Spooky Action at a Distance: Communication Faster Than the Speed of Light

1st Law of Motion

Newton

The title of this blog entry is based on Albert Einstein's words, not mine. He was speaking about the effects of quantum nonlocality, which encompasses counterfactual definiteness and theorizes about the possibility of superluminal communication. Is that clear? I will try to explain, but please keep in mind that I have no idea what I am writing about.

Einstein

There are many "laws" of physics. You've heard of some of them, such as "every action has a reaction", or "a body in motion tends to stay in motion." These laws were first brought to our attention by Isaac Newton in 1687 through the publication of his book: Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Latin for "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" -- and even after the translation, isn't it still as clear as Latin to you? Albert Einstein came along in the early 1900's to point out through his Theories of Relativity that Newton's laws need to have asterisks when dealing with the vast expanse of the Universe. Einstein correctly theorized that the mass, gravity, and motion of objects are also affected by time, and vice versa. Also, although an object that is accelerating at a regular pace will tend to continue its acceleration at that pace (according to Newton), that object can never attain a speed that is faster than the speed of light (according to Einstein), 186,000 miles/second.

2nd Law of Motion

But then the field of quantum physics (the study of subatomic particles) came along, and it was discovered that Einstein's own calculations about the nature of the Universe needed asterisks when dealing with the smallest of objects: sub-particles of atoms. For instance, Einstein's "law" about the natural speed limit: In the world of quantum physics, there is a very odd occurrence that even Einstein had trouble explaining.

Counterfactual Definiteness

I'll try to make this as simple as I can; this is rocket science. One of the laws of the Universe is that there cannot be a loss or gain of energy without an equal loss or gain to offset it. For instance, you can destroy matter by turning it into energy when you explode an atomic bomb -- the matter has simply been turned into energy. You can also turn energy into matter, but it's not as simple. In this case, you have to build a multi-billion-dollar machine that will smash the nucleus of an atom into a photon (which is energy but not mass), and the photon will be converted into an electron and a positron (an anti-matter particle, so called because it has the opposite charge of an electron). Electrons and positrons are matter, so you've turned energy into matter. Of course, you've also turned your scientific budget into a black hole of debt, and all you've got to show for it is an electron/positron pair -- and if they ever come into contact with each other, they will instantly vaporize into gamma rays (matter into energy).

In making calculations and findings at the quantum (sub-atomic particle) level, it often is not possible to make definitive conclusions. For instance, let's say you wanted to find out the position and momentum (speed and direction) of an electron as it's whizzing around some atom's nucleus. However, according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you cannot measure one without losing the data for the other. For instance, once you stop the electron in its tracks to see where it is, you no longer have any info about its speed, where it came from, and where it was headed (direction). You might be able to measure its speed, but you'll have no idea where it was, is, or will be (position). So, how do we resolve this problem? We can measure the position of an object and then determine what would be the result if the momentum had been one of any of the statistical possibilities. Repeating these measurements and results many times ends up with specific patterns of predictable electron behavior in specific circumstances. This procedure of creating results without actually doing all the measuring is called counterfactual definiteness. In other words, you can be quite definite about your predictions even though you had been missing a lot of actual facts.

Quantum Nonlocality

These experiments have led to an amazing, and extremely odd, occurrence hidden deep inside the nature of Nature. While smashing sub-atomic particles, it was noticed that in addition to the creation of matter and anti-matter pairs, other sub-atomic particle pairs also come into being. These pairs of objects are very "dependent" on each other. What I mean to say is that they follow the universal rule about keeping things at a zero sum game result. And what I mean by that is... well, let me give you an example:

Let's say a pair is created that comprises Object A (OA) and Object B (OB). OA spins clockwise. OB must spin counterclockwise in order to maintain the overall state of no spin at all (zero sum). If we want to measure OA's position, we are in essence stopping it in order to view/measure it. Now here's the strange thing. Since we are stopping its spin in order to discover its location, OB must maintain the zero sum, so it instantaneously stops spinning as well, and its location can be determined. Nature cannot allow one half of the pair to stop spinning while the other continues to rotate. OB stops even though no action was taken to make it stop or to measure its position. This leads to a lot of important questions: How did OB know to stop? What method did OA use to communicate to OB? These objects are usually sub-atomic in size to begin with, so what type of matter or energy are the objects using between themselves? This activity, the instantaneous communication between objects separated in space is called quantum nonlocality. Einstein was aware of the theoretical possibility of this effect, even though he could not explain it. In fact, he referred to the event as "Spooky Action at a Distance." Scientists have since proven that this activity does, in fact, occur.

Quantum State of Spin Probabilities

Superluminal Communication

The existence of quantum nonlocality leads to a very intriguing hypothesis: Since an action performed on one object instantaneously affects another, if these objects are separated far enough apart from each other, can we determine that the "communication" between them is traveling across the distance at a rate that is faster than the speed of light (superluminal), which is supposed to be impossible. Recent experiments have indeed confirmed that this superluminal communication occurs. Theoretically, you can have a spaceship 10 light-years away and set up a quantum nonlocality communications network that will allow instant messaging between the spaceship and Earth. In fact, it has been theorized that such communications occur at least 10,000 times the speed of light.

These facts and theories lead to yet more intriguing thoughts. Some scientists believe that traveling faster than the speed of light is actually a way to go back in time. One scientist is currently running a quantum nonlocality experiment with lasers to set up a one-way communications system between two computers. He hopes one day to find that the receiver unit will have received a message from the transmitter unit before the transmitter unit actually sends the message.


Quantum nonlocality might also be a viable explanation and proof of certain Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) claims. Neurons within the brain transmit thoughts via matter and energy. Could it be possible that certain people have somehow generated sub-atomic object pairs that allow them to instantaneously "feel" or "know" something that is on the other side of the world?


So, there you go. I hope that now you don't know as much as I don't know about this topic.