See: Local reference frame - Wikipedia
This theory wouldn’t mean GR is wrong; it would be an addendum to GR. A preffered frame of reference. If the observation of one pair of the entangled particles instanously affects the state of the other entangled particle, how could time dialation also occur?
I quoted it because it was the part relevant to what I thought your idea was.
The same way it occurs now, despite our naive ideas that simultaneity isn’t relative. According to one observer one of the pair was observed first, according to the other the other one was observed first. Or they agree on the order, in which case everything is hunky dory no matter what. Your idea presupposes a cause and effect relationship that we know can’t be determined from the very nature of the phenomenon.
Now you could say that you have the hypothesis that this cause and effect relationship exists, and that your specified experiment would prove it. But you can’t take the relationship as given from current knowledge.
I don’t understand why you’re proposing to set up the equipment, then not actually use it. Are you suggesting that the mere presence of an entangled particle on the plane somehow keeps the whole plane in sync with the lab?
I’d say the proposition is probably false just on the basis that it seems to me there are going to be enough accidentally-entangled particles spread around the universe, in different natural reference frames, that relativity would be broken out of the box, if this was a problem for it.
Can it work that way? I’ve never been able to get the math to do that. The most I can do is to have two events appear simultaneous to one observer, and non-simultaneous to the other, or happening at differently measured different times, yet in the same order. I’ve never been able to get a full reversal as you describe. Are there simple Lorenz equation solutions that make that happen?
(I’ve only worked with the really simple high-school level equations.)
Any two events with a space-like separation (so that neither is in the other’s light cone) can be seen in any order (including simultaneously). For a simple case, picture two lights a mile apart, that turn on at the same time in a reference frame at rest with respect to both the lights. An observer moving towards the lights in one direction will see light A turn on first. An observer moving towards the lights from the other direction will see B turn on first.
Cool. I was doing something wrong.
(I also should have remembered the really cool example of the telephone pole flying lengthwise through a barn. I really love that’n!)
ETA: I think I may have been looking only at events where one is inside the light-cone of the other. Oopsie!
Yeah, that wouldn’t work. However, for events where one is inside the other’s light cone, you can find a reference frame for which both events happen at the same place, which is cool.
P.S. The telephone pole problem is pretty interesting.
Why? EPR doesn’t really say this - it merely breaks causality. How you break causality is another matter.
As noted above, the universe is filled with entangled particles. They are not rare at all. It is just that they are fragile and de-cohere easily. So actually performing an EPR experiment takes effort. But the space around you is filled with entangled particles. There are entangled photons that have been travelling billions of light years in opposite directions across the entire universe.
If an entangled particle somehow froze the region about it into a special reference frame, we would need to assume that the freezing was transitive - what if two different entangles particles from two pairs were held together in your experiment. Say we generated one on a plane flying east (location A), one on the ground (location B), and put both of them in a plane flying west (location c) and kept clocks with all three. When we get the planes together on the ground again and compare clocks - what do we see? Is the freezing of reference frame time transitive? If it is, the entire universe must be frozen into one reference frame.
Suppose you have two pairs of entangled particles A1, A2 and B1, B2. A1 and B1 are both at the lab at Stanford. A2 is on a plane flying east and B2 is on another plane flying west. Assume A1 and B1 share a local reference frame at the lab. The lab and both planes have equipment that can measure the spin of their particles and all three locations have accurate clocks. Then land both planes at the lab. If my hypothesis is correct all three clocks read exactly the same time. Now suppose you repeat the experiment but this time you observe the spin of A2 during the flight. Land the planes again at the lab. If the clock accompanying A2 shows relativistic time dialation and reads differently than both other clocks, then synchronization of reference frames is not transitive.
But they don’t.
In fact test have been done with super accurate clocks where one stays on the ground and one flies around. The clocks will disagree.
In fact, simultaneity breaks in relativity pretty easily. Two different observers (different reference frames) will disagree as to which event took place first. Weird thing is both will be correct.
When it comes to entangled particles there is no way to transmit information faster than light (i.e. back in time). Yes, the entanglement seems to happen faster than light speed but you cannot use it to transmit info FTL.
The problem is, when you entangle two particles, you cannot know the spin of either one. So, when you measure your particle on Alpha Centauri there is no way to tell if its spin was always that way or affected by its entangled particle on earth. As soon as you do the measurement you break entanglement and till you do that measurement you don’t know which is which.
Fine - now given that the entire universe is perfused with entangled particles, some of which that have been in flight for billions of years, and at any given location you may have an arbitrary number of such particles, how does the entire universe not become one single frame?
Do you have a range limit on the frame? It would appear that you are limiting the frame to the entire inertial frame that the entangled particle is embedded in. IE the entire plane, or the lab. Given the lab is stationary wrt the earth, you seem to have decided that the presence of a single entangled particle on the Earth freezes the Earth into one of these reference frames. Does the particle need to be stationary wrt to the surrounding inertial frame in order to freeze it? Is the transitivity unlimited? So could I create an arbitrary chain of entangled particles? Make a pair in lab A, move A2 to lab B. Make another pair. Move B2 to lab C, move C2 to lab D etc? Then maybe fly these pairs to other planets, land on the planets and freeze these planets into the same reference frame as the Earth? Would landing such a pair on Mercury mean that its orbit would change? Or just that time on Mercury would now progress at a different rate?
Or indeed any other plane on a parallel course.
The idea makes no sense.at all.
Here’s another problem - let’s say I’m on board the plane - and I also have a very accurate watch, synchronised at the start of the experiment. I leave my seat near the front of the plane and run to the toilet at the back (should have ordered the beef, not the chicken). While I am in motion, I’m in a different inertial frame from the rest of the plane (so no longer beholden to the particle-based frame snapping that is being alleged by the OP), but when I stop running, I am back in the same intertial frame as the plane and the unopened box with the entangled particle in it.
What happens to my watch?