Entanglement - A layman's Approach

For our amateur scientists who are curious...
Quantum Reality
Point of No Return
Theory of Everything
The God Particle

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The Quantum Realm is full of uncertainties and probabilities and asks questions that our state of the art physics still don't have an answers to. Once a great scientist said, "At the Quantum Level, every probable event is a 100% possible event" and quantum experiment has proved it.

Here at this level subatomic particles behave like a wave holding all of their particle properties at the same time, the wave-particle duality. Particles, here, doesn't acquire a particular spacial position but they are present at all probable space at all the times, the quantum superposition. The interesting thing about this realm is that "the act of measurement" decides what place and property a particular particle is going to have among all the other probabilities that it can have.

At this Quantum Realm particles interact with each other in a wholly different way. Two particles interacted at the beginning can exchange their properties, no matter the distance, without actually interacting with each other. That's Quantum Entanglement or "Spooky Action At Distance", as quoted by Dr. Albert Einstein. Till this day our science doesn't have an answer to this phenomena!

Let's have an insight to this spooky problem, say, or phenomena. Take two electrons, entangle them at source and keep one at Earth and send other to Moon. Well thanks to Pauli's Principle we know that both the electrons have opposite spin. Now carefully changing the spin of Electron on earth simultaneously changes the spin of electron on moon. It happens in just the opposite way, like if you up your right hand I'll up my left and vice-versa. You can take distance to be relativistic, still the exchange of information between the two entangled particles happens in real time, somehow breaking the speed barrier. This very phenomena made Dr. Einstein cry like a baby for decades and say statements like, "God doesn't play dice", or "Spooky action at distance".

One of the most controversial aspect of Quantum Entanglement is "Teleportation". At Canary Island on The Coast of Africa there are two laboratories. Dr. Anton Zylinger and his team produced a pair of Entangled Photons, kept one at La Palma and sent the

other to Tenerife Island 143 KM away by Laser. Now he introduced a Third Photon and made it interact with the one at La Palma. Quantum Data of the third photon was taken and sent to Tenerife and then something happened that was no less than a miracle. The third photon vanished at La Palma and appeared at Tenerife without actually covering the space in between. The damn little Photon was "Teleported".

Thanks to Dr. Anton Quantum Entanglement is not a spooky thing from Science Fiction anymore. "Give me the Quantum State Data of all the particles and I can teleport anything, even Humans", said Dr. Zylinger. It took us more than 10,000 years to understand that Earth is not the centre of the Universe and took us mere 500 years to get in the world where every new discovery gets old on the very next day of its birth. How long do you think is when we start using teleportation for our day to day life ?!

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For our amateur scientists who are curious...
Quantum Reality
Point of No Return
Theory of Everything
The God Particle

Read More

Quantum Reality

For our amateur scientists who are curious...
Event Horizon
Theory of Everything
The God Particle
Gravitational Lensing

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The meaning of reality, in our day to day life, is so vague. Talking scientifically, Reality can be understood at two levels: Macro and Micro.

When we talk about reality at the macro level we generally mean the reality of the bodies/objects we see around us and also the bodies/objects we see at the grand scale i.e, planets, star, galaxies, etc. up to the Event Horizon.
This reality, on the macro scale, has Newtonian Mechanics and General Relativity as its DNA and at this level we can define past, explain present and predict future of any given body provided with some essential data like velocity, space-time coordinate, momentum, etc. with 100% certainty. Here we use words like certainty, spatial coordinates, etc.

Apropos reality at the micro level we generally mean the Quantum level. Here we use words like uncertainty, quantization, superposition, probability space, etc. At the Quantum level reality has its own meaning.

Let's consider the Double Slit Experiment as an example. In the exp. first a beam of electron was passed through one slit and its impact on the detector screen was observed. The beam made impression on the screen just behind the slit. Now here's the chase, when the exp. was continued with two slits the result was fascinating. This time there was not two wide dark bands on the screen(as expected) but was multiple bands with decreasing intensity i.e, the interference pattern was observed.


Now the twist. When electrons was beamed one at a time through any of the slit, each electron took some random position on the screen(makes sense) but when continued for many electrons a pattern was observed which was same as the pattern observed earlier. Remember electrons was sent one at a time through only one slit but somehow each electron knew what positions to take on the screen to have that pattern and that makes no sense. Also the interference pattern can only be observed if a single wave crosses both the slits at the same time. This concludes that single electron was present at both the slits at the same time no matter that it was targeted towards only one slit. This is a classical example of Quantum Superposition.

Also it was observed that when a particle detector was placed at either of the two slit or at both the slits the interference pattern vanishes and we get a desired dark band behind the slit on the screen. The reason was when we put the detector at the slit we knew the position of the electron only to have its momentum(in this case direction) uncertain. And this my friend is a classical example of how reality at the quantum level can be altered just by the measurements you make for the particle only to have all the other properties of that particular particle uncertain.

This sole exp. was sufficient enough to have some glimpse of the quantum realm and the uncertainty it consists of. There are many more examples to support these facts and others too. At quantum level one can't know both the position and momentum data for a given particle at the same point of time. That's the Uncertainty Principle. Also the particles have spin in all the directions at the given point of time and particles can be present at more than one place at the same time. That's the Quantum Superposition. Also there are specific positions particle takes in the 3-D space(no in-between positions) thus, giving birth to the term Quantization.

This world of uncertainty is nothing like what we see at the macro scale. It is not wrong to say that particles at this level have their own Quantum Miniverse powered by quantized reality. So, in layman's term every probable event is a 100% possible event which further depends on the act of measurement, yes it can change the outcome of an event.


"Reality doesn't exist until we measure it", quantum experiments has confirmed.

***I've left Quantum Entanglement  for my future post***

Please post your valuable comments.

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For our amateur scientists who are curious...
Event Horizon
Theory of Everything
The God Particle
Gravitational Lensing

Read More