How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ is real

Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by serverholic on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @05:17PM (#27899480)

I think you're having a pedantic moment. Nobody claimed that the red/blue ball example was some big unsolved mystery. It's merely to give people a taste of entanglement in a way that your average person can understand.

Isn't it true that if you entangle two particles, separate them, then measure one it'll tell you something about the other particle? That's all the example is trying to communicate.

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Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by Kranar on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @05:22PM (#27899547)

>Isn't it true that if you entangle two particles, separate them, then measure one it'll tell you something about the other particle?

Yes that's true, but that's also true of things that aren't entangled. I assure you if I went to Socrates, showed him a red ball and a blue ball, put them in a bag, and took out a ball at random that happened to be red, Socrates would have no problem realizing that the other ball must be blue. I am sure if I went to my 4 year old daughter, she'd figure it out as well because nothing about quantum mechanics or entanglement would be needed to understand this.

What entanglement tells us is that if two balls had their colors entangled, then both balls are both red and blue at the same time and it's simply not possible to reason about one ball being blue and one ball being red while they are entangled. They are in a superposition of both colors and remain so until a measurement is performed.

Once the measurement is performed, they are no longer entangled and only at that point can you call one ball red and the other blue.

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Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by unparagoned on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @06:47PM (#27900273)

The analogy is fine for explaining entanglement. Sure it's more complicated when you consider superposition.

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Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by Kranar on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @07:09PM (#27900424)

Entanglement is only applicable when there is a superposition of conjugate pairs. Without it, there is literally no entanglement whatsoever.

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Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by rottc0dd on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @11:49PM (#27902138)

I think what OP means is, spookiness comes out of the fact that one particle that can be separated by huge distance from another particle, and both particles being in superposition of states, observing one particle can affect the state of another.

It is not about state, that you do not know, but state that is not yet there.

When one particle's state decomposes from superposition of states to a single state, given the assumption of quantum theory, it also affects the state of particle that is physically separated from the particle. That is the spookiness.

If we assume that the quantum particles are always in superposition of states, the question is how can one particle's observation can affect another particle at distance.

If you take out, indeterminate state assumption, then it is indeed missing the point of 'spooky action at distance'.

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Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by serverholic on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @01:20PM (#27909171)

Yes but I think what you both are missing is that this example is meant for laypeople. Nobody has ever claimed that this is literally entanglement and I can say from first-hand experience that it's useful to bridge the gap to actually understanding entanglement.

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Re:How Bell’s Theorem proved ‘spooky action at a distance’ i... by rottc0dd on Thursday July 29, 2021 @12:42PM (#27998429)

Well, I am layman regarding in general, particularly physics. I get what you are saying, but the analogy lose the point of what makes entanglement nonsensical and spooky for anybody, layman or not.

As I said before, if they had an analogy of balls which does not have a color and when you see one ball and it gets color and the other ball which was in contact with it become colored magically too, it would be fine. I am ranting and I am sure educators can come up with better analogy.

The point is, spookiness is important for understanding the significance of why this is big deal at all and some people think that should not get lost in translation.

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