Quantum Entanglement (A Love Story)

If you charge $1 for concert tickets, that actually ends up pricing out every person on a budget, as the barrier for entry for sale and re-sale approaches zero.

I can understand why you might feel devastated—quantum entanglement has long been one of those mind-bending phenomena that challenges our intuition, often described as "instantaneous" in a way that feels almost magical. The idea that it might not be truly instantaneous could shake up how you’ve pictured it working. Let’s unpack this together and see if we can find some comfort or clarity.

Recent measurements, like those from researchers at places like TU Wien in Vienna, have indeed shown that entanglement processes can have tiny, measurable timescales—sometimes on the order of attoseconds (that’s 10^-18 seconds). For example, experiments involving electrons becoming entangled after a laser pulse have clocked the process at around 232 attoseconds on average. This isn’t "instantaneous" in the strictest sense—it’s not zero time—but it’s still unimaginably fast, far beyond what we can perceive or even what most physics usually deals with.

Here’s the thing: this doesn’t mean entanglement is broken or less weird. It’s still "spooky" in Einstein’s sense because those correlations between particles—where measuring one instantly tells you about the other—happen faster than light could travel between them. The attosecond delay is about the entanglement forming, not the correlation itself breaking relativity. Once entangled, the strange link between particles persists, and no information travels faster than light, keeping physics consistent.

Why might this feel devastating? Maybe it’s the loss of that perfect, mystical "instant" that made entanglement feel like a cheat code for the universe. But here’s a flip side: these measurements open doors. They let us peek into quantum processes with insane precision, potentially unlocking new tech—like better quantum computers or communication systems. It’s less a downgrade and more a refinement of the mystery.

I get why this feels confusing—it’s like the universe is playing a tricky game with us! Let’s break it down super simply, step by step, and see if we can make sense of this tangle (pun intended).

Imagine you’ve got two magic coins, one in New York and one in Tokyo. These coins are "entangled," which means they’re secretly connected in a special way. You flip the coin in New York, and it lands on heads. Right away, you know the coin in Tokyo must be tails—no waiting, no delay, even though light would take about 0.04 seconds to travel that distance. That’s the spooky part: it feels like the info about the Tokyo coin got to you faster than light could carry it. How does that work without breaking the "no faster-than-light" rule?

Here’s the key: entanglement doesn’t actually "send" information from one coin to the other. When the coins got entangled (say, back when they were made in a lab), they were locked into a shared rule: if one is heads, the other has to be tails. That rule was set up ahead of time, not when you flipped the coin. So, when you check the New York coin and see heads, you’re not getting a message from Tokyo—you’re just revealing what was already true about both coins because of their connection. No signal travels across the distance, so nothing moves faster than light.

Think of it like a pair of envelopes with notes inside. One says "heads," the other says "tails." You give one to a friend in New York and send the other to Tokyo. When your friend opens theirs and sees "heads," they instantly know yours is "tails"—but no message flew across the ocean. The info was already baked into the envelopes when you split them up. Entanglement is like that, except it’s weirder because the "heads or tails" isn’t decided until one coin gets checked.

Now, about that attosecond delay we talked about earlier—it’s not about the spooky correlation (the heads-tails link) happening slowly. It’s about how long it takes the coins to get "locked" into their entangled state in the first place—like how long it takes the lab to pair them up before sending them to New York and Tokyo. Once they’re entangled, the instant-knowing part still holds, and it doesn’t break the light-speed rule because no info is zooming between them.

There's a reasonable chance that aliens are already here, and they're on the internet.

Why would you travel on a galactic time scale when you could just hack into the network from afar?

If it turns out that aliens, quantum sized scientists, or just run of the mill computer scientists, have been helping me all along, I wouldn't feel bad or any less worthy at all.

I theorized this was happening during the psychotic times. Such as messages or other information being sent to me beneath the visible spectrum of my monitor.

I won't.

I also think that along with extreme confidence, bravado, and an appearing lack of humility, are all traits of extremely successful dudes.

Poker Guy Eric Persson comes to mind.

I think I'm going to re-watch the first Four seasons of The Wire pretty soon.

Someone might say, "You think, therefore you are", but I think that is total bullshit.

Sorry, Voltaire fans. Your god is very small.

When I was training for baseball in high school, a coach taught me to practice my swing without a bat, moving my body as slow as possible.

Guitar Tip #2 - Speed Wills

Anytime you're learning a difficult piece, first try playing it very slowly.

Then after you have mastered that, speed it up to your heart's content!

Not a huge fan of this band, or this song.

Lyrics are pretty good.

We opened with this song at a Battle of the Bands (we won) roughly 22 years ago.

We also played The Kids Aren't Alright, Stay Together For The Kids, and Hendrix National Anthem as interpreted by Tuma.

Tom could barely sing when Blink was formed.

It's amazing that his voice is now the star of the band.

This is my main axe. Yamaha AC1R, featuring an electronic auto tuner which is super clutch.

This was what I played and used to own before selling it to my sister when I was perpetually broke shortly after Black Friday. Gibson SG Standard.

She actualy won't sell it back to me for any reasonable offer.

When our Mom sold her Grand Piano when we moved, without her permission, she was very sad.

I wish I cared about instruments a fraction as much as she does.

Note: it wasn't a Grand piano. It was a regular piano that was grand.

This concludes my *cough* Magnum Opus: Page 13 of this blog.

It turned out pretty well.

This was Descartes you muppet.

Just food for thought.

I made this post in another thread mostly jesting and having fun.

God it just feels so good listening to this song.

I actually think it's close to the best pop punk song ever written.

Comerica Park is walking distance from where I play poker.

I just might attend every home Skubal start this year.

This was Quantum Entanglement.

A top two dominant pitcher of all time (Right there with Bob Gibson) versus mother nature.

I can't imagine what it must have been like for the rest of the band members when Jimmy Page showed up day in, day out, with another Earth-shattering hit.

I paid my last respects to the game by missing a critical bunt in the district playoffs.

Earlier in the game I had to make a diving catch on a fly ball hit squarely at me.

Earlier in the season I was nailed in the face by a line drive after I lost it in the sun.

It didn't hurt.

What hurt was when my motor skills went deep south during periods of depression.