IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 10

a penchant for reinventing himself, and in Kaiser's
Einstein, in a famous paper published with his
story he does not disappoint us.
colleagues Podolsky and rosen in 1935 saw similar
Why should people have started the basics of quanbizarre results as arising from a limitation of quantum
tum mechanics in 1975? Max Planck was thinking
mechanics-quantum mechanics must therefore be
these thoughts in 1900, and in later decades so were
incomplete. Bell not only showed that nonlocality
the greats of physics like Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg,
was inherent in quantum mechanics but that there
and Schrödinger. They could sweat over apparent
are experiments you can perform to test for it. But
paradoxes like the wave-particle duality, e.g., when
because Bell's work was regarded as so far from what
is electromagnetic radiation to be regarded as a wave
was then considered respectable main line physics, it
and when is it a stream of photons?
was 4 years before anyone published the first experiThe clue about the return to deep questions is in
mental verification. This was the work of a young
Kaiser's chapter "Shut up and Calculate." In the big
physicist, John Clauser, which appeared in 1972.
money period, 1945-1968, physics classes were full
An experiment disproving entanglement would have
and crowded, and overworked professors assigned
thrown into upheaval the very foundations of quantum
easily graded computational homework and exam
mechanics. A few years later he was to find a conproblems requiring the manipulation of numbers; no
genial environment in the FFG while a post-doctoral
thought was expected on the underlying deeper philostudent at Berkeley.
sophical implications of what was being calculated.
Bell's paper is one of the most cited in modern
And of course the jobs available to these students,
physics, and one wishes that Kaiser would explain
many in the defense industry, were to require numwhy he didn't win the Nobel Prize. If you can send
ber crunching, which meant slide rules
information faster than the speed of
and computers.
light, (superluminal communication)
Why should
In the early 1970s, with dismal job
then why not apply for a patent on a
prospects, people like rauscher and
device that will do it? This occurred to
people have
the FFG's other founder George WeisJack Sarfatti, who filed for one in May
started the
mann had the leisure and curiosity to
of 1978. Do a Google Patent search for
basics of
shake off the number crunching mindhim and his device and you'll come up
quantum
set and to start pondering the implicawith nothing. I wish Kaiser had told
tions of what are the seminal papers
us whether the patent office rejected
mechanics
for this book: two articles published
it - putting it into the same wastein 1975?
in the middle 1960s by the Irish physibasket that holds patent applications
cist John Bell, a scientist working "on
for perpetual motion machines - or
the fringes" who was then living in the united States.
whether Sarfatti withdrew the application. The latter
These articles firmly establish the principle of what is
seems likely. Two papers in the late 1970s, one from
called "quantum nonlocality." A way to think of nonPhilippe Eberhard and the other from GianCarlo Ghilocality is this: one can create a physics experiment
radi showed that Bell's nonlocality does not underresulting in the generation of two quantum particles
mine Einstein's relativity.
moving off in opposite directions. If you make a
Philippe Eberhard had been a physicist working at
measurement on one of these particles, say its posiBerkeley who had joined the FFG while GianCarlo
tion or momentum, the act of measurement affects the
Ghirardi had been at the International Center for Thephysical parameters of the particle - a well estaboretical Physics in Trieste. Like a number of physilished principle of quantum mechanics. But, according
cists drawn into the implications of Bell's work, he
to Bell, the particles are "entangled" and measurehad kept his investigations on the side - such work
ments you make on one particle are "nonlocal." They
was considered outside of mainstream respectable
immediately affect the other particle. This is very
physics and might jeopardize a career.
strange for two reasons - the immediate transfer of
The mysterious question of how information moves
information from one particle to its twin would seem
from one quantum particle to the brother with which
to violate a precept of Einstein's special relativity: you
it's entangled emerged at a time of popularity for a
can't send a signal to someone faster than light moves.
public performer named uri Geller, who apparently
The other queer thing is the mechanism whereby one
performed uncanny acts of mental telepathy, extra
particle communicates with the other - no matter how
sensory perception, and psychokinesis.1 The FFG and
long they have been separated, or how far. This is in
their friends at the nearby Stanford research Institute
marked contrast to phenomena physicists and engi[SrI] saw this quantum communication as a way of
neers feel they understand quite well, e.g., how the
1
motions of electrons on a radio transmitting antenna
Psychokinesis refers to the ability to move objects without touching them
affect the motions on the receiver of your home radio.
but by mental exertion alone.
10

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SuMMEr 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013