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'Ingenious' Experiment Closes Loopholes In Quantum Theory
Annanag writes: A Bell experiment in the Netherlands has plugged loopholes in the theory of quantum mechanics using a technique called entanglement swapping to combine the benefits of using both light and matter. It's Nobel-Prize winning stuff. Quoting: "Experiments that use entangled photons are prone to the ‘detection loophole’: not all photons produced in the experiment are detected, and sometimes as many as 80% are lost. Experimenters therefore have to assume that the properties of the photons they capture are representative of the entire set. ...
[In the new work], researchers started with two unentangled electrons sitting in diamond crystals held in different labs on the Delft campus, 1.3 kilometers apart. Each electron was individually entangled with a photon, and both of those photons were then zipped to a third location. There, the two photons were entangled with each other — and this caused both their partner electrons to become entangled, too.
This did not work every time. In total, the team managed to generate 245 entangled pairs of electrons over the course of nine days. The team's measurements exceeded Bell’s bound, once again supporting the standard quantum view. Moreover, the experiment closed both loopholes at once: because the electrons were easy to monitor, the detection loophole was not an issue, and they were separated far enough apart to close the communication loophole, too."
[In the new work], researchers started with two unentangled electrons sitting in diamond crystals held in different labs on the Delft campus, 1.3 kilometers apart. Each electron was individually entangled with a photon, and both of those photons were then zipped to a third location. There, the two photons were entangled with each other — and this caused both their partner electrons to become entangled, too.
This did not work every time. In total, the team managed to generate 245 entangled pairs of electrons over the course of nine days. The team's measurements exceeded Bell’s bound, once again supporting the standard quantum view. Moreover, the experiment closed both loopholes at once: because the electrons were easy to monitor, the detection loophole was not an issue, and they were separated far enough apart to close the communication loophole, too."
Science doesn't explain why at all. How could it?
No number of cannonballs dropped off of towers will tell you why they fall.
A mathematical description of what happens is exactly what one wants. If you cannot show anything, what happens and is not covered by the mathematical description, and you can deduct things what will happen, that wasn't known before, then you have a theory.
If you want an answer to the question why, you are not looking for science.
The difference is, that we are speaking here about a failure rate of singular events, which is a technical problem, and requires a larger population of events for sufficient confidence.
That is contrary to the results the previous article, that regardless of the population size, we cannot reproduce the result, which is a systemic problem.
Because you don't get to 'flip' anything without breaking entanglement. You can just measure one electron and be sure that the same measurement will give you the same result in entangled one. It is like having two random number generators with the same seed - they always give the same (random) answer, but it does not allow you to transmit anything.
Gravity exists because spacetime, curved by massive bodies, effectively changes what it means to have inertial reference frames from the more intuitive Newtonian notion. Take away the massive bodies and spacetime flattens, straight lines are Euclidean, and gravitational attraction goes away. Gravity, then, exists due to the interaction between mass and spacetime.
Of course, you could ask why that interaction exists, and keep asking the question as more explanations are found. I don't know that that'd ever end, but I guess you could eventually hit some inherent axiom or self-referential property of nature. If you're asking for some ultimate underlying conscious intention, though, you may find yourself disappointed, or at least you should accept the possibility that such a question may simply not apply.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.