Abstract Einstein introduced quantum entanglement in 1935 and referred to it as “spooky actions at a distance” because it seemed to conflict with his theory of special relativity. Today, some refer to it as “the greatest mystery in physics,” and the 2022 Physics Nobel Prize was even awarded for experimental confirmation of the “spookiness.” While the mystery is experimentally well established, its solution remains elusive because it is commonly believed that quantum entanglement entails one or more of the following: In this book, a rigorous solution to the mystery of quantum entanglement is provided that entails none of those things. The key to this seemingly impossible feat is—to use Einstein’s own language—a “principle” explanation that foregoes the need for any “constructive” explanation of quantum entanglement, such as those listed above. Ironically, the proposed principle explanation is Einstein’s own relativity principle as grounded in quantum information theory. So, contrary to popular belief, quantum mechanics and special relativity are far from inconsistent, as both are a consequence of the exact same relativity principle.
Abstract Einstein introduced quantum entanglement in 1935 and referred to it as “spooky actions at a distance” because it seemed to conflict with his theory of special relativity. Today, some refer to it as “the greatest mystery in physics,” and the 2022 Physics Nobel Prize was even awarded for experimental confirmation of the “spookiness.” While the mystery is experimentally well established, its solution remains elusive because it is commonly believed that quantum entanglement entails one or more of the following: In this book, a rigorous solution to the mystery of quantum entanglement is provided that entails none of those things. The key to this seemingly impossible feat is—to use Einstein’s own language—a “principle” explanation that foregoes the need for any “constructive” explanation of quantum entanglement, such as those listed above. Ironically, the proposed principle explanation is Einstein’s own relativity principle as grounded in quantum information theory. So, contrary to popular belief, quantum mechanics and special relativity are far from inconsistent, as both are a consequence of the exact same relativity principle.
The paper discusses this years Nobel Prize in physics for experiments of entanglement establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science in a much wider, including philosophical context legitimizing by the authority of the Nobel Prize a new scientific area out of classical quantum mechanics relevant to Pauli's particle paradigm of energy conservation and thus to the Standard model obeying it. One justifies the eventual future theory of quantum gravitation as belonging to the newly established quantum information science. Entanglement, involving non-Hermitian operators for its rigorous description, non-unitarity as well as nonlocal and superluminal physical signals spookily (by Einstein's flowery epithet) synchronizing and transferring some nonzero action at a distance, can be considered to be quantum gravity so that its local counterpart to be Einstein's gravitation according to general relativity therefore pioneering an alternative pathway to quantum gravitation different from the secondary quantization of the Standard model.
While quantum mechanics (QM) is covered at length in introductory physics textbooks, the concept of quantum entanglement is typically not covered at all, despite its importance in the rapidly growing area of quantum information science and its extensive experimental confirmation. Thus, physics educators are left to their own devices as to how to introduce this important concept. Regardless of how a physics educator chooses to introduce quantum entanglement, they face a trilemma involving its mysterious Bell-inequality-violating correlations. They can compromise on the the completeness of their introduction and simply choose not to share that fact, totally ignoring the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. They can frustrate their more curious students by introducing the mystery and simply telling them that the QM formalism with its associated (equally mysterious) conservation law maps beautifully to the experiments, so there is nothing else that needs to be said. Or, they can compromise the rigor of their presentation and attempt to resolve the mystery by venturing into the metaphysical quagmire of competing QM interpretations. Herein, we resolve this trilemma in precisely the same way that Einstein resolved the mysteries of time dilation and length contraction that existed in the late nineteenth century. That is, we resort to "principle" explanation based on the mathematical consequences of "empirically discovered" facts. Indeed, our principle account of quantum entanglement is even based on the same principle Einstein used, i.e., the relativity principle or "no preferred reference frame." Thus, this principle resolution of the trilemma is as complete, satisfying, analytically rigorous, and accessible as the standard introduction of special relativity for first-year physics students.
The paper discusses the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics for experiments of entanglement “establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” in a much wider, including philosophical context legitimizing by the authority of the Nobel Prize a new scientific area out of “classical” quantum mechanics relevant to Pauli’s “particle” paradigm of energy conservation and thus to the Standard model obeying it. One justifies the eventual future theory of quantum gravitation as belonging to the newly established quantum information science. Entanglement, involving non-Hermitian operators for its rigorous description, non-unitarity as well as nonlocal and superluminal physical signals “spookily” (by Einstein’s flowery epithet) synchronizing and transferring some nonzero action at a distance, can be considered to be quantum gravity so that its local counterpart to be Einstein’s gravitation according to general relativity therefore pioneering an alternative pathway to quantum gravitation different from the “secondary quantization” of the Standard model. So, the experiments of entanglement once they have been awarded by the Nobel Prize launch particularly the relevant theory of quantum gravitation grounded on “quantum information science” thus granted to be nonclassical quantum mechanics in the shared framework of the generalized quantum mechanics obeying rather quantum-information conservation than only energy conservation. The concept of “dark phase” of the universe naturally linked to the very well confirmed “dark matter” and “dark energy” and opposed to its “light phase” inherent to classical quantum mechanics and the Standard model obeys quantum-information conservation, after which reversible causality or the mutual transformation of energy and information are valid. The mythical Big Bang after which energy conservation holds universally is to be replaced by an omnipresent and omnitemporal medium of decoherence of the dark and nonlocal phase into the light and local phase. The former is only an integral image of the latter and borrowed in fact rather from religion than from science. Physical, methodological and proper philosophical conclusions follow from that paradigm shift heralded by the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. For example, the scientific theory of thinking should originate from the dark phase of the universe, as well: probably only approximately modeled by neural networks physically belonging to the light phase thoroughly. A few crucial philosophical sequences follow from the break of Pauli’s paradigm: (1) the establishment of the “dark” phase of the universe as opposed to its “light” phase, only to which the Cartesian dichotomy of “body” and “mind” is valid; (2) quantum information conservation as relevant to the dark phase, furthermore generalizing energy conservation as to its light phase, productively allowing for physical entities to appear “ex nihilo”, i.e., from the dark phase, in which energy and time are yet inseparable from each other; (3) reversible causality as inherent to the dark phase; (4) the interpretation of gravitation only mathematically: as an interpretation of the incompleteness of finiteness to infinity, for example, following the Gödel dichotomy (“either contradiction or incompleteness”) about the relation of arithmetic to set theory; (5) the restriction of the concept of hierarchy only to the light phase; (6) the commensurability of both physical extremes of a quantum and the universe as a whole in the dark phase obeying quantum information conservation and akin to Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophical and theological worldview.
