Spooky Action at a Distance?

   

Synopsis:

A misinterpretation of the results of the Stern-Gerlach experiment in conjunction with Bell's theorem has led much of the physics community to make an erroneous assumption that, in turn, has resulted in acceptance of non-local behavior of entangled pairs.  That is to say: something moving faster than the speed of light.

This paper describes Bell’s Inequality. It goes on to describe the failure of Bell’s Inequality in experiments. These experiments are often referred to as Bell's Theorem. The paper goes on to describe the assumption made and how that assumption results in a misapplication of Bell's Inequality. Further, the paper shows how the application of classical physics will produce results that agree with the results found in those experiments.

The paper is written for the general public. As such, the use of mathematics is kept to a bare minimum and uses constructs understandable at a high school level.

Note: The author is constrained by limited resources. For that reason, validation experiments, to date, have only been performed with polarization of light rather than particle spin. However, the logic is expected to produce equivalent results when applied to spin.

Link to entire .pdf file.

 

Bell's Theorem

The original intent of this exercise was to understand Bell's Theorem. While I may have some disagreement with a few minor details, I think the best description of Bell's Theorem can be found in Gary Felder's paper on the internet.

To better understand Bell's Theorem, I wrote a program to test out correlations with different sensor positions.

I found two characteristics very interesting:

1. If I rotate one set of sensors, the correlation follows a sinusoidal function between the values of 5/9 and 4/9. That said, there are three orientations that do give the 0.5 correlation which gets so much attention. (This is not important, but it is interesting.)

2. If I rotate a single pair of sensors (holding control key), the 5/9 correlation ratio does not change until I reach a point where all three sensors are in the same hemisphere. Then the correlation value increases to a point limited by the largest angle between sensors.

If you wish to play with the program yourself (PC only), you can download Entangle.zip from this web site. There are currently no help files with this program. The Analize and Non-local buttons have not yet been implemented.

Microsoft, in their attempt to protect you against unknown sources of code now blocks programs not know to them. This protection has changed. As of this writing, in order to have both the program and the help features work, you must first download the .zip file to your machine, Then right click on the .zip file and select properties. At the bottom of the properties window, click Unblock. Then say "OK" to exit the properties window and open the .zip file. On the "File" menu (top left) select "Expand All" and follow the instructions to place the file wherever you want it. You may then discard the zip file.

 

Comments to Gary at gary@vipilot.com

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