Tuesday, 22 May 2018

quantum mechanics - Why does my thought experiment involving entanglement appear to violate the speed of light?



I have a thought experiment that "seems" to allow messages passed at faster than the speed of light. Since that is impossible I'd like to learn what is wrong with my experiment/reasoning. Start with the classic setup where 2 particles (spin up and spin down) are entangled and then sent in opposite directions to locations A and B (possibly even light years apart). Now picture an ensemble of these (each pair is independent of the other pairs). If no observations (measurements) are made at location B then there must be results of measurements at location A that demonstrate superposition, and these results must look different than if observations were made at location B. So now picture an ensemble sent out every second and measurements (which won't start until the first emsembles reach A and B) are made also every second. Now to send a message from B to A one just needs, for each ensemble arriving at B each second, to either observe the ensemble (call it bit '1') or not observe (bit '0'). Then, simultaneously, at A, one just needs to do measurements to determine if each incoming ensemble is in superposition states or not. If superposition then bit='0', if not, then bit='1'. Since the sending and receiving of the messages is simultaneous there is the violation of the speed of light.




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