Thursday, July 10
As I just explained to Mike, I have come to an interesting conclusion about quantum mechanics: I don't understand it at all because it is really, really difficult to understand. Things just don't work the same way down there (in the tiny world), as they do in our realm. For example, electrons may orbit (or maybe they don't, I can't understand that part) the nucleus of an atom, but when they jump from one orbit to another, they never occupy any space in between. “Impossible!” I declared, but then again, everything on that level is different and strange, as another example will illustrate.
The photon is a unique massless particle that carries an electromagnetic force. They are also referred to as “particles of light” or “energy balls” (huh-huh), but really I don’t get that part. What I do know is that they are strange. Of course everyone called Wolfgang Pauli strange when, back in 1925, he came up with an Exclusion Principle. All this little puppy said was that some subatomic particles in certain pairs, even when they are a long, long way from one another immediately “know” what’s going on with the other. Like I said, everyone thought he was kinda of crazy. Seventy years later a couple of schmucks in Geneva would prove him true.
These nerds sent one photon one way over a fiber-optic cable and its partner the other. At the end, each of the particles sent had a random chance of being counted or detected. What they discovered is that when one photon was detected at one end, its partner at the other would know it. And even at a distance of 7 miles, the two photons knew when the other was being counted.
Some geeks want to use this discovery to teleport Spock and Scotty, but they’re just fanciful losers. Most see the practical use coming in the field of cryptology, protecting codes, or at least allowing for folks to know when they’ve been broken. My vote is that we just use the knowledge to kill cats.
The photon is a unique massless particle that carries an electromagnetic force. They are also referred to as “particles of light” or “energy balls” (huh-huh), but really I don’t get that part. What I do know is that they are strange. Of course everyone called Wolfgang Pauli strange when, back in 1925, he came up with an Exclusion Principle. All this little puppy said was that some subatomic particles in certain pairs, even when they are a long, long way from one another immediately “know” what’s going on with the other. Like I said, everyone thought he was kinda of crazy. Seventy years later a couple of schmucks in Geneva would prove him true.
These nerds sent one photon one way over a fiber-optic cable and its partner the other. At the end, each of the particles sent had a random chance of being counted or detected. What they discovered is that when one photon was detected at one end, its partner at the other would know it. And even at a distance of 7 miles, the two photons knew when the other was being counted.
Some geeks want to use this discovery to teleport Spock and Scotty, but they’re just fanciful losers. Most see the practical use coming in the field of cryptology, protecting codes, or at least allowing for folks to know when they’ve been broken. My vote is that we just use the knowledge to kill cats.
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