Dennis Yost Was Not Involved

Deb tossed one of Sadie’s plastic rings at a tower of blocks to knock it down, which is something Sadie doesn’t have the concept of doing yet.  She loves to knock down towers as fast as we build them, but has no concept of throwing something at it to make it happen.

So I said “that’s non-spooky action at a distance” to Sadie, as if that explained it.  Deb didn’t get the reference, which was floating around the top of my brain as I’d seen the phrase a couple times recently.

I told her it was a reference to “spooky action at a distance,” and I thought it was a quantum physics reference, probably to do with entanglement.  Then I said “wait, I have Google!”

Sure enough, the phrase, by Einstein, refers to a major prediction of quantum theory.  Two photons can be light years apart and entangled such that a polarity flip in one instantly happens in the other. Or something like that.  It apparently violates nothing, because there is no spoon space.  I love it when I pick these things up by osmosis and remember them enough to be almost useful.

1. Quantum entanglement is a neat thing. Many are already using it for encryption systems, making it damn near impossible to decrypt intercepted communications with the plus of letting people know someone has intercepted those same communications. NASA also has a scheme to use entanglement to increase the accuracy of GPS by ‘locking’ the atomic clocks on GPS satellites to the master clock on Earth, making all of them synchronized to the femtosecond..or even attosecond!

   Another possible application: the ansible, i.e. FTL communications.

   Posted by DCE  on  05/06  at  07:16 AM

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