From:
Caroline Thompson [ch.thompson1@virgin.net]
Sent: 15
July 2005 16:25
To:
letters@newscientist.com
Subject:
Changing the past
The Editor
New
Scientist
Dear Sir
How about
checking whether or not there really is any conclusive evidence for "quantum
entanglement" before doing anything as drastic as suggesting messages
travelling backwards in time! Henry
Harris and Tony Fowler suggested (letters, 9 July, p21) that assuming the
existence of such messages would be preferable to assuming that ones that went
faster than light, but I've had a hard look at the experimental facts and
satisfied myself, at any rate, that *neither* of these uncomfortable options is
necessary.
To me, it
seems very much more satisfactory to assume that the quantum-mechanical formula
here is wrong, and to explain the apparent agreement of experiments with its
predictions as due to the presence of various "loopholes". It is not hard to see that the latter lead
to slight adjustments of the ordinary classical model -- adjustments that
result in as good a fit to the data as the QM formula. Indeed, I suggest the classical model can do
better, in that it will still give a good fit when experimental conditions are
altered, e.g. by using different detectors or different beam intensities, while
QM begins to fail.
There is no
need to invoke any weird ideas to explain the actual experiments, only to
explain the results of quantum-mechanical *thought* experiments!
For more on
the loopholes in the Bell tests, see my web site:
http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/
Yours
sincerely
Caroline H
Thompson