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Physics World

Sherlock Holmes investigates the EPR paradox

Colin Jack

Published Apr 1, 1995• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

"The problem does not sound too dramatic, Mr Holmes. It is hardly in the same league as murder or kidnapping. Yet it has the best brains in our forensic department baffled. The chemists are scratching their heads and our physicist declares it quite the spookiest thing he has come across. Here is the cause of our troubles." Lestrade pulled a lottery card from the pocket of his police uniform.

DOI
10.1088/2058-7058/8/4/33

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"The problem does not sound too dramatic, Mr Holmes. It is hardly in the same league as murder or kidnapping. Yet it has the best brains in our forensic department baffled. The chemists are scratching their heads and our physicist declares it quite the spookiest thing he has come across. Here is the cause of our troubles." Lestrade pulled a lottery card from the pocket of his police uniform.
Nonlocality of the type first elucidated by Bell in 1964 is a difficult concept to explain to nonspecialists and undergraduates. We attempt to do so by showing how nonlocality can be used to solve a problem in which someone might find themselves as the result of a series of normal, even if somewhat unlikely, events. Our story is told in the style of a Sherlock Holmes mystery, and is based on Mermin’s formulation of the “paradoxical” illustration of quantum nonlocality discovered by Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger.
Non-locality of the type first elucidated by Bell in 1964 is a difficult concept to explain to non-specialists and undergraduates. Here we attempt this by showing how such non-locality can be used to solve a problem in which someone might find themselves as the result of a collection of normal, even if somewhat unlikely, events. Our story is told in the style of a Sherlock Holmes mystery, and is based on Mermin's formulation of the "paradoxical" illustration of quantum non-locality discovered by Greenberger, Horne and Zeilinger.