On hadron colliders, dark matter and black holes

[torstan]

And now we have a claim for the first ever evidence of a direct detection signal. CDMS in the Soudan mine has released evidence that they have seen two events consistent with dark matter recoiling off the target material in their detector. There's still a sizable chance that these are just chance events (23% is their number for the chance that this is nothing) so no-ones claiming an actual discovery yet - despite what all the news sources are saying. We need more time and a bit of a technical upgrade to turn that suggestion into solid evidence. But, nonetheless, it looks like we're finally drawing the curtain back.

If this is an actual signal then it rules out one of my papers. That's pretty exciting.

[Turgenev]

I was reading about the CDMS at the Starts With A Bang blog. Interesting stuff. I loved the CERN twitter pic! Sounds like someone has been folding space & time to peak at some of my RPG notes.

[moutarde]

Thanks for all the updates Torstan, this entire thread has been a fabulous read

[meleeguy]

Forgive me if this is too far off topic, but I posit this thought;

If

spooky action at a distance stands
and there is evidence of non-local determinism
and action and determinism are related (I opine)

then is spooky determinism at a distance possible?

I am a computer scientist by training with a modest interest in things quantum, mainly how they interact with computer science. Thanks for reading!

[Karro]

Melee guy... was that nerd poetry?

Or just peculiar science terminology?

[waldronate]

Melee guy... was that nerd poetry?

Or just peculiar science terminology?

It certainly seems to have been.

[meleeguy]

Indeed.

It pleases me that it may be taken as such, but it is meant as a casual yet earnest inquiry.

[Juggernaut1981]

It's bona fide 100% techno-babble.
Although, for those of you with ovaries and nerd tendencies, this may have been close to a Geek-Sonnet. Short of the amusing one on Think Geek which involves Roses are [colour code], Violets are [colour code].... etc, etc, etc

[meleeguy]

In an alternate universe, Einstein carefully prepares to remove the soles of another pair of shoes.

[torstan]

Apologies for the total silence - was running round to UK dodging snow storms trying to see all family in 8 days. Done and successful and back in NYC now.

Okay, let's see.

Spooky action at a distance? Well we do have this. The collapse of the wave function is instantaneous and non-local. So if you have two particles that are entangled, then if one goes from a superposition of states (say pointing up and pointing down) to just one of those states (so it's now pointing up, or pointing down, but not both) then the other immediately decides whether it's up or down and is also not in a superposition any more. This does happen instantly and has been referred to as spooky action at a distance. However we can never use this for faster than light transfer of information sadly.

Non-local determinism? What do you mean by this?

Action and determinism are related? Again, can you expand a little on what you mean by this?

Now spooky determinism at a distance is a tricky one. The fact that the only non-local processes that we believe to exist are quantum ones, and therefore fundamentally probabilistic means that determinsim at a distance is unlikely. However, as I mentioned before, there's a degree of determinism here.

Say you have a pair of electrons that are oppositely directed so that if one is up, then the other is down. Now each electron (in this example) is created in a superposition of being directed up and directed down (superposition is just a fancy word for saying that it's a bit of both).

At the start both electrons can be represented by:

(up + down)/√2

(Feel free to ignore the √2 - it's just there to keep the probability of the electron being either up or down to 1)

Now say these go off across the universe. One hits a researcher who looks at it. Now quantum mechanics says that when you look at something it can't be two things at once. It has to be one or the other. So electron 1 has to pick. Let's say it chooses to be directed up (a 50% chance in the example above).

Electron 1=Up

As soon as that happens, the other electron must be directed down.

Electron 2=Down

So with that, a deterministic event has happened, if one changes state then the other changes state in a totally deterministic way, instantly across an arbitrarily large distance. Now the initial event - the choice of electron 1 to be up or down - will always be probabilistic. However the chain of events that follows is entirely deterministic.