Re: Universal non-point of light

Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:48:13 -0800


From: Michael Lorrey <retroman@tpk.net>
> From this, we can see that it becomes
> possible to communicate at faster than light speeds. Using a reference
> light source, at point C, individuals at points A and B can communicate
> by using devices that only have a 50% chance of receiving a photon at
> any given moment. Like the classic cat experiment, by using binary 1s
> and 0s to selectively observe and not observe the reference source of
> photons, we selectively collapse and fail to collapse the wave function.

No, you can't communicate using such a device! This is the original
EPR paradox, and as has been discussed here recently, Bell's work does
imply that something strange is going on here. But there are no results
that I am aware of in standard QM which would allow communication via
the faster-than-light connections which are often invoked to explain
the results.

Hal