This is an approximate transcription of my physics talk from Boskone, titled “Spooky Action at a Distance,” in which I attempted to give a reasonable explanation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (“EPR” hereafter) paper and Bell’s Theorem. This was sort of a follow-on from last year’s “Weird Quantum Phenomena,” meant to highlight a specific class of weird… Continue reading Spooky Action at a Distance
Category: Quantum Optics
Thought Experiments Made Real
We’re back from Boskone, which included lots of fun stuff, and not enough sleep. I also cleverly forgot to bring my lecture notes home from work, which means I need to go in early to figure out what the hell I’m talking about in class today, so there’s not much time for blogging at the… Continue reading Thought Experiments Made Real
Mirror, Mirror
A little bit before Christmas, I spent an afternoon swapping mirrors out of one line of the apparatus. I was losing too much of the laser light before it went into the chamber, and replacing the mirrors increased the power entering the apparatus by a factor of two or so. Here’s a picture of the… Continue reading Mirror, Mirror
One Sentence
Some time back, Dave Munger called me out for the one sentence challenge, originally phrased thusly: Physicist Richard Feynman once said that if all knowledge about physics was about to expire the one sentence he would tell the future is that “Everything is made of atoms”. What one sentence would you tell the future about… Continue reading One Sentence
Local Realism, Loopholes, and the God Delusion
The recent discussion of reviews of The God Delusion has been interesting and remarkably civil, and I am grateful to the participants for both of those facts. In thinking a bit more about this, I thought of a good and relatively non-controversial analogy to explain the point I’ve been trying to make about the reviews… Continue reading Local Realism, Loopholes, and the God Delusion
Classic Edition: The Transporters Aren’t Working. Again.
Third and final post in a series about “teleportation” from July 2002. This one is mostly dedicated to voicing the same complaints I have about the more recent stories that kicked this whole repost business off. The more things change, the more I keep repeating myself.
Classic Edition: Beam Me a Photon, Scotty
Part two of three of an explanation of “quantum teleportation” experiments, from July of 2002. This one goes through the basics how teleportation works. I might be able to do better now, having worked through it in more detail in order to teach about it in my Quantum Optics class, but it’s been a busy… Continue reading Classic Edition: Beam Me a Photon, Scotty
Classic Edition: Spooky Interaction at a Distance
As threatened in the previous post on new “quantum teleportation” results, here’s the first of three old articles on teleportation. This one discusses EPR states and “entanglement.” It’s somewhat linkrotted– in particular, the original news article is gone, but the explanation is still ok. This dates from July of 2002, which is like 1840 in… Continue reading Classic Edition: Spooky Interaction at a Distance
The Latest in Teleportation
The latest physics news is an experimental demonstration of “teleportation” involving both light and atoms, done at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and reported on by the Institutes of Physics and CNN, among others, and remarked on by Dave, among others. I wrote up some stuff about teleportation in the early days of this… Continue reading The Latest in Teleportation
Physics Conference Blogging
It’s not as sexy as Strings 2006, but it’s easier to understand what the talks are about: Nathan Lundblad is blogging from the International Conference on Atomic Physics in Innsbruck, Austria (the bastard). Posts so far: First day introduction. First day talk recaps. (The latter includes the announcement of the [Norman] Ramsey Prize, “to be… Continue reading Physics Conference Blogging