these. It is a vacuum that is not empty but is a soup filled with a multitude of virtual particles having temporary residence. They come into being as non-identical twins, particle and anti-particle, exist momentarily, then annihilate one another. Quantum theory allows them to do this by borrowing sufficient energy from the vacuum to sustain their fleeting existence. They pay it back when they annihilate. Willis Lamb received the Nobel prize for first presenting evidence for the reality of vacuum effects. A Dutchman, Hendrik Casimir, clinched the argument by a totally different means, so much so, it is difficult not to believe in the quantum vacuum and its virtual particles.
Einstein and other realists held out against quantum indeterminism for a long, long time. Einstein felt that God would not play dice with the world--and died protesting (Einstein, that is). The experiments to demonstrate non-locality came about to test a 'thought' experiment proposed by Einstein and his mates in 1935. It is known as the E-P-R experiment and was an untestable hypothesis until an Irish physicist, John Bell, invented Bell's theorem and came up with a way of testing it. This has now been done to the satisfaction of all. Non-local effects occur instantaneously even at infinite distance when no message travelling at the speed of light could possibly allow direct communication. To date, nobody has found a way to actually send a message at faster than light speeds, but there can be no doubt that the particles 'know' what they must do.
Some flies in the soup--Bohm and The Urantia Book
At least one quantum physicist, David Bohm, refused to accept the deification of quantum observers. Bohm maintained the universe and all therein (matter-wise) is determinate. Ordinary quantum physicists propose a wave function that contains all the possibilities to describe a system. They then portion out probabilities of occurrence to each possibility. They claim that when an observer looks to see what has happened, one of these possibilities suddenly becomes the real thing and all the others collapse to nothingness. Thus Schrodinger's cat remains dead and alive in a superposition of states until a physicist lifts the lid and announces its fate. At the sub-atomic level, thousands of observations confirm that this concept is an apparently valid description of reality. By training, quantum physicists (and many other scientists) are conditioned to believe that the only truth is observable truth. The role of the observer is sacrosanct. Nothing happens until he, she, or it, observes. This is often called the Copenhagen interpretation--for which Neils Bohr gets the blame.
The Copenhagen interpretation proposes at least three curious 'facts' (?) about the physical world. First, pure chance governs the innermost workings of nature. Second, although material objects always occupy space, situations exist in which they occupy no particular region of space. Third, the observer and his instruments are afforded a privileged status outside of the laws that govern the things being observed. In a recent review, David Albert states: "although the Copenhagen interpretation probably remains the guiding dogma of the average working physicist, serious students of the foundations of quantum mechanics rarely defend the standard formulation any more."
In 1952, David Bohm published an alternative interpretation, later given polish by the Irish physicist, John Bell. The new notions of Bohm's interpretation can be summed up in terms of the concept that the wave-function of quantum theory determines a quantum potential
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