More Quantum Weirdness

   This is the most recent experiment confirming the apparently random nature of the Universe, and how our senses co-create reality as we perceive and measure the world around us. No one is sure of exactly where the transition between the micro and macro worlds exists, but it's fascinating to wonder how it all relates to how the human mind constructs it's version of existence.

    >"Random number generators developed at ICFO -- The Institute of Photonic Sciences, by the groups of ICREA Professors Morgan W. Mitchell and Valerio Pruneri, played a critical role in the historic experiment was published online today in Nature by the group of Ronald Hanson at TU Delft. The experiment gives the strongest refutation to date of Albert Einstein's principle of "local realism," which says that the universe obeys laws, not chance, and that there is no communication faster than light.

As described in Hanson's group web the Delft experiment first "entangled" two electrons trapped inside two different diamond crystals, and then measured the electrons' orientations. In quantum theory entanglement is powerful and mysterious: mathematically the two electrons are described by a single "wave-function" that only specifies whether they agree or disagree, not which direction either spin points. In a mathematical sense, they lose their identities. "Local realism" attempts to explain the same phenomena with less mystery, saying that the particles must be pointing somewhere, we just don't know their directions until we measure them.
When measured, the Delft electrons did indeed appear individually random while agreeing very well. So well, in fact, that they cannot have had pre-existing orientations, as realism claims. This behaviour is only possible if the electrons communicate with each other, something that is very surprising for electrons trapped in different crystals. But here's the amazing part: in the Delft experiment, the diamonds were in different buildings, 1.3 km away from each other. Moreover, the measurements were made so quickly that there wasn't time for the electrons to communicate, not even with signals traveling at the speed of light. This puts "local realism" in a very tight spot: if the electron orientations are real, the electrons must have communicated. But if they communicated, they must have done so faster than the speed of light. There's no way out, and local realism is disproven. Either God does play "dice" with the universe, or electron spins can talk to each other faster than the speed of light.
This amazing experiment called for extremely fast, unpredictable decisions about how to measure the electron orientations. If the measurements had been predictable, the electrons could have agreed in advance which way to point, simulating communications where there wasn't really any, a gap in the experimental proof known as a "loophole." To close this loophole, the Delft team turned to ICFO, who hold the record for the fastest quantum random number generators. ICFO designed a pair of "quantum dice" for the experiment: a special version of their patented random number generation technology, including very fast "randomness extraction" electronics. This produced one extremely pure random bit for each measurement made in the Delft experiment. The bits were produced in about 100 ns, the time it takes light to travel just 30 meters, not nearly enough time for the electrons to communicate. "Delft asked us to go beyond the state of the art in random number generation. Never before has an experiment required such good random numbers in such a short time." Says Carlos Abellán, a PhD student at ICFO and a co-author of the Delft study.
For the ICFO team, the participation in the Delft experiment was more than a chance to contribute to fundamental physics. Prof. Morgan Mitchell comments: "Working on this experiment pushed us to develop technologies that we can now apply to improve communications security and high-performance computing, other areas that require high-speed and high-quality random numbers."
With the help of ICFO's quantum random number generators, the Delft experiment gives a nearly perfect disproof of Einstein's world-view, in which "nothing travels faster than light" and "God does not play dice." At least one of these statements must be wrong. The laws that govern the Universe may indeed be a throw of the dice."<

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Black Bear

       Saw my first bear of the year while riding my bike, and although they are common around here, mostly they avoid humans and thus see, hear or smell us long before we see them. This individual had crossed the road about fifty yards in front of me and disappeared down a bank into a wooded ravine. I was climbing slowly up a hill at the time and figured that it had continued on into the woods, but as I approached the spot where it had gone over the edge, it suddenly popped its head up as if it wanted to return back across the road at the same spot, so was no more than 15 feet to my side. I yelled "Hey!" as if it were a dog, which caused it to turn and run back into the ravine, stopping to look at me some 40 or 50 yards further on. No doubt I had startled it more than it had startled me, and fortunately black bears are very rarely aggressive, so as I talked calmly to it it eventually continued leisurely into the woods.

      One aspect of bears and other living creatures that always impresses me is the vividness of their color-and I consider black a true color when it is part of a wild animal.  It is unlike any other black, being instead a "living" vibrant hue that cannot be duplicated by paint or photograph, and shimmers like an aspen tree in the light. It makes such a contrast with the landscape around it that it appears to be almost separate from, like a crude simulation, yet the animal itself moves fluidly through the woods like a bird through the wind.