Anton Zeilinger et al win the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics

[Swammerdami]

Despite the thread title I want to talk about a variant of the con-man's game Three-Card Monte.

Imagine a jar with two windows, one blue, one green. If you open the blue window you see EITHER a blue light OR an orangish-yellow light. If you open the green window you see EITHER a green light or an orangish-red light. But if you open the blue window the green window is disabled (and vice versa). You can perform EITHER the blue window experiment or the green window experiment, but not both.

The con-man(?) has three such jars; he re-initializes them in his special machine; he shuffles them up; and he presents them to you. There seem to be six bits of information involved (3 jars, each with 2 windows, each with 2 possible outcomes) but only 3 bits of information are accessible to you since opening one window disables the jar's other window.

You have nothing better to do than experiment for hours, letting the guy reset the jars, opening three windows of your choice and recording the results. You observe that if you open 1 green window and 2 blues (or 3 green windows and no blues), each of the eight possible results occurs about 12.5% of the time. BUT if you open 2 greens and a blue, or zero greens and 3 blues, four possible results become impossible!

1. If you open 2 green windows and a blue window, you will always see an EVEN number of orangish lights.
2. If you open zero greens and 3 blue windows, you will always see an ODD number of orangish lights.

Suppose now that you open 2 blue windows and see two orange lights. You know from Rule 2 that the 3rd blue window would reveal another orange light, so you don't waste your guess with that. You open the GREEN window on the 3rd jar. Let's say you see yet another orangish light.

-	Jar 1	Jar 2	Jar 3
Blue Window	ORANGE	ORANGE	(orange)
Green Window	X?	Y?	ORANGE

You've used up your three experiments, but you can deduce what the other windows would have revealed had you opened them instead. We've already seen that Jar 3 would have shown orange were the Blue window opened. What about X?

Well, if you'd opened the three windows shown underlined in the table, Rule 1 dictates that X would show green. Similar reasoning dictates that Y would show green. So we can fill in the entire table:

-	Jar 1	Jar 2	Jar 3
Blue Window	ORANGE	ORANGE	(orange)
Green Window	(green)	(green)	ORANGE

So we've deduced all six bits! But suppose we had opened the three windows now underlined? What about Rule 1? Does the con-man have machines inside the jars communicating with each other by radio, and enforcing Rules 1 and 2 by flipping their programmed lights?

I'm already late for my afternoon errands, so I'll just leave these questions here for now.

 

[lpetrich]

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 - NobelPrize.org

I had to read “For experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science” (pdf) before I could understand what was going on.

Quantum-mechanical entanglement happens when two particles with coordinates x and y have a combined wavefunction that cannot be decomposed into ones for each particle. A decomposition looks like this:

ψ(x,y) = ψ_x(x) * ψ_y(y)

Some atoms decay from a spin-0 excited state to a spin-0 ground state, and for that, they need to emit two photons. The combined spin of these photons is zero, and that tells us their wavefunction:

(1/sqrt(2)) * ( {+,-} - {-,+} )

where the {}'s have {photon 1's polarization state, photon 2's polarization state}. The + and - are any two orthogonal states: left and right circular polarization, or else horizontal and vertical linear polarization. Those two definitions map on to each other. so they are different ways of describing the same thing.

If one tries to detect each photon, then its polarization will be random. But if one checks on how these observations are correlated, one finds correlations, with the amount that one predicts from quantum mechanics.

That happens under a variety of experimental conditions, like changing the detector's polarizers after the photons have started on their way.

I couldn't follow the later parts of the article very well, however.

 

[lpetrich]

Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 is about making difficult processes easier. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal have laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry – click chemistry – in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently. Carolyn Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms.

Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 - NobelPrize.org
For Svante Pääbo
for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution

Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova. Importantly, Pääbo also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections.

Pääbo’s seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics. By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 was awarded to Annie Ernaux "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory"

The Nobel Peace Prize 2022 - NobelPrize.org

The 2022 Peace Prize is awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.

The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022 - NobelPrize.org

This year’s laureates in the Economic Sciences, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, have significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises. An important finding in their research is why avoiding bank collapses is vital.

