Autcsrgv.298
net.misc
utzoo!utcsrgv!donald
Tue Apr 20 16:05:47 1982
Re: instantaneous telepathy

re: ucbcory.339 (Special Relativity prohibiting instantaneous communication)

There IS something with Einstein didn't provide for when he formulated
special and general relativity: the infamous quantum theory which plagued
him for the rest of his days.  In fact, I don't believe relativity and
quantum theory have yet been integrated to everybody's satisfaction.

Consider, say, an electron, which has an associated wave function which
in the Born interpretation represents the probability of finding that
electron at any point in space.  One could perform an experiment and
detect the electron at point P, and sometime later perform an experiment
and in theory detect the electron anywhere else in the universe.
This principle applies even to macroscopic objects, albiet the probabilities
involved are much lower.  But consider: the "collapse" of the wave function
in determining the location experimentally must happen instantaneously!
There can be no elapsed time because the electron doesn't *travel*
between the two points.  It cannot disappear and reappear after a time
interval which is detectable, either, for that would violate energy
conservation.  Thus, at the quantum level, it would appear that "events"
can occur instantaneously in some sense.

Now in special relativity there are what are called "space-like" events,
which are two events which cannot be connected by a light ray, so that
it is impossible to say which event happened "first" or if they happened
at the "same" time.  However, there is a thought experiment that one
can perform in quantum mechanics where we can observe two space-like
events repeatedly and see that the two events are *correlated*  This
implies that the events are somehow "connected", moreover, this connection
must be *superluminal* because, after all, the events are space-like.

Now if I were a rabidly pro-PSI and a reckless speculator (which I
vehemently deny) I would hypothesize that the mechanism of telepathy
could depend on events which occur at the level at which quantum effects
are significant, hence instantaneous telepathy is possible.

I admit that I'm not a physicist by trade, so I would welcome any
opinions from one


                                                 Don Chan (utcsrgv!donald)

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