Keith
>Meta 122. 6/29/98. Approximately lines.
>Please feel free to forward all Meta postings in their entirety.
>
>Below is a message from me on Entangled Quantum States. I pose some follow
>up questions to a talk on the subject at the Chicago Summer Workshop by
>William Wootters from Physics at Williams College.
>
>-- Billy Grassie
>
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>
>A week ago at the Chicago Summer Workshop, Bill Wootters from Williams
>College gave an exciting talk on Entangled Quantum States. The talk was
>memorable for Wootters exceptional clarity and enthusiasm in explaining
>these perplexing phenomena from Quantum Mechanics. Subatomic particles
>that originate from the same source are in an entangled quantum state,
>which means that a measurement of one particle "forces" the opposite
>"fixing" of the other particle. This is described in the "Schroedinger's
>Cat Experiment." Entangled Quantum States raise some perplexing
>metaphysical problems for physics regarding temporality and instantaneous
>causation at a distance. Entangled Quantum States also hold technological
>promise in the creation of quantum computers and teleportation devices.
>
>In the question and answer period which followed Wootters' talk, we
>discussed some of the implications of these phenomena. In particular, I
>have been meditating on what it means literally and metaphorically to say
>that all particles in the Universe originate from the same sources (the
>Singularity), that all particles in the Universe are therefore in an
>entangled state, and that there is therefore also an aspect of the Present
>Universe which retroactively "signifies" the Past Universe.
>
>I would welcome clarifications and commentary. Thank you.
>
>Billy Grassie
>
>
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Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/