 

[lpetrich]

There are some big problems with the Nobel Prize coverage of the sciences. Several fields are omitted entirely, and some fields do not have sharp boundaries with some other fields. Some of the omissions are understandable given the state of the sciences back in 1895, when Alfred Nobel established his prizes, but some of them are more difficult to justify.

Mathematics: omitted entirely.

Physics and chemistry: no sharp boundary between them. That was especially evident by the 1930's, when the quantum mechanics of chemical bonds became reasonably well understood.

Earth science and astronomy: omitted entirely, though some astronomical discoveries have earned physics prizes. Here also, it must be noted that there is not a sharp line between the two, though that only became very evident after spacecraft exploration. By the 1980's, every planet and every large moon had been visited at least once, and most of them were at least a little bit Earthlike.

Biological sciences: only represented by medicine and physiology, though those are often interpreted as organismal biology. Here also, there are omissions, like ethology (animal behavior), ecology (the biology of organism communities, not environmentalist activism and ideology), and paleontology.

Social sciences: only represented by economics, added in 1968. They were in a poorly-developed state back in 1895, I must concede.

 

[bilby]

Mathematics: omitted entirely.

They have the Fields Medal. Alf couldn't be expected to do all the lifting, surely?

 

[Swammerdami]

Mathematics: omitted entirely.

They have the Fields Medal. Alf couldn't be expected to do all the lifting, surely?

The Abel Prize is almost as exclusive as the Fields Medal and, like the Nobel Prizes but unlike the Fields Medal, comes with a very large cash stipend and is awarded by, or in the presence of, the King of a Scandinavian country. Like the Nobel Prizes it is never announced posthumously and may be given for lifetime achievement. This is in contrast to the Fields Medal which rewards youth. (Cédric Villani was delighted to win a 2010 Fields Medal since he would be 41, and therefore ineligible, in 2014 when the next Medals would be given.)

The Wolf Prize in Mathematics is the 3rd most prestigious prize for mathematicians and was compared with the Nobel Prizes prior to the establishment of the Abel Prize.

 

[Swammerdami]

Despite the thread title I want to talk about a variant of the con-man's game Three-Card Monte.

Imagine a jar with two windows, one blue, one green. If you open the blue window you see EITHER a blue light OR an orangish-yellow light. If you open the green window you see EITHER a green light or an orangish-red light. But if you open the blue window the green window is disabled (and vice versa). You can perform EITHER the blue window experiment or the green window experiment, but not both.

The con-man(?) has three such jars; he re-initializes them in his special machine; he shuffles them up; and he presents them to you. There seem to be six bits of information involved (3 jars, each with 2 windows, each with 2 possible outcomes) but only 3 bits of information are accessible to you since opening one window disables the jar's other window.

You have nothing better to do than experiment for hours, letting the guy reset the jars, opening three windows of your choice and recording the results. You observe that if you open 1 green window and 2 blues (or 3 green windows and no blues), each of the eight possible results occurs about 12.5% of the time. BUT if you open 2 greens and a blue, or zero greens and 3 blues, four possible results become impossible!

1. If you open 2 green windows and a blue window, you will always see an EVEN number of orangish lights.
2. If you open zero greens and 3 blue windows, you will always see an ODD number of orangish lights.

Suppose now that you open 2 blue windows and see two orange lights. You know from Rule 2 that the 3rd blue window would reveal another orange light, so you don't waste your guess with that. You open the GREEN window on the 3rd jar. Let's say you see yet another orangish light.

-	Jar 1	Jar 2	Jar 3
Blue Window	ORANGE	ORANGE	(orange)
Green Window	X?	Y?	ORANGE

You've used up your three experiments, but you can deduce what the other windows would have revealed had you opened them instead. We've already seen that Jar 3 would have shown orange were the Blue window opened. What about X?

