- #1
zenith8
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Further to my recent post on not understanding why physical length contraction in Lorentzian relativity doesn't imply an empirical difference with Einsteinian STR:
It seems to me that Bell's theorem and the Aspect EPR-style experiments demonstrating non-locality in quantum mechanics imply an absolute simultaneity and therefore that there must be a preferred frame. The experimentally confirmed instantaneous action at a distance cannot occur otherwise (the actual results of the experiment would be observer dependent if there were no such frame).
Hence (nutter alert) Einstein is wrong, not all frames are equivalent, and therefore we must look at a theory with an absolute space (hence my interest in Lorentzian relativity). This does not seem to be controversial to me, though I have hardly ever seen it mentioned by anyone?
If you want to believe that nonlocality doesn't exist, then (it seems to me) you have only the following four options:
(1) Loopholes: claim that improving detector efficiencies in the EPR-style experiments will invalidate the results. Usually taken to be desperate clutching-at-straws.
(2) Deny `realism' i.e. the belief that there is a material world the description of which is the task of physics - but can this really be seriously questioned?
(3) Believe the many-worlds interpretation, i.e. make two problems - nonlocality and macroscopic superpositions in measurement - go away, at the cost of believing in something apparently ludicrous (eight bazillion new universes per second). NOTE TO CONFUSED: Bell's theorem refers to correlations between the results of experiments in the two (widely-separated) arms of an EPR experiment. If every damned thing that could possibly happen happens at both ends and forms a separate universe then there are no such things as correlations therefore Bell's theorem is irrelevant.
(4) Allow time travel into the past (barmy, unless one can demonstrate how or why this might happen).
None of these things seem very plausible to me.
So my question is the following. Given the fact that these experiments were done about a quarter of a century ago, and that to all intents and purposes nonlocality is an experimentally-proven fact, why has there been no wholesale switch away from Einsteinian every-frame-is-equivalent STR towards Lorentz style formulations? (note the same conclusions also apply to GTR as far as I can see).
Cheers,
Zenith
It seems to me that Bell's theorem and the Aspect EPR-style experiments demonstrating non-locality in quantum mechanics imply an absolute simultaneity and therefore that there must be a preferred frame. The experimentally confirmed instantaneous action at a distance cannot occur otherwise (the actual results of the experiment would be observer dependent if there were no such frame).
Hence (nutter alert) Einstein is wrong, not all frames are equivalent, and therefore we must look at a theory with an absolute space (hence my interest in Lorentzian relativity). This does not seem to be controversial to me, though I have hardly ever seen it mentioned by anyone?
If you want to believe that nonlocality doesn't exist, then (it seems to me) you have only the following four options:
(1) Loopholes: claim that improving detector efficiencies in the EPR-style experiments will invalidate the results. Usually taken to be desperate clutching-at-straws.
(2) Deny `realism' i.e. the belief that there is a material world the description of which is the task of physics - but can this really be seriously questioned?
(3) Believe the many-worlds interpretation, i.e. make two problems - nonlocality and macroscopic superpositions in measurement - go away, at the cost of believing in something apparently ludicrous (eight bazillion new universes per second). NOTE TO CONFUSED: Bell's theorem refers to correlations between the results of experiments in the two (widely-separated) arms of an EPR experiment. If every damned thing that could possibly happen happens at both ends and forms a separate universe then there are no such things as correlations therefore Bell's theorem is irrelevant.
(4) Allow time travel into the past (barmy, unless one can demonstrate how or why this might happen).
None of these things seem very plausible to me.
So my question is the following. Given the fact that these experiments were done about a quarter of a century ago, and that to all intents and purposes nonlocality is an experimentally-proven fact, why has there been no wholesale switch away from Einsteinian every-frame-is-equivalent STR towards Lorentz style formulations? (note the same conclusions also apply to GTR as far as I can see).
Cheers,
Zenith