Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Are we only on the outside of reality(how information travel faster than the speed of light)?

 IN 1982 the French physicist Alain Aspect conducted an experiment that some people believe is one of the most important scientific events of the 20th century — one that has the potential to change our entire assessment of reality. Simply put, the experiment provided strong evidence that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantly communicate with each other regardless of whether they were 10 metres or 10 billion kilometres apart. More importantly, it violated Einstein’s edict that information can’t travel faster than the speed of light; that there can be no “spooky action at a distance” as he put it. 
    The late quantum physicist David Bohm, however, had a different take on it. He proposed that the observed electrons were not actually two separate entities but aspects of the same unity being manifest in altered viewing conditions. Think of an aquarium, he said, holding a single fish which we cannot see directly. Rather, we rely on images being recorded by two video cameras positioned in front and on one side of the aquarium. If one were to see the two video monitors one would get the initial impression that there were two fish inside the tank since the 
angle of videography would be different from two sides. 
    After a while, though, it might slowly start becoming apparent that there was some kind of relationship between the images. That, for instance, even while one fish appeared to face the front and the other was sideways, when the first made a movement or turn, the second always made a different but cor
responding (and simultaneous) movement or turn too. Thus, if a person was unaware of the camera arrangement, he or she could easily come to the conclusion that the two fish were in some kind of direct and intimate communication with each other. 
    Therefore, according to Bohm then, the Alain Aspect experiment only reveals what is really going in the subatomic world of electrons and other such particles. The apparent faster than light communication between them is telling us there exists a deeper level of reality we are not privy to where such a “pair” of electrons is only communicating with a part of itself. Or, to put it another way, the level of reality we are privy to is deceptive, misleading and, ultimately, illusory. And that all we ever know of the underlying reality are the ways in which it appears to manifest itself.

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