NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/physics/21998

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-01 | 1.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mtnmath!paul
From: [e-mail] (Paul Budnik)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Aspect's experiment
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Jan 93 16:34:10 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Mountain Math Software, P. O. Box 2124, Saratoga. CA 95070
Lines: 31

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Fran Litterio) writes:

 [Description of an experiment to measure delays in tests of
 Bell's inequality deleted.]

> Won't this experiment only allow conclusions of the form "There is a
> 33% probability that a non-local process is at work"?

Yes, but if you conduct enough accurate trials you should be able to get a
probability arbitrarily close to 100%. *All* real experiments have this same
limitation, although not all real experiments are verifying a statement
that is probabilistic. You can always concoct an unlikely but logically
possible alternative explanation for any experimental result.

Of course I do not think you will get this result because I do not think
locality is violated. The result I expect is a nearly 100% probability
that there is no nonlocal effect.

> After all, you might see the first third of the shift from few-to-many
> joint detections happen in less time than it takes light to travel to
> each detector from the more distant polarizer.  The remainder of the
> shift happens "too late" to be evidence of a non-local process.

I do not understand what you mean by the 'first third of the shift'.
You will see a series of detections that change at some point from
many to few (or the reverse) joint detections. You can then make a
statistical estimate of when the probability of a joint detection changed.
You have to repeat the experiment many times to get an accurate estimate
of what the delay is.

Paul Budnik