I feel compelled to respond to the frequent references to spooky action at a distance that often accompany reports of experiments investigating entangled quantum mechanical states. Most, but not all, of these articles have appeared in the popular press. As an experimentalist I have great admiration for such experiments and the concomitant advances in quantum information and quantum computing, but accompanying claims of action at a distance are quite simply nonsense. Some physicists and philosophers of science have bought into the story by promoting the nonlocal nature of quantum mechanics. In 1964, John Bell proved that classical hidden variable theories cannot reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics unless they employ some type of action at a distance. I have no problem with this conclusion. Unfortunately, Bell later expanded his analysis and mistakenly deduced that quantum mechanics and by implication nature herself are nonlocal. In addition, some of these articles present Einstein in caricature, a tragic figure who neither understood quantum mechanics nor believed it to be an accurate theory of nature. Consequently, the current experiments have proven him wrong. This is also nonsense.
The paper discusses the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics for experiments of entanglement “establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” in a much wider, including philosophical context legitimizing by the authority of the Nobel Prize a new scientific area out of “classical” quantum mechanics relevant to Pauli’s “particle” paradigm of energy conservation and thus to the Standard model obeying it. One justifies the eventual future theory of quantum gravitation as belonging to the newly established quantum information science. Entanglement, involving non-Hermitian operators for its rigorous description, non-unitarity as well as nonlocal and superluminal physical signals “spookily” (by Einstein’s flowery epithet) synchronizing and transferring some nonzero action at a distance, can be considered to be quantum gravity so that its local counterpart to be Einstein’s gravitation according to general relativity therefore pioneering an alternative pathway to quantum gravitation different from the “secondary quantization” of the Standard model. So, the experiments of entanglement once they have been awarded by the Nobel Prize launch particularly the relevant theory of quantum gravitation grounded on “quantum information science” thus granted to be nonclassical quantum mechanics in the shared framework of the generalized quantum mechanics obeying rather quantum-information conservation than only energy conservation. The concept of “dark phase” of the universe naturally linked to the very well confirmed “dark matter” and “dark energy” and opposed to its “light phase” inherent to classical quantum mechanics and the Standard model obeys quantum-information conservation, after which reversible causality or the mutual transformation of energy and information are valid. The mythical Big Bang after which energy conservation holds universally is to be replaced by an omnipresent and omnitemporal medium of decoherence of the dark and nonlocal phase into the light and local phase. The former is only an integral image of the latter and borrowed in fact rather from religion than from science. Physical, methodological and proper philosophical conclusions follow from that paradigm shift heralded by the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. For example, the scientific theory of thinking should originate from the dark phase of the universe, as well: probably only approximately modeled by neural networks physically belonging to the light phase thoroughly. A few crucial philosophical sequences follow from the break of Pauli’s paradigm: (1) the establishment of the “dark” phase of the universe as opposed to its “light” phase, only to which the Cartesian dichotomy of “body” and “mind” is valid; (2) quantum information conservation as relevant to the dark phase, furthermore generalizing energy conservation as to its light phase, productively allowing for physical entities to appear “ex nihilo”, i.e., from the dark phase, in which energy and time are yet inseparable from each other; (3) reversible causality as inherent to the dark phase; (4) the interpretation of gravitation only mathematically: as an interpretation of the incompleteness of finiteness to infinity, for example, following the Gödel dichotomy (“either contradiction or incompleteness”) about the relation of arithmetic to set theory; (5) the restriction of the concept of hierarchy only to the light phase; (6) the commensurability of both physical extremes of a quantum and the universe as a whole in the dark phase obeying quantum information conservation and akin to Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophical and theological worldview.
“Quantum entanglement” is a well-known phenomenon in quantum physics that refers to the ability of widely separated, subatomic objects to be mysteriously connected by sharing a common condition or state. Albert Einstein famously called quantum entanglement “spooky action at a distance.” In “Quantum Entanglement” (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Penguin Random House, 2020), author Jed Brody says, “Two particles are entangled if the measurement of one of them, for all practical purposes, instantly affects the other particle over any distance.” We will discuss a connection between random events that, although not on the quantum level, resemble quantum entanglement in some ways. We metaphorically call this connection “random entanglement.”