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Making Sure Our Lab Equipment Isn't Tricking Us

An anonymous reader writes "In a newly published paper, MIT researchers propose an experiment that may close the last major loophole of Bell's inequality. The test is to see whether, as far-fetched as it sounds, a particle detector's settings conspire with events in the shared past to determine which properties of a particle to measure — a scenario that implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector's setting. MIT’s David Kaiser says, 'It sounds creepy, but people realized that's a logical possibility that hasn't been closed yet. Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?' The test involves quasars, telescopes, and lots of deep, deep space. It was published this week in the journal Physical Review Letters (pre-print available at the arXiv)."

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  1. Forced Blindness by JimSadler · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    For quite a few people with either religious or unusual beliefs there is a belief that the nature of reality or actuality can not be penetrated as a designed law installed by a creator. If it is simply an advanced race and we are living in their simulated universe or whether if is God that intends for us to live within a perpetual mystery the end result is the same. Humanity will never be allowed to understand the nature of things. There is also some belief that only after death are we allowed understanding.