http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php Comments on "Top Eleven: Alain Aspect" en Copyright 2006 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:51:56 -0500 Johnny Vector none@example.com Ooh, an experimenter I've met! One more reason to vote for him: He is an excellent teacher. It's not just the mustache, it's the gleam in his eyes when he talks about physics. I can't even remember specifically what he was speaking on, I just recall being impressed with his clarity and sense of excitement at a couple of Gordon Conferences in the 80s. Good times, good times. http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13590 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13590 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500 John Farrell none@example.com Francophobia? Wait. A French physicist who hated his own country? http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13606 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13606 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500 Chad Orzel none@example.com One more reason to vote for him: He is an excellent teacher. It's not just the mustache, it's the gleam in his eyes when he talks about physics. Absolutely. He gave the first talk at a small workshop in Europe a few years back, and I hadn't managed to get any sleep on the plane or the ride from the airport. The fact that he managed to keep me awake through the whole thing is a real testament to his enthusiasm and speaking ability. http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13643 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13643 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500 Dave Bacon none@example.com When do I get to vote! For an interesting read on why we think quantum entanglement is essential to the speedup in quantum computers see http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0201143, On the role of entanglement in quantum computational speed-up by Richard Jozsa and Noah Linden: if there is "little" entanglement during your quantum computation, then there is a classical efficient simulation of your quantum computation (caviots of course.) Also to be fair there is still a loophole, the detector loophole, which hasn't been closed (or at least it hasn't been closed at the SAME time as closing other loopholes! Ion trap experiments closed the loophole, but the ions were definitely not spacelike separated!) This loophole arises since we don't have perfectly efficient detectors and hence a local hidden variable theory can exploit this fact to "boost" its correlations. I can't wait until the detector loophole is closed because when that happens I'm going to go out and celebrate. BTW, there is also the "cosmic conspiracy" loophole, which gets rediscovered about once a year, which basically states that the correlations you obtain in quantum theory are a consequence of the initial conditions of the universe: what measurement you choose to perform is in conspiracy with the correlations themselves (i.e. you don't really have any "freedom" in choosing your measurement, and worse, no matter HOW this measurement is performed, the initial conditions always end up consipring!) http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13680 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13680 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500 Chad Orzel none@example.com Dave: When do I get to vote! I'll post the ballot entry later tonight. Also to be fair there is still a loophole, the detector loophole, which hasn't been closed (or at least it hasn't been closed at the SAME time as closing other loopholes! Ion trap experiments closed the loophole, but the ions were definitely not spacelike separated!) This loophole arises since we don't have perfectly efficient detectors and hence a local hidden variable theory can exploit this fact to "boost" its correlations. I can't wait until the detector loophole is closed because when that happens I'm going to go out and celebrate. Yeah. I sort of view this like the photon stuff I talked about in an earlier post-- it wasn't until 1977 that anybody did an experiment that conclusively showed that light was quantized, in an experiment that couldn't be replicated with some semi-classical theory, but long before that, most people had accepted the existence of photons. BTW, there is also the "cosmic conspiracy" loophole, which gets rediscovered about once a year, which basically states that the correlations you obtain in quantum theory are a consequence of the initial conditions of the universe: what measurement you choose to perform is in conspiracy with the correlations themselves (i.e. you don't really have any "freedom" in choosing your measurement, and worse, no matter HOW this measurement is performed, the initial conditions always end up consipring!) That's gonna be a bitch to get rid of... http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13728 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13728 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500 Aaron Bergman none@example.com Hey, Chad. Your cookie makes you name link to scienceblogs.org, not .com. http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13795 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-13795 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500 David Harmon none@example.com One point that occasionally gets missed in discussions of this sort of "instantaneous communication" issue is that though the sender and reciever may be out of each other's event cones, they must both be in the event cone of whatever process produced the entanglement. This comes from basic physical logic (the entangled particles had to get "there" from "here"), but it might be interesting to verify it experimentally.... (One SF writer who got it right was Frederick Pohl, in World At The End of Time.) http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-14334 http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2006/02/top_eleven_alain_aspect.php#comment-14334 Experiment Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:20:05 -0500