Is Quantum Entanglement Really Spooky Action at a Distance?

You may have heard that you can take two entangled particles and put them on opposite ends of the universe, and when you change the state of one, the other particle also changes its state instantaneously! Einstein called this spooky action at a distance.

It does seem weird when you consider that nothing is supposed to exceed light speed. How did the first particle get the state-change message to the second particle so fast? This is a question that has spread through the physics community at greater-than-light speed. As far as I can tell, it is based on an assumption that particle one must send information to particle two before particle two can change its state.

We could start with a different assumption. If you take a good look around you, you will find that entanglement is more commonplace and not so strange after all. Take marriage, for example. What could be more entangled than marriage?

Imagine this married couple named Bob and Stella. Bob is an astronaut, so he gets in his flying saucer, flies it straight out of the hanger at Area 51, and whisks out of earth’s atmosphere to a remote exoplanet a gazillion light years away.

When Bob arrives at the exoplanet, he changes his state: he dies. His saucer crash lands and blows asunder with Hollywood pyrotechnics and special effects. Bob was alive, but now he’s dead. Don’t feel bad for him; he’s only make-believe. The important point to remember here is his state has changed. Stella’s state has also changed. It changed the instant Bob died. The moment Bob died, she became a widow. She didn’t have to wait for a signal from the distant exoplanet to reach her before she became a widow. She may have no idea that Bob is dead, and won’t be notified any time soon, but nevertheless, her state has changed from happily-married wife to widow--and it happened instantaneously!

That’s entanglement.

Another Take on Quantum Entanglement

Einstein described quantum entanglement as "spooky action at a distance." Ironically, his theory of relativity explains what is happening.

Imagine two entangled particles separated by a large distance. Let's say it takes a photon a billion years to go from one particle to the other. But somehow, the particles can send information to each other instantaneously. Obviously the particles' information transmission is breaking the light-speed limit. Or is it?

Each particle has mass, energy and its own clock. The space between the particles is a vacuum. It has virtually no mass, energy, and it too has its own clock. Its clock however ticks far faster than each particle's clock. From its point of view, it sends the information along at a speed less than or equal to light speed.

From each particle's point of view, the information reaches its destination instantaneously. We also see it this way, since we are made up of similar particles with clocks that tick far far slower than spacetime's clock.