It’s almost a year since Nicolas Gisin and colleagues at the University of Geneva announced that they had calculated that a human eye ought to be able to detect entangled photons. “Entanglement in principle could be seen,” they concluded.
That’s extraordinary because it would mean that the humans involved in such an experiment would become entangled themselves, if only for an instant.
Gisin is a world leader in quantum entanglement and his claims are by no means easy to dismiss.
Now he’s going a step further saying that the human eye could be used in a Bell type experiment to sense spooky-action-at-a-distance. “Quantum experiments with human
eyes as detectors appear possible, based on a realistic model of the eye as a photon detector,” they say.
One problem is that human eyes cannot se single photons–a handful are needed to trigger a nerve impulse to the brain.
That might have scuppered the possibility of a Bell-type experiment were it not for some interesting work from Francesco De Martini and buddies at the Universityof Rome, pointing out how the quantum properties of a single particle can be transferred to an ensemble of particles.
That allows a single entangled photon, which a human eye cannot see, to be amplified into a number of entangled photons that can be seen. The eye can then be treated like any other detector.
This all looks like fun. The first person to experience entanglement –mantanglement–would surely be destined for some interesting press covereage.
But the work raises an obvious question: why is Gisin pursuing this line? The human eyeball could be put to use in plenty of optics experiments, so why the focus on mantanglement?
Could it be that Gisin thinks there is more to entanglement than meets the eye?
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0902.2896: Quantum experiments with human eyes as detectors based on cloning via stimulated
emission
When we say that humans can detect a bunch of fotons, it means that not only that a retinal ganglionar cell fires due to such fotons, but also that the psychological sensation of to view a small light spark is activated after visual processing. So, perhaps it is possible to have psychological entangled states (or not, it is important to calculate the duration of the entangled state and if visual processing destroy or could amplify it (in duration and number of particles).
[...] Einstein saw it with numbers and equations; modern scientists see it with expensive machines; but could everyday eyes see it? – The Physics arXiv Blog: Human eye could detect spooky action at a distance [...]
When they named our species homo(=man) sapiens they didn’t leave out the women.
Or to be on the safe side, just use the word “Homo” instead.
@Anthony, maybe I missed something? “homo” means “same”, compare homogeneous, homosexual, etc.
@Henry, LOL!
And why, there’s the word, how much more exact can you get?: homotanglement! Didn’t sound half as gay as mantanglement. Everybody happy now? (oops! not all the gay attenders who now think I’m homophobic for de-gaying the expression!)
Nah, enough of this.
Well back to the more scientific side of things (or not): I’ve actually seen radio waves. And soundwaves. And the sky falling – slowly. And, yes I had ingested a fairly big amount of mushrooms. Beautiful experience. Zooming in on trees and seeing the relational differences of frequency of the waveforms. That’s what I saw when walking in the forest.
They really should incorporate mushrooms into these experiments
I also experienced two time-speeds from different senses! While still being syncronized in time (how’s that even possible, I tried and tried to analyze the experience). Woa, mushrooms is the shit
It’s quantum shit!
Getting off topic.
I agree with Hex.
However, I can see why mantanglement was used in this instance. ‘man’ is one syllable ‘en’ is one syllable and they both end in the same sound. The author was trying to get a word as close to entanglement as possible that mixed in people, none of the other options had this quality.
It really is a nightmare for gender conscious grammarians that woman and man don’t have a single grammatical root that doesn’t infer the preclusion of one sex.
“Mantanglement? Men only? And they wonder why physics can’t attract and keep women in the field.”
You are not railing against sexism, as you appear to believe. You are railing against your own lack of understanding of English.
But don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, let the men do all the thinking and we’ll be fine.
Is homotanglement less gay than mantanglement?
I think this is actually exciting because maybe we can start testing all the crazy consciousness-quantum theory theories put forth by Penrose and others!
Quantum Entanglement has absolutely nothing to do with FTL communications know-how.
Anytime you use a mechanical linkage to transmit data, the data is sent from one end of the link to the other at instantaneous speed. Given a long enough linkage, you can theoretically send information a long distance at greater-than-light speed. These types of action at-a-distance phenomena are happening around us all the time, it’s just that we aren’t aware of them.
Entanglement is real, as anyone who has observed diffraction patterns can readily tell you.
You should read what Stephen Lehar has to say about photons and conciousness. In _The World Inside Your Head_, not only does he propose that we experience reality completely inside our brains, but that the virtual reality within our cortex is the ONLY reality there is. As an extension to this, we can infer that the entire spectrum of reality exists completely within our brains, and there is nothing (just an empty void) outside of our own experiences. Heavy stuff. Wonder what will happen to the first entwined human…
would watching an entangled movie allow us to see the beginning, middle, and the end all at the same time? How efficient that would be!
oh4real
You have the right spin on the entire phenomenon.
Err…Niven, I’m pretty sure that’s a form of philosophy known as “idealism.” Its a rather ridiculous philosophy that got the stuffing beat out of it by Immanuel Kant.
Anyways, what with the absurdities of the field of quantum physics, there seems to be this psuedo-tribalist spiritual movement among the scientific community.
Which is ridiculous. I can already tell you that the reason why “observing” a particle gives different results than using indirect monitoring, because one of the two, or both, are inaccurate. We don’t have the proper equipment to monitor the sub atomic world with complete accuracy.
AND WHAT’S WITH THE RADICAL FEMINISM, PEOPLE?!?
Radical feminism, such as railing against grammar, is ITSELF sexist! Get a life! Complain about something that actually has some bearing on people other than yourself!
In fact, radical feminism is a complete mishmash of self-destructive philosophies. On one hand, you have the feminists who believe they have the right to purposefully make themselves objects, than feminists who believe they have the right to make men objects, then you have the feminists who want to make both objects! Its ridiculous! Discussion over!
Now start talking about quantum physics, people!
This is an amazing evidence to my theory that we can sense the light at the place it is generated without photons from the light having to reach us.
Human eyes can detect action at a distance!!!
The fact that we observe solar eclipse as it occurs i.e. exactly at the time when sun, earth, and moon are in a straight line shows that we can sense the light at the place it is generated and sense it instantaneously.
Several photon detectors placed at different location can simultaneously detect a single photon. Obviously, photon detectors, including our eyes can sense the photons.
If we extent double-slit experiment and make a slit each in the dark band as well as in the light band and peep through these slits then we find virtually no difference in the two views even though a lot less photons are supposed to reach the comparatively dark areas. We can see plenty of light even from the dark bands. This experiment also confirms our above observations.
For more info., pl. read my blog titled, ‘Solar Eclipse, Nature of light, & Information’ on the technology review website.
to Niven42: Mechanical linkages move at the speed of sound in the material(s) they are made of. Even if you had a hundred-mile-long rod with a handwheel on one end and gave it a twist, I’m pretty sure the motion imparted would die out somewhat shy of the other end, due to heat loss. And that would be true even if you had the rod somewhere between here and Mars. Historically, we never bothered with long-distance linkages; we used smoke signals, heliographs and finally the telegraph to communicate.
The speed of light—a billion feet a second—is still the limit. Quantum Entanglement will be a laboratory curiosity for quite a while yet.
It’s strange how we can entangle myriad particles, but that the entanglement mysteriously “collapses” when we make an “observation”.
Wait a minute, but we’re constructed of quamtum particles too? And when we make an “observation” we ourselves are necessarily becoming “entangled” with the quantum system we are observing?
So the “collapse” occurs when we become part of it, and are viewing the system from the “inside”? Aha.