The ID Report

Post details: Science: Bell's inequality the most profound fact ever discovered?

03/27/09

by Denyse O'Leary 06:11:34 pm, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 424 words

Science: Bell's inequality the most profound fact ever discovered?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In response to this post ("Quantum theory: Finally facing up to its threat to special relativity"), friend Malcolm Chisholm writes to say:

I have been wondering when you would blog about Bell's inequality.

Bell's Inequality has its foundation in traditional logic (stuff developed by the scholastic guys of the Middle Ages). It states the following

The number of objects which have parameter A but not parameter B plus the number of objects which have parameter B but not parameter C is greater than or equal to the number of objects which have parameter A but not parameter C.

So for instance, if you have a class of students, then

The number of girls who are not blond plus the number of blond students who are under six feet tall must be greater or equal to the number of girls who are under six feet tall.

This will always be true. It is amazing. You can do it for all kind of populations that possess 3 attributes in the macroscopic world that we inhabit. And yet it can be applied to the domain of quantum entanglement to prove that everything in the universe is utterly connected at a very fundamental level. It really is the most profound fact ever discovered in science

Here is a link for more (and it's Canadian!).

Well, he knows how I will love that!

If Bell's inequality is indeed the most profound fact ever discovered in science, it is interesting (at least to me), that Bell started out wanting to disprove it. He was a follower of Einstein and shared the Einsteinian suspicion of quantum physics.

I read his book and toward the end he finally concedes defeat, in the nicest possible way. I recall it as somewhat touching.

Here's more about Irish physicist John Bell. Here are his collected works, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

Also just up at Colliding Universes, my blog on theories about our universe:

Plasma theory: An alternative to the Big Bang?

Cosmology: If the universe has free will, where do I go to file a claim for damages?

Origin of life: Life came from dwarf planet Ceres?

Dante's Proton

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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