From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 04:47:03 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: EPR, Bell, and FTL Bandwidth (fwd)
Message-ID: <199801282036.OAA08857@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> From: Eric Cordian <emc@wire.insync.net>
> Subject: EPR, Bell, and FTL Bandwidth
> Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 14:17:49 -0600 (CST)

> Think of the classical case.  I bake two fortune cookies, one with
> "FOO" written on the slip of paper inside, and the other reading
> "BAR." I then put them in a box and shake it for quite a while, until
> the final state has chaotic dependence upon initial conditions, and
> cannot be predicted.  I then keep one fortune cookie, and mail the
> other one to Lucky Green in Tonga.
>  
> Someday in the future, I open my cookie, and instantly know what Lucky
> will see when he opens his.

True, but your opening your cookie does not *force* Lucky to open his at the
same time. This is one fault with this model. The 'state' of the cookies are
not inter-dependant as the polarization of the photon pairs are.

>  In doing so, I have created a
> "instantaneous" correlation between two things separated by a vast

It isn't instantanous, the correlation existed when they were printed and
doesn't change. If I destroy one of the cookies it doesn't destroy the other
spontaneously as would happen in a correlated photon-pair. The state of the
individual cookies exists because of the observer and not a fundamental
requirement of the cookies existing.

> I am sure we will agree that there was no genuine faster-then-light
> communication of information in this case.

On this we can agree.

> In quantum mechanics, pairs of observables may have the property that
> both of them may not be known precisely for a physical system.  The
> Heisenberg Uncertainty principle states this for position and
> momentum.

Incorrect. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that in order to
measure one parameter the other must *necessarily* change because they are
in actuality different aspects of the *same* characteristic. They are *not*
indipendant aspects of the system being observed. Momentum and position are
different sides of the same coin. A conservation effect is what we are
dealing with. This same conservation issue arises, and in fact allows
FTL state transitions, with bound photon-pairs.

> Similar relationships exist for energy and time,
> polarization or angular momentum measured with respect to different
> axes, and various other things.  In addition, measuring a physical
> system for one such variable always changes its wavefunction into one
> for which the value of that variable is precisely specified, and the
> value of the other "non-commuting" variable is not.

Not quite. In the act of measuring one parameter we necessarily change the
other. That change is what we can't measure *at the same time* not the
absolute value at a given time tau.

> You can see this easily with three polarizing filters.  If you shine a
> light through two of them at right angles to each other, it will be
> completely blocked.

Only if the light has a single polarization. If you shine a circularly
polarized light through you will in fact see light on the other side.

[more stuff deleted]


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