On Thu, 11 Feb 2010, Mike Spencer wrote:

> 
> > http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/physicists-prove-teleportation-energy-theoretically-possible
> >  
> 
> 
> If you're as much of a Neal Stephenson fan as I am and have read The
> Baroque Cycle as many times as I have, you will have reflected on the
> overwhelming degree to which Newton's concept of atoms
> (notwithstanding that it didn't anticipate sub-atomic particles) has
> been ascendent over Leibniz' Monadology for 300 years.
> 
> I'm good with Newtonian physics.  I grok the Bohr Atom. I'm even okay
> with the probabilistic nature of the wave equation that makes sense of
> chemical bonds and the scanning tunneling electron microscope
> 
> But I'm too stupid or too old to get quantum entanglement.

A very good start is here
http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/197911_0158.pdf
which is fortunately linked out of this article about its author at the 
SciAm site:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=despagnat-takes-big-prize-for-work-2009-03-18

the article was written upon the release of the March 2009 issue,
which had an article by David Z. Albert, who is the author of
the other excellent piece on the subject, the book "Quantum Mechanics 
and Experience". Both pieces require a lot of attention - you have
to really be awake to get them, and see what's being said. Not light
reading, and you might need a pencil and paper to draw some pictures
to help you think, but like very few things you encounter in the
world, it doesn't take any great back-knowledge of accumulated
facts, everything you need to understand is right in front of
you, if you can concentrate and see it. You get to dig directly
into the nature of reality, and you can come away with insights
that reward your effort.

 -Pete



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