20101122

Future holds key to quantum physics—Obama awards National Medal of Science to Aharonov National Medal of Science  | As reported in USAToday, Yakir Aharanov of Chapman University was in Washington D.C. to collect a National Medal of Science this past week:

"The future is affecting the past—all the time, on the quantum level—allowing physicists to effectively select the future they want their particles to have, within limits, and amplifying the results for a desired outcome."

"I really believe we are close to a second revolution in physics as big as the one a century ago," Yakir Aharonov says. "I feel we are only beginning to free existing quantum theory and to do so, we must think of time in another way."

4 comments:

  1. JA Wheeler, and Ben Schumacher have said something similar. I understand having present or future actions influence the past is an obvious assumption and one that follows from some interpretations of quantum but there may be other interpretations but they may be just as weird as influencing the past.

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  2. Time Travel and the Single Atom – Researchers have confirmed one of the most profound thought experiments of quantum physics. “A fantastic experimental tour de force.”

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  3. Quantum Computing with time travel – Closed timelike curves are among the most controversial features of modern physics. As legitimate solutions to Einstein’s field equations, they allow for time travel, which instinctively seems paradoxical.

    However, in the quantum regime these paradoxes can be resolved, leaving closed timelike curves consistent with relativity.

    The study of these systems therefore provides valuable insight into nonlinearities and the emergence of causal structures in quantum mechanics—essential for any formulation of a quantum theory of gravity.

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