The point of this post to hear what people have to say…
SR requires that there is no “preferred” reference frame, so that part of your comment is true. Newtonian physics is true for relatively flat space-time.
Entangled particles are a preferred reference frame. Entanglement doesn’t transmit information (you can’t send any information by observing the particle’s state) so of course that’s not FTL communication. But how do you know that entangled particles don’t change the frame of reference? And no, if two entangled particles cause a synchronized frame of reference, and I’m correct, then any FTL communication between the two synchronized frames of reference would not violate causality.
Absent any evidence that they do, and with no reason to think of any reason they might, the smart money is on them not doing so. You would need new physics, and evidence to base such new physics on. Just saying “how do you know there isn’t new physics?” isn’t useful.
But they don’t transmit information, so the question of FTL communication is not relevant.
This morning I woke up and was hungry. If I had had some bacon, I could have eaten bacon and eggs for breakfast. If I had some eggs.
Well, you can’t be correct because any two points separated in space are correspondingly separated in time. There is no absolute concept of synchronicity. Any such assumption is meaningless and does, in fact, violate causality.
I had bacon and eggs for breakfast this morning too… It’s a good thing no one wonders if there might be “new physics” because current physics explains dark energy, dark matter, and the unification of quantum physics and GR so well already. I can think of an experiment to test my theory; one entangled particle at a physics lab at Stanford and another in low-earth orbit, and both locations have the capacity to observe the entangled particle. If time dilation still occurs, then I’m wrong.
Sure, we need new physics. But this doesn’t mean that every new idea is immediately accorded some special status. You are asking for new physics for no other reason than to support an idea of even more new physics.
Indeed. If you were to develop your idea to the point where it usefully explained an as yet unexplained problem (say one of: “dark energy, dark matter, and the unification of quantum physics and GR”) you might get some interest, and someone might even perform the experiment. (You don’t even need to orbit the second particle, just fly it around the Earth on a plane.)
OTOH, you have a lot of work to do to develop a useful and consistent theory based upon your idea of synchronized frames of reference.
How do you know that eating eggs for breakfast doesn’t change your reference frame? Answer that, and then we can try to address your points about entanglement.
Fixing eggs and bacon for breakfast has only very local effects; some IR radiation, some chemical reactions and a phase change. Quantum entangled particles can be separated by any distance (now no longer local like breakfast) and the observation of one of them instantly determines the state of the other one. The two entangled particles exist in a preferred (or synchronized) frame of reference…
Why is the following not the way to reconcile entanglement and special relativity?
According to this there is no way to test for time dilation in a quantum entanglement experiment. What do you know that they don’t? Or what do they know that you haven’t realized?
But there’s no fact of the matter regarding the observation of which particle ‘determines the state’ of the other (if you want to talk that way, which I would caution against). If the two particles are separated by a spacelike distance, then there exists a frame of reference in which the observation of A occurred before B, and a frame of reference in which the observation of B occurs before A. In the end, everything works out consistently (with the observations made at the other end, and with special relativity).
This seems to be the nub of the confusion - I think the experiment being described here is:
[ul]
[li]Get two entangled particles[/li][li]Move one of them to a different reference frame[/li][li]Observe them both simultaneously…[/li][/ul]
Yeah, I did wonder if there was some assumption that we can keep checking in on a quantum state to see if it’s collapsed yet, without actually forcing it to do so.
(If we could, that would be cool, because that would enable FTL communication)
You quoted the Paradox section of the wiki article on quantum entanglement (the ERP paradox), but you quoted only one element of the paradox. This seems specious, or you didn’t read the article you quoted
FTL spacecraft would be cool… Experiment: One entangled particle is on a Boing 727 with equipment capable of measuring the state of its particle. The other entangled particle is in a lab at Stanford, also capable of measuring the state of its entangled particle. Both the plane and the lab also have very accurate clocks. Without actually measuring the state of either particle, compare the two clocks when the plane lands. If time dialation still occurs (the clocks are off by .00…1 seconds) in accordance with GR predictions, then my theory is wrong and no FTL communication or spacecraft are possible. But if the clocks read exactly the same, then the local reference frames, i.e. the plane and the lab, are synchronized (because when observed, either particle has to be able to affect the state of the other one instaneously) and time dialation doesn’t occur. Then FTL space travel is possible.
The two-clock experiment has occurred (without entangled particles.) Time dilation has been observed.
Why would entangled particles “lock” the two clocks into synchronization? How would they do that? Why would a measly pair of electrons force space-time to become absolute? What happens to clocks in the vicinity of this effect: how widespread is it? Does the entire earth get locked into a single frame of reference?