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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Hi Paul and Brian,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Thanks for this article Paul, I enjoyed
it. If you haven’t seen the film “what the bleep” yet, do
try and find it, I think you will enjoy it. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Brian, when you asked, “</span></font><font
size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:blue'>Does our focused attention create a reality from the raw material
of the universe? If we could bring a strong enough focus or consciousness to
bare on these raw materials would we be in effect creating something new
because of the attention we place on it. In effect creating something from
nothing,as a result of our intention for it to exist which is what we imply
when we try to analyze or understand it. Could the intersection of many
entanglements provide that focused consciousness necessary to bring something
into reality?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>I want to say yes, and add impishly, that if
Dr. Susan Blackmore’s latest musings about the nature of consciousness
are accurate, (that it is a backwardly assembled narrative) there is no way we
would ever be able to know if this has happened or not, because our brains assemble
a cogent narrative to encompass apparent reality at the speed of consciousness…ah
yes…inhaling a deep breath at the Puckishness of it all…<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>And then again…maybe that’s
how it all works out!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Mystery within mystery, <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Cheers, <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Wendy<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=3 width="100%" align=center tabindex=-1>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2
face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'> <st1:PersonName
w:st="on">OSLIST</st1:PersonName> [mailto:<st1:PersonName w:st="on">OSLIST</st1:PersonName>@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>On Behalf Of </span></b>Brian Dalzell<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> December 28, 2005 11:30 AM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> <st1:PersonName w:st="on">OSLIST</st1:PersonName>@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> Re: Long, Quantum
trickery</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'>Hi Paul:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'>Really appreciated the article. Is it
possible that matter and energy are both responding to and as a result
malleable to thought and choice. Does our focused attention create a reality from
the raw material of the universe? If we could bring a strong enough focus or
consciousness to bare on these raw materials would we be in effect creating
something new because of the attention we place on it. In effect creating
something from nothing,as a result of our intention for it to exist which is
what we imply when we try to analyze or understand it. Could the intersection
of many entanglements provide that focused consciousness necessary to bring
something into reality?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'>Just musing about if OS is
“irreducibly random”. Is it random or a conduit to create an
intersection of entanglements for infinite possibilities?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'>Best of the season, Brian<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
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face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center tabindex=-1>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2
face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'> <st1:PersonName
w:st="on">OSLIST</st1:PersonName> [mailto:<st1:PersonName w:st="on">OSLIST</st1:PersonName>@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU]
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>On Behalf Of </span></b>EVERETT813@aol.com<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Tuesday, December 27, 2005
2:54 PM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> <st1:PersonName w:st="on">OSLIST</st1:PersonName>@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> OT: Long, Quantum
trickery</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Geneva><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Geneva;color:black'>Dear OS'rs<br>
<br>
I thought the below article related in some strange way to OS. We don't
know exactly how it works, or why, either, but it doesn't care, OS just goes on
working. Probably relates to Chaos and Complexity Theory, too. The
future is indeed unknowable. OS may be "irreducibly random".<br>
<br>
May your new year be filled with surprises and may you be sufficiently flexible
to cope, indeed, thrive!!<br>
<br>
Paul Everett<br>
<br>
</span></font><font size=1 color=black FAMILY=SERIF><span style='font-size:
7.5pt;color:black'><br>
</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Geneva FAMILY=SANSSERIF><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Geneva;color:black'>December 27, 2005<br>
<br>
<br>
</span></font><b><font size=4 color=black face=Geneva FAMILY=SANSSERIF><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:Geneva;