Amir D. Aczel ( Four Walls Eight Windows 2001 pp.303)

303 Pages·2012·3.03 MB·English

by  Entanglement...The Greatest Mystery in Physics

entanglement
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E N TA N G L E M E N T
The Greatest Mystery in Physics
a mir d . aczel
FOUR WALLS E IGHT WINDOWS
NEW YORK
© 2001 Amir D. Aczel
Published in the United States by:
Four Walls Eight Windows
39 West 14th Street, room 503
New York, N.Y., 10011
Visit our website at http://www.4w8w.com
First printing September 2002.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by
any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Entanglement: the greatest mystery in physics/ by Amir D. Aczel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 1-56858-232-3
1. Quantum theory. I. Title.
qc174.12.A29 2002
530.12—dc21 2002069338
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States
Typeset and designed by Terry Bain
Illustrations, unless otherwise noted, by Ortelius Design.
for Ilana
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Contents
Preface / ix
A Mysterious Force of Harmony / 1
Before the Beginning / 7
Thomas Young’s Experiment / 17
Planck’s Constant / 29
The Copenhagen School / 37
De Broglie’s Pilot Waves / 49
Schrödinger and His Equation / 55
Heisenberg’s Microscope / 73
Wheeler’s Cat / 83
The Hungarian Mathematician / 95
Enter Einstein / 103
Bohm and Aharanov / 123
John Bell’s Theorem / 137
The Dream of Clauser, Horne, and Shimony / 149
Alain Aspect / 177
Laser Guns / 191
Triple Entanglement / 203
The Ten-Kilometer Experiment / 235
Teleportation: “Beam Me Up, Scotty” / 241
Quantum Magic: What Does It All Mean? / 249
Acknowledgements / 255
References / 266
Index / 269
vii
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Preface
“My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer
than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
—J.B.S. Haldane
n the fall of 1972, I was an undergraduate in mathe-
matics and physics at the University of California at
IBerkeley. There I had the good fortune to attend a spe-
cial lecture given on campus by Werner Heisenberg, one of
the founders of the quantum theory. While today I have some
reservations about the role Heisenberg played in history—at
the time other scientists left in protest of Nazi policies, he
stayed behind and was instrumental in Hitler’s attempts to
develop the Bomb—nevertheless his talk had a profound,
positive effect on my life, for it gave me a deep appreciation
for the quantum theory and its place in our efforts to under-
stand nature.
Quantum mechanics is the strangest field in all of science.
From our everyday perspective of life on Earth, nothing
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