[HN Gopher] LHC experiments at CERN observe quantum entanglement...
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LHC experiments at CERN observe quantum entanglement at the highest
energy yet
Author : gmays
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-09-21 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (home.cern)
(TXT) w3m dump (home.cern)
| phyzome wrote:
| << test the Standard Model of particle physics in new ways and
| look for signs of new physics that may lie beyond it >>
|
| "Surely we're just a teensy bit away from that new physics, and
| if we can just a _little_ bit more money^Wenergy into the system,
| we 'll find that new physics for sure!"
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Seriously, this headline is the quantum equivalent of "super
| expensive catapult observe tallest free fall yet." Or verifying
| Galileo's free fall experiment with more and more items. It's
| nice that Newton's laws still hold, but do we really need to
| test it on the one millionth object?
| dexwiz wrote:
| There are some effects that may show up only at very high
| energies. A large enough catapult and you would put something
| into orbit. Wouldn't that be a novel outcome?
| pohuing wrote:
| Or fast enough to break the sound barrier. I'd assume
| that's a new discovery when catapults were still relevant.
| Or heating of the projectile from drag...
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Yes but clearly you couldn't achieve that with normal
| catapult technology. You need some theory to be able to
| predict what energies are going to be significant.
| Valectar wrote:
| At high enough energies the laws of physics are actually
| different. Two of the four fundamental forces in physics, the
| electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, are actually
| a single force which only appears to be two separate forces
| at "low" energies/temperatures, with low being the pretty
| much all temperatures in the universe after the Big Bang.
|
| It is completely reasonable to test whether phenomenon that
| hold at low energies still hold at high energies, and that
| may be the only way you're going to find more fundamental
| physical laws. Especially when we know quantum theory is
| incomplete, since it is currently incompatible with general
| relativity.
| jfengel wrote:
| They know that it's a long way and a lot more money.
| Fundamental physics has a habit of paying off in utterly
| unexpected ways, but that's not really why we do this. It's
| pure curiosity.
|
| They are grateful that the public seems willing to pay for
| curiosity. I don't know how long it will last. Though I can say
| that it's a rounding error in national budgets.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Imagine how much money is spent on defence. And then imagine
| the tiny proportion that is spend on basic research that
| might result in offensive or defensive weapons.
| greenavocado wrote:
| The fusion breakthrough in the National Ignition Facility
| was said to be essentially a scam program claiming to be
| for nuclear weapons research.
| digbybk wrote:
| Particle accelerators are pinging the deepest layers of
| reality that we can possibly reach. Deeper than anyone could
| have imagined just a few generations ago. That anyone can be
| cynical about that is hard to understand.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Hey, saying paradise is just around the corner with "just a bit
| more scale" works wonderfully for OpenAI, and these guys have
| much more modest claims and asks.
| carstenhag wrote:
| The people at cern are amazing at making you like science &
| gather money. I was there only for a student trip (non-
| related studies) and they had many slides about how awesome
| the international collaboration, science, funding etc is. And
| of course, they show you the huge site and machines and talk
| about stuff that you don't understand anything about.
| tamimio wrote:
| I have always wondered if quantum entanglement is the scientific
| explanation of why when you start thinking of someone (or stop
| thinking) suddenly they just text you.
| jfengel wrote:
| Not likely. That's not what entanglement does.
| qwertox wrote:
| Nobody ever texts me. Maybe you just text too much to realize
| that its unrelated.
| atoav wrote:
| Nope. That is coincidence paired with statistical priors. If
| you have certain relationships to people it is not unlikely
| that they would think: "I should text" in periods that overlap
| with you thinking a similar thing.
| ktm5j wrote:
| I feel like that's just a combination of coincidence and
| confirmation bias
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not.
| Yoric wrote:
| Answering in case this is not humor: no, it isn't.
|
| From the top of my head, quantum entanglement is something:
|
| 1/ that happens at quantum level, so typically with measurable
| effects on a scale smaller than one atom (way smaller than one
| neuron);
|
| 2/ that requires specific operations on a specific group of
| particles (the probability that such entangled particles end up
| in two different brains of related people is infinitesimal);
|
| 3/ that requires many measures to confirm - and you can only do
| so once per group of particles (so it would not be sufficient
| to have two entangled particles one in each brain, you'd
| probably need tens of thousands).
| dyauspitr wrote:
| No, but it's the very definition of new age pseudo science work
| that was all the rage in the 90s.
| hansoolo wrote:
| I call it synchronicity
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Joke aside, seems like a frequency illusion[1] to me.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
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