Isaac Newton's 21st Century Entanglement

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Isaac Newton's 21st Century Entanglement

Once Upon A Time, I read weekly issues of New Scientist, monthly editions of Scientific American, dozens of books by particle and astro-physicists, and attended three-years of physics courses “For Continuing Education” at the University of Oxford.  I bought the first ever edition of New Scientist – and still get them weekly, and read them cover to cover; that’s sixty-one years of following the course of popular physics and science; hugely assisted by Jimmy Wale’s Wikipedia.

You might well ask, Why? What have I learned in six decades, about Life, The Universe and Everything. Mostly I’ve learned that we humans have gained knowledge of, say, one-percent, about how things work. There are many more, 99 to 1, questions than we have answers. So, “There’s a way to go before we rest.”

One of the most baffling areas is Quantum-Physics. “Quantum” refers to the fact (we believe it is fact) that every sort of basic stuff, basic energy, the stuff of the universe, exists in neatly defined packages. The particles have a fixed “quantity” of stuff; of energy. As far back as classical Greece, humankind has pestered and fussed and explored to conceive and consider just what is the smallest thing, or things, that make our universe. They also thought in quantum terms – and imagined the smallest unit was the Atom. Two or three thousand years later, Rutherford and others bombarded atoms and studied the debris and found sub-atomic-particles. We think that these minuscule motes, the bricks that build atoms, also exist in neat little packages. It maybe that the very smallest thing is the Quark (rhymes with cork). “Quantum theory” implies that such particles are discontinuous, with abrupt steps, one to the next. They have separate identities and are not “fields” – or indeed are not oceans. The fields and oceans of “pure-energy” are continuous and do not have steps. They are plasma; very hot, melted, merging, swirling clouds of non-matter, with electro-magnetic fields. When these clouds condense, they produce sub-atomic-particles; photons (light) electrons (orbiting in atoms) etc. etc. etc.

I have been mulling over these matters for sixty-one years. You will be pleased to know that I have, uniquely, solved the mystery of Gravity, that sticks stuff together. Read about it in this blog. And I have tracked other mysterious events and processes – presented in these colourful slides. 99.99% of scientists and philosophers will say, with great weight and authority, that I am at best misled, deluded, and, at worst, totally stark raving potty. I leave you judge.

However, one of the threads I have followed is “Entanglement” – and hence this book. Entanglement is respectable science, demonstrated experimentally many times. It says that when a sub-atomic particle splits (usual example being a photon, light, the most plentiful “quantum” in the universe) the two halves reform as nice rounded complete photons – and, at the speed of light, they whizz off in different directions. And, mysteriously, they stay in communication; always and forever. Because they are separating at the speed-of-light, and because Einstein proved that “Nothing Travels Faster Than Light”, these entangled photons cannot communicate with each other. But they do.

Einstein famously dubbed this phenomena “Spooky action at a distance.” He denied that it could be; then came around to believing. Entanglement works! OK?

One of my reality-checks when getting excited by scientific discoveries, is to remind myself that I am also made of the stuff of the universe. For convenience, I say that all objects are made of light, or photons. Basic quantum units. Yours and my brains are made of photons; organised in ways we cannot conceive – to make, forgive the pun, an intelligent organism. If we can “Know Thyself” in sufficient depth and consciousness, we can explore this stuff of the universe of which we are made. We are each a walking reference library of Life, The Universe and Everything. We just need to learn how to read it / read ourselves. And all our bits and pieces are, as my publishers put it “quantumly-entangled”.  

So, this is the underlying logic of how Isaac Newton and his young friend, Archie Wilkins, meet, discourse and flow through space-time. Throw in a little Richard Feynman time-independent occurrences (also respectable QED science) – and we have a pretty decent Time-Machine. It is of course impossible and sadly ungovernable  and non-directional – but the elements are there. Rome wasn’t built in a day.   

Noel HODSON - Author