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A new study recently conducted has brought contradictions to one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. This experiment took a team of 12 physicists from 10 different countries , over 100,000 volunteer gamers and over 97 million data units all of which were randomly generated by hand. This experiment was carried out to test for quantum entanglement which was referred to as spooky action at a distance by Albert Einstein.
WHAT IS ENTANGLEMENT OR SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE?
Entanglement is an aspect of quantum mechanics that many found distressing and unexpected including those who developed quantum mechanics. According to the mathematics of quantum mechanics, you should be able to set up two entangled particles in two distant locations let's say one in London and the other in Manchester, with each of these particles being in an indefinite state or in more modern term referred to as spin. Particles spin, if the particle is spinning clockwise we say it's spinning up while if it's spinning counterclockwise we say it's spinning down. The idea is having two entangled particles at different locations, each spinning up and down at the same time. What was found was that if for instance you go over to the particle in London and measure it, saying it snaps out of the haze and spins up, the particle over in Manchester at that same moment according to mathematics will snap out of the haze and spin down even if nothing was done to it. The experiment can be reversed, measuring the particle in Manchester while it spins up, the one in London will spin down without nothing being done to it and it seemed crazy. This is what Einstein referred to as spooky. It was surprising and unimaginable to say you do something to a particle at a location and if affects another in another location instantaneously with no time delay and Einstein didn't find it plausible, he argued that this quantum behavior was impossible and suggested they could be explained by hidden instructions in the entangled particles. This whole idea was based on the principles of locality and realism jointly known as local realism.
Locality basically explains that objects or particles can only be affected by happenings in their immediate surrounding, a part of the concept of locality tells us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Realism concept explains that objects or particles in the universe have well defined properties even when we are not looking at them.
Now these two concepts seems plausible to all, evidence however shows that they are not actually compatible in the field of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has shown that just by observation of particles in the universe, their properties can be altered which is contradictory to the concept of realism. Also the principle of locality contradicts the phenomenon of particles communicating at an instant over large distances which implies that there must be some hidden information between these particles which travels faster than the speed of light.
The Bell Test
The Bell test was named after physicist John Stewart Bell. In this test, pairs of entangled particles for instance photons are generated and then sent to different location after which the properties of the photons such as it's color or time of arrival are measured. If the results of the measurement of these properties agree, irrespective of the property that was measured then it implies that the measurement of one particle affects the other which is strange as they were placed far away from each other. Another strange assumption will be that the properties never existed at first but were created by the measurement. Anyway you put it both contradicts local realism as explained above.
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The Big Bell Test
Over the years different number of Bell tests have been carried out to confirm the theory of quantum mechanics over those of local realism. However there appeared to be one big issue which has made it impossible to completely rule out the explanation provided by local realism. This was seen a a flaw and it was referred to as the "freedom of choice loophole" which explains the possibility of the particles themselves influencing the choice of measurement and if this was true it will make Bell test invalid as it will be like allowing students set their own examination. Bell tests usually requires random independently generated number sequences which aids in determining the measurement to be performed on quantum objects.
To close the freedom of choice loophole the big bell test was organized on November 30th 2016 with about a hundred thousand volunteer gamers worldwide who were referred to as Bellsters asked to play a custom made online game called The Big Bell Quest. In the game the players are required to tap two buttons on their screen repeatedly with both buttons representing binary digits one and zero respectively. This meant the gamers were the ones choosing the measurements, the loopholes cannot be closed by using random number generators because there is the possibility that these physical systems are coordinated with the entangled particles. Human choices helped in introducing the element of freewill to the mix by which players can choose independently of whatever the particle might be doing.
The bits created from the gaming activities of the volunteers were channeled to state of the art laboratories in different countries and were then used in setting up angles of polarizers and other laboratory equipment to determine how the entangled particles were measured. So for the first time ever the freedom of choice loophole was closed and the results from the experiments successfully disproved the concept of local realism.
The large number of volunteer gamers gave an extra edge and it helped in reducing uncertainty and increasing precision by providing different random numbers which helped the scientists to carry out different run of experiments to ensure accuracy.
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