I Entanglement might be the result of an underlying law?

[wavering]

TL;DR Summary

Entanglement might be the result of an underlying law? So just in the way that snooker balls "know where to go when they are hit" in the same way entangled objects react when one of them is forced to declare its state

This is still a great mystery, Einstein called it ""spooky action at a distance"

But science and mathematics are full of concepts which at first cause great bafflement but in due course are just accepted. In the case of Quantum Mechanics this gave rise to the saying "Shut up and calculate". In other words, don't try to "understand it" just accept that the mathematics works.

The square root of minus one is another example - it does not exist and yet electrical engineers use it to do numerous useful things. Even the concept of zero has caused great distress in the past. And I am still struggling with cardinality - the idea that not all infinite sets are equal in size

But let's consider the actions of Snooker Balls (Americans can think of Pool). If you project a snooker ball into a group of other snooker balls they will fly all over the place in a manner which may look random but is strictly in accord with the law of the conservation of kinetic energy and the law of the conservation of momentum. So a dozen balls interact in a tiny fraction of a second and then all go on their way in a totally predictable manner. How do they know where to go?

Do they communicate with each other? Is there a central computer that issues instructions of velocity and direction? No, and this is the crucial point, they go where they go because they MUST obey the two laws referred to above. How they do it is really a great mystery but because it is so commonplace we don't see it as a mystery.

Maybe quantum entanglement is the same - the two particles MUST obey the Law of Entanglement (I just invented it) so they have to do what they do. Just like the snooker balls. But how they do it is a mystery - just like the snooker balls.

At the heart of this mystery is the question I have never seen asked "how do physical phenomenon know how to obey laws?"

[My background is a degree in Mathematical Physics from many decades ago]

 

[.Scott]

At the heart of this mystery is the question I have never seen asked "how do physical phenomenon know how to obey laws?"

I won't answer that question, but I will point out that if the laws of Physics were not followed, we would not be here to discuss it.
In a certain sense, the question is "too fundamental".

As for your more general question, it is always the point of Physics to describe things in the most simple and basic terms possible.

There is one issue that you will need to know before playing pool (snookers) with quantum particles: the Physical laws as currently described will not let you know ahead of time exactly where your billiard balls will end up. They only provide statistics. And, of course, you will never know precisely where the cue ball is.

The purpose of describing entanglement is to describe what has been discovered in experiments. It's not so much that the photons are following the rules - it's more like the rules are part of the description of what a photon is.

 

[Esim Can]

It might be helpful to think a bit different for answering the question, how did they know to obey the rules i think. These so called rules are mostly patterns, constructed in our own way of looking at nature. Not only mathematical and physical give us after so much research falsifiable methods and models, but our own brain is wired an a very specific way to survive as an organism. Take for example the concept of space itself. Your question could be paraphrased like "how do space knows, that it is spacious?" But if we look closer we even could postulate, that we as humans are a space obsessed species. We are a species, with two eyes, frontal view to construct a 3d space with distance to make us climb trees and not to fall out of them. Our survival brain models reality as space to guarantee, that we do not fall of a tree oder estimate the distance to our prey or predators. What physics, what maths would be invented from a species, for example a blind species with heightened smell oder feeling wavelengths on its fur?

How do WE KNOW, that space is not a evolutionary biological model-theory out of which we perceive nature? To try to answer your question: Not the snooker balls know the rules, we set them up on their pattern do describe their repeating patterns i think. Modern assumptions work more and more without a space as the base background of events. Relativity was the first huge and well known idea, getting rid of the absolute space-time. I think future theories will go further and show one day, that space and time are some emergent phenomenon from deeper patterns, but only a personal view. Because there are mathematical formalisms working without space but can describe space-time from a different point of view. An example is Fisher-information-metric. Or perhaps look at the light-front-form of Dirac, where he can establish a simultaneity inside relativity.

I would highly suggest to never "shut up and calculate". Mostly right there is a hint of the universe to someone bigger.

Greetings
Esim Can

 

[berkeman]

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[berkeman]

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