On Sat, Jun 15, 2019 at 2:10 AM Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote:
> *Bell's theorem is wrong.* Well yes but that's the point! We know from experiment that Bell's Inequality is indeed wrong, but to derive it Bell made only 2 assumptions: 1)High school algebra and trigonometry are correct 2) Photons have hidden variables. "Hidden variable" means there is something different about a particular photon that we just don't know about, something equivalent to a lookup table inside the photon that for one reason or another we are unable to access but the photon can when it wants to know how to behave. But with existing technology I can make a real physical machine that violates Bells's inequality. So either high school algebra and trigonometry is wrong or the hidden variable idea is. Even if Quantum Mechanics is someday proven to be untrue Bell's argument is still valid, in fact his original paper had no Quantum Mechanics in it; his point was that any successful theory about how the world works must explain why his inequality is violated, and today we know for a fact from experiments that it is indeed violated. Nature just refuses to be sensible and doesn't work the way you'd think it should. OK on to making my machine. I have a black box, it has a red light and a blue light on it, it also has a rotary switch with 6 connections at the 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 o'clock positions. The red and blue light blink in a manner that passes all known tests for being completely random, this is true regardless of what position the rotary switch is in. Such a box could be made and still be completely deterministic by just pre-computing 6 different random sequences and recording them as a lookup table in the box. Now the box would know which light to flash. I have another black box. When both boxes have the same setting on their rotary switch they both produce the same random sequence of light flashes. This would also be easy to reproduce in a classical physics world, just record the same 6 random sequences in both boxes. The set of boxes has another property, if the switches on the 2 boxes are set to opposite positions, 12 and 6 o'clock for example, then there is a total negative correlation; when one flashes red the other box flashes blue and when one box flashes blue the other flashes red. This just makes it all the easier to make the boxes because now you only need to pre-calculate 3 random sequences, then just change every 1 to 0 and every 0 to 1 to get the other 3 sequences and record all 6 in both boxes. The boxes have one more feature that makes things very interesting, if the rotary switch on a box is one notch different from the setting on the other box then the sequence of light flashes will on average be different 1 time in 4. How on Earth could I make the boxes behave like that? Well, I could change on average one entry in 4 of the 12 o'clock look-up table (hidden variable) sequence and make that the 2 o'clock table. Then change 1 in 4 of the 2 o'clock and make that the 4 o'clock, and change 1 in 4 of the 4 o'clock and make that the 6 o'clock. So now the light flashes on the box set at 2 o'clock is different from the box set at 12 o'clock on average by 1 flash in 4. The box set at 4 o'clock differs from the one set at 12 by 2 flashes in 4, and the one set at 6 differs from the one set at 12 by 3 flashes in 4. But I said before that boxes with opposite settings should have a 100% anti-correlation, the flashes on the box set at 12 o'clock should differ from the box set at 6 o'clock by 4 flashes in 4 NOT 3 flashes in 4. Thus if the boxes work by hidden variables then when one is set to 12 o'clock and the other to 2 there MUST be a 2/3 correlation, at 4 a 1/3 correlation, and of course at 6 no correlation at all. A correlation greater than 2/3, such as 3/4, for adjacent settings produces paradoxes, at least it would if you expected everything to work mechanistically because of some local hidden variable involved. Does this mean it's impossible to make two boxes that have those specifications? Nope, but it does mean hidden variables can not be involved and that means something very weird is going on. Actually it would be quite easy to make a couple of boxes that behave like that; easy to make and easy to demonstrate that they work, but not easy to understand why they work. Photons behave in just this spooky manner, so to make the boxes all you need is 4 things: 1) A glorified light bulb, something that will make two photons of unspecified but identical polarization moving in opposite directions so you can send one to each box. An excited calcium atom would do the trick, or you could turn a green photon into two identical lower energy red photons with a crystal of potassium dihydrogen phosphate. 2) A light detector sensitive enough to observe just one photon. Incidentally the human eye is not quite good enough to do that but frogs can, for frogs when light gets very weak it must stop getting dimmer and appear to flash. 3) A polarizing filter, a good pair of sunglasses would do. 4) Some gears and pulleys so that each time the rotary switch is advanced one position the filter is rotated by 30 degrees. This is because as I said before the amount of light polarized at 0 degrees that will make it through a polarizing filter set at X degrees is [COS (x)]^2; so if x = 30 DEGREES then the value is .75, so the probability any individual 0 degree photon will make it through that filter is 75%. The bottom line of all this is that there can not be something special about a specific photon, some internal difference, some hidden variable that determines if it makes it through a filter or not. Thus, assuming high school algebra and trigonometry are correct, one of two things must be true: 1) The universe is not realistic, that is to say nothing exists until it is observed. 2) There are no hidden variables, no secret deterministic lookup table that tells quantum particles how to behave. I can't prove it but I have a hunch the moon still exists when I'm not looking at it so I think the second one is the one that is true. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv21p56Pp2kv%3DKnGOA%3DQaHMZr2R09GUdN%2BA-rBuK%3D84YFw%40mail.gmail.com.
