Quantum Experiment Shows Effect Before Cause

steveb3210 writes "Physicists have demonstrated that making a decision about whether or not to entangle two photons can be made after you've already measured the states of the photons." Here's the article's description of the experiment: 'Two independent sources (labeled I and II) produce pairs of photons such that their polarization states are entangled. One photon from I goes to Alice, while one photon from II is sent to Bob. The second photon from each source goes to Victor. Alice and Bob independently perform polarization measurements; no communication passes between them during the experiment—they set the orientation of their polarization filters without knowing what the other is doing. At some time after Alice and Bob perform their measurements, Victor makes a choice (the "delayed choice" in the name). He either allows his two photons from I and II to travel on without doing anything, or he combines them so that their polarization states are entangled. A final measurement determines the polarization state of those two photons. ... Ma et al. found to a high degree of confidence that when Victor selected entanglement, Alice and Bob found correlated photon polarizations. This didn't happen when Victor left the photons alone.'

Comments

Re:First before I even posted!

[geekoid]

This study does lend wait to my hypothesis:
The universe doesn't care about your're stupid theoretical paradoxes.
You kill you grandma? you still exist with the memories because you have been inserted into reality. Another you won't exists, but so the fuck what?

I think once we get past the false idea of paradoxes being anything more then are limited ability to conceive time as anything but linear.

Or I could be wrong.