Get Real or Get Local

Quantum entanglement shows that reality can’t be local

Experiments have definitively demonstrated entanglement, and ruled out any kind of slower-than-light communication between two separated objects. The standard explanation for this behavior involves what’s called nonlocality: the idea that the two objects are actually still a single quantum system, even though they may be far apart. That idea is uncomfortable to many people (including most famously Albert Einstein), but it preserves the principle of relativity, which states in part that no information can travel faster than light.

To get around nonlocality, several ideas have been proposed over the decades. Many of these fall into the category of hidden variables, wherein quantum systems have physical properties (beyond the standard quantities like position, momentum, and spin) that are not directly accessible to experiment. In entangled systems, the hidden variables could be responsible for transferring state information from one particle to the other, producing measurements that appear coordinated. Since these hidden variables are not accessible to experimenters, they can’t be used for communication. Relativity is preserved.

2 thoughts on “Get Real or Get Local

  1. I thought Bell’s Inequality showed that hidden variables is wrong if locality is true. Isn’t it a toss up between nonlocality and nonreality?

  2. Entanglement is unpleasantly instantaneous. General relativity and quantum mechanics work to 14 significant figures, but overlaps contradict. A postulate is failing despite successes.

    Achiral GR splits into chiral halves (Ashtekhar). Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama gravitation offers GR failures within chiral spacetime torsion. QM’s symmetries fail for fermionic matter, thus manually inserted symmetry breakings. Both demand vacuum with zero refraction, dispersion, dichroism, gyrotropy, or other anisotropy. Vacuum isotropy plus Noether’s theorems enforce conservation of angular momentum. Parity (3-D chirality) is outside Noether for being absolutely discontinuous. Isotropic vacuum chokes on periodic lattices (arxiv:1109.1963).

    GR and QM can fail without contradicting successes. Trace vacuum chiral anisotropy offers trace angular momentum non-conservation for fermionic matter – MOND’s Milgrom acceleration, not dark matter. Chemically and macroscopically identical, single crystal test masses in enantiomorphic space groups vacuum insert with trace different energies, violating the Equivalence Principle as they fall.

    Three pairs of periodic enantiomorphic lattices contain no opposite sense or racemic screw axes within a single crystallographic space group. Dense atom packing in space groups P3(1)21 versus P3(2)21 is alpha-quartz. P3(1) versus P3(2) has gamma-glycine. Load an Eotvos balance with opposite geometric parity atomic mass distributions. 90 days later, 42 years of physics are bettered. Do it.

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