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- From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Subject: Re: mind-numbing gedankenexperiment
- Message-ID: <Jul.24.14.22.06.1992.9421@ruhets.rutgers.edu>
- Date: 24 Jul 92 18:22:06 GMT
- References: <2377@nic.cerf.net>
- Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
- Lines: 45
-
- mitsu@nic.cerf.net (Mitsuharu Hadeishi) writes:
- >I don't think anyone fully understood the import of the communication from
- >Dr. Jack Sarfatti I posted a few days ago. Let me summarize it first.
-
- Really, sir, I did read it. I just didn't think it was worth
- respondiing to.
-
- >It has widely been asserted that the non-local correlations evinced in the
- >EPR paper and most recently verified conclusively in the Aspect experiments
- >in France, though very strange, cannot be used for communication. However,
- >the demonstrations to this effect rely on non-unitary behavior of the
- >detectors (i.e., probability current is not conserved).
-
- wha? They do nothing of the sort. As was best said by somebody else,
- operators separated by spacelike intervals commute. They can't
- influence each other. QED. (that's quod erat demonstratum, not
- quantum electrodynamics)
-
- > [Sarfatti quote] the transmitter photon retarded wave arrives at T and is
- > detected. Information on the setting of the transmitter at event T is
- > sent backwards-in-time by an advanced transmitter photon wave. The
- > advanced wave arrives at S just as the photon pair is being emitted.
- > This is what Fred Hoyle calls a "loop in time" between events S and T.
-
- This is meaningless. What is an "advanced photon wave"? I think
- Sarfatti is trying to talk about advanced and retarded in the sense
- of potentials in electrodynamics. As we have probably all beaten to
- death, even though you can use the advanced potential, which is
- seemingly non-causal, to do calculations, causality is never actually
- violated. Hell, in the Coulomb gauge the potential propagates
- instantaneously, but it doesn't allow instantaneous communication.
- (The fields are limited to lightlike propagation. See Jackson,
- especially problem 6.19, nyuk nyuk.) I hate to say this, because he
- was so distinguished, but it is becoming impossible to treat anything
- Fred Hoyle says with any respect. He is an example of the tragic
- results of failing to accept that you can be wrong.
-
- > [Sarfatti again] I have algebra based on Feynman rules to back
- > up every detail of what I am talking about intuitively here. This is
- > not handwaving.
-
- And I'm the King of England.
-
- Ben Weiner
- ("Weiner" is not a particularly Hanoverian name.)
-