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Autcsrgv.298 net.misc utzoo!utcsrgv!donald Tue Apr 20 16:05:47 1982 Re: instantaneous telepathy

re: ucbcory.339 (Special Relativity prohibiting instantaneous communication)

There IS something with Einstein didn't provide for when he formulated special and general relativity: the infamous quantum theory which plagued him for the rest of his days. In fact, I don't believe relativity and quantum theory have yet been integrated to everybody's satisfaction.

Consider, say, an electron, which has an associated wave function which in the Born interpretation represents the probability of finding that electron at any point in space. One could perform an experiment and detect the electron at point P, and sometime later perform an experiment and in theory detect the electron anywhere else in the universe. This principle applies even to macroscopic objects, albiet the probabilities involved are much lower. But consider: the "collapse" of the wave function in determining the location experimentally must happen instantaneously! There can be no elapsed time because the electron doesn't *travel* between the two points. It cannot disappear and reappear after a time interval which is detectable, either, for that would violate energy conservation. Thus, at the quantum level, it would appear that "events" can occur instantaneously in some sense.

Now in special relativity there are what are called "space-like" events, which are two events which cannot be connected by a light ray, so that it is impossible to say which event happened "first" or if they happened at the "same" time. However, there is a thought experiment that one can perform in quantum mechanics where we can observe two space-like events repeatedly and see that the two events are *correlated* This implies that the events are somehow "connected", moreover, this connection must be *superluminal* because, after all, the events are space-like.

Now if I were a rabidly pro-PSI and a reckless speculator (which I vehemently deny) I would hypothesize that the mechanism of telepathy could depend on events which occur at the level at which quantum effects are significant, hence instantaneous telepathy is possible.

I admit that I'm not a physicist by trade, so I would welcome any opinions from one

Don Chan (utcsrgv!donald)

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