Well, if you'd opened the three windows shown underlined in the table, Rule 1 dictates that X would show green. Similar reasoning dictates that Y would show green. So we can fill in the entire table:

-	Jar 1	Jar 2	Jar 3
Blue Window	ORANGE	ORANGE	(orange)
Green Window	(green)	(green)	ORANGE

So we've deduced all six bits! But suppose we had opened the three windows now underlined? What about Rule 1? Does the con-man have machines inside the jars communicating with each other by radio, and enforcing Rules 1 and 2 by flipping their programmed lights?

By following rules 1 and 2 we can prove that Jar 3 would have shown orange if we had opened the Blue Window, but we can ALSO prove that it would have shown blue! How can this be?

It is not that Orange-Orange-Orange was an anomalous case; you end up with essentially the same paradox for each of the other seven outcomes. Inexplicable!! ??? Unless the jars are somehow communicating. But mount the jars in "Faraday cages" and send one jar to Alpha Centauri and open the windows simultaneously and get the same result.

This peculiar — "impossible" — result is predicted by theory and demonstrated experimentally.

This impossible result may be called the GHZ Paradox. I think it should be better known. It is similar to eh EPR Parodox which Bell's Theorem describes, but instead of two entangled photons there are THREE. This makes the paradox a crisp Yes=No fallacy, unlike the Bell's Theorem scenario which requires probabilistic reasoning just to understand:

"Why shouldn't the arc-cosine of 1/2 be 45° anyway? And who cares if you see 70 head tosses instead of 50? Haven't you heard of COINCIDENCE?"​

These naive responses to Bell's Theorem are not possible with the GHZ Paradox.

I didn't know the 2022 Prizes had been announced until I chanced on this YouTube with the title "How Physicists Proved The Universe Isn't Real - Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 EXPLAINED"

The YouTube title seems rather harsh. I always thought I was real, though I guess my list of regrets will be much smaller if the whole thing was just a dream.

Anton Zeilinger didn't get his Prize for the GHZ "Three-Card Monte" scenario specifically, but it seems fun to talk about.

I do not think there is anything paradoxical about the GHZ result at all! The Universe is not only REAL, but more exciting than we thought! Bomb#20 knows what I'm talking about.

 

[Bomb#20]

I do not think there is anything paradoxical about the GHZ result at all! The Universe is not only REAL, but more exciting than we thought! Bomb#20 knows what I'm talking about.

I'm just exasperated that these guys didn't get their Nobels for this work back in the 80s, when it would have done their careers some good. (And while we're at it, let's not forget the man who put them up to it, John Stewart Bell. It's said he was on the shortlist the year he died; they don't do posthumous Nobels.)

 

[lpetrich]

• Fields Medal | International Mathematical Union (IMU) -  Fields Medal - since 1936, every 4 years, up to 4 recipients, under 40 - mathematics
• Home | The Abel Prize -  Abel Prize - since 2003 - mathematics
• The Wolf Prize - Wolf Foundation -  Wolf Prize - since 1978 - agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, and in the arts, rotating between architecture, music, painting, and sculpture.
• Welcome to the Crafoord Prize - Crafoord Prize -  Crafoord Prize - since 1982, one award category per year, rotating through the categories - astronomy and mathematics, geosciences, biosciences, polyarthritis (if significant progress was made)
• HOME - Lasker Foundation -  Lasker Award - since 1945 - medicine

 List of prizes known as the Nobel or the highest honors of a field
 List of mathematics awards

 

[Swammerdami]

... This peculiar — "impossible" — result is predicted by theory and demonstrated experimentally.

This impossible result may be called the GHZ Paradox. I think it should be better known. ...

I do not think there is anything paradoxical about the GHZ result at all! The Universe is not only REAL, but more exciting than we thought!

Just to be clear, the laws of physics and Feynman diagrams read the same forward as backward. Tuesday's observation of the photon in Jar 3 affects the photon which travels back to the laboratory setup on Monday and affects the photons in Jars 1 and 2. Information is NOT traveling faster than light — the information is in the photon whose absolute speed is c in either direction.

Paradox disappears. Quantum "entanglement" becomes the ordinary entanglement that 19th-century physicists like Maxwell and Boltzmann were already familiar with. All of this is well-known to expert physicists. I honestly wonder why they don't embrace this viewpoint.