Science, Society

Lab Love: Science Publish Findings on the Dynamics of Entanglements

This picture could be the most moving Valentine that scientists could send each other on this special day. Scientists have finally shown how entanglement works, the quantum process in which two objects share the same existence.

For our regular science geeks, just send this picture to your geek girlfriends and explain that it is a measurement of how one object immediately influences the other, no matter how far apart they may be. Beautiful.

Most notably, according to this article, the scientists found that “entanglement is a strange and fragile thing” and can be “destroyed by any interaction with the environment and these interactions are hard to prevent.” So true, so true.

Scientists are exploring the status of equilibrium and how things change.

I suggest the following note with this card: “Humanoid companion, we have reached an unchanging equilibrium following our entanglement in common existence. Will you be my quantum Valentine?”

If that does not work, here are a few pick up lines for physicists:

1. Heisenberg was wrong. I’m certain about what you’re doing tonight.

2. I might be a physics major, but I’m no Bohr in bed.

3. You and Me = Grand Unification

4. I’m attracted to you like the Earth is attracted to the Sun-with a large force inversely proportional to the distance squared.

5. You make me want to be a better physicist.

Good luck today and Happy Valentine’s Day.

For the story, click here.

10 thoughts on “Lab Love: Science Publish Findings on the Dynamics of Entanglements”

  2. Construct a box containing a Geiger counter, a mechanism to break a glass vial of poison, and a cat. Because the poison vial is broken by a Geiger counter sensitive to a single microscopic event, the box contains a composite wavefunction of two overlapping states, alive cat and dead cat, properly expanded from an initial indeterminate wavefunction of an undecayed or decayed atomic nucleus. The wavefunction collapses into a single fully alive or fully dead cat once someone opens the box. (If the vial is broken in other subtly clumsy ways- by a guy rolling dice and then reaching in to break it for example- the wave function will already be collapsed.)

    For entanglement- situate two such unopened boxes on the side of a weak positronium source like sodium-22 for a period of time during which there is a 50% of a decay. Positronium decay fires a pair of gamma rays at 180 degrees from the other, so either both vials will crack, or neither one will. The half-alive / half-dead cats are now entangled, so only two states are plausible: alive-alive, and dead-dead.

    Now hand each box off to a courier who departs the scene and eventually reaches the speed of light. One of the couriers opens his box. Because of entanglement, the wave function in the other box collapses instantaneously, since only one history is now plausible, where before there were two plausible histories.

    But since the effect of collapsing a wavefunction is subtle, it’s impossible to send a bit of information this way without both couriers having to meet up again and compare the contents of their boxes.

    More realistic scenarios involve Alice and Bob holding polarizer sheets and looking at the positronium source through that. The photons leave the source polarized in the same direction, but Alice can’t use the entanglement to send superluminal messages to Bob unless they get together later and figure out where her polarizer was when photons randomly went through or were stopped by his polarizer. The superluminal “message” she sends is one that changes a random sequence on his end to another random sequence that he doesn’t know how to read without asking her questions.

  6. AY:

    Thanks, for putting a smile on ones face thie beautiful Sunday morning.And I agree:-)).

    “Canadian Eh
    1, February 14, 2010 at 8:59 am
    Wow AY, you should send some of your ideas into Hallmark”

  8. Or I am a pre-med student and I am need help with some lab work. Will you help me with my Anatomy and Physiology by braille. I think it is best if we turn the lights off as I would like to test my Quantum theory.

  10. Hmmm….this may be the picture on the Valentines card that I receive from my science geek.

Comments are closed.