Is Entanglement a Fundamental Property of Photons?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of quantum entanglement, particularly in relation to photons. Participants explore various interpretations, implications, and misunderstandings of entanglement, touching on its fundamental nature and its relationship to causality and choice.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests a philosophical analogy between personal actions and quantum entanglement, proposing that past actions can affect present outcomes, akin to entangled states.
  • Another participant asserts that the initial analogy does not accurately represent quantum entanglement.
  • A participant expresses a desire for clarification on the nature of quantum entanglement, indicating they are currently reading about the topic.
  • One post questions the understanding of quantum entanglement, suggesting that the phenomenon may challenge existing notions of causality and proposing the existence of an unobservable particle that could transmit information instantaneously.
  • A participant summarizes quantum entanglement as a linkage of future states of interacting particles, distinguishing it from causal relationships in everyday scenarios.
  • Another participant posits that quantum entanglement interactions are independent of distance, suggesting that all photons were entangled at the universe's inception.
  • One participant emphasizes the need to consider various properties of quantum particles, such as polarization and spin, for a complete understanding of entanglement.
  • A participant shares their interpretation of entanglement as implying a lack of choice in the outcomes of measurements on entangled photons, noting the instantaneous correlation of states between distant particles.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the nature and implications of quantum entanglement, with no consensus reached on its fundamental properties or its relationship to causality.

Contextual Notes

Some statements reflect personal interpretations and philosophical analogies that may not align with established scientific definitions. The discussion includes speculative ideas about the nature of entanglement and its implications for causality.

Antonio Lao
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What I say or do here and now can affect someone somewhere sometime, is this the same as quantum entanglement?

If no one doesn't say or does here and now then nothing will ever happen in the future. Someone can only do or say something only if he or she is alive. But what someone does or says in the past can still be affecting everything in the present. So entanglement is same as causality with a built-in probability.

This probability come about because of reaction from the effect to the cause of the action. When the reaction is equal in intensity to the causal action, the probability of the original action becomes zero. When there is no reaction to any action, the probability of the action becomes 1.
 
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That isn't qunatum entanglement, so don't worry.
 
Anybody has a good idea what quantum entanglement is all about?

I am still reading the book by Amir D. Aczel on the same topic.
 
matt grime said:
That isn't qunatum entanglement, so don't worry.

Not that I'm trying to postulate here, but how do we know that they do not have the same underlying forces? We do not understand how quantum entanglement works. The idea of actions in one local space/time having consequences in a seemingly separate space/time defies our explanation of physics entirely. Perhaps the entire system of causality needs reworking.

...then again, perhaps there's an unobservable particle that has infinite velocity which transmits the information between the entangled particles, and no further relationships can be deduced.
 
Quantum entanglement states , if I remember the brief article I read about it, that if two quantum particles interact, then their future states are linked, or words to that effect. So the original idea that, say, if Antonio says 'apples are red' affects the outcome of the US elections in November isn't the same situation. Entanglement isn't about what 'can' happen it explains what does happen (though I can't explain why *it* happens).
 
Distance is not a factor in a quantum entanglement interaction. Therefore the spacetime structure has its space components equal to zero. The time component can also be shown to be zero. This implies that entangled events only happens at the singularity (the birth of the universe) and this only happens once for our particular universe. All photons were entangled at the beginning of time and all things were also entangled at that time.
 
For a complete description of entanglement, the properties of polarization, spin, momentum (mass and velocity), position, direction of propagation, and other unique properties of a quantum particle must all be accounted for.
 
Just finished reading a book on entanglement. Entanglement, as I undestood it, implies a property of "no choice." This choice is the state of the entangled objects. If someone perform an experiment to find the spin of an entangled photon, the expeimenter can choose an arbitrary direction for this particular experiment but cannot choose the outcome for the state that the photon will take. Once the photon takes a state of spin, the other entangled photon (light-years away) instantly takes the "opposite" state of spin.

The reality of entanglement seems to indirectly imply the compositeness of photons.
 

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