[SEQ RERUN] Entangled Photons
Today’s post, Entangled Photons was originally published on 03 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Using our newly acquired understanding of photon polarizations, we see how to construct a quantum state of two photons in which, when you measure one of them, the person in the same world as you, will always find that the opposite photon has opposite quantum state. This is not because any influence is transmitted; it is just decoherence that takes place in a very symmetrical way, as can readily be observed in our calculations.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Decoherence as Projection, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
For everyone else who was curious, it looks like we’ll be out of the quantum physics sequence and toward the metaethics sequence in a couple weeks or so.
This post would be about a thousand times easier to follow if it wasn’t all in-line text based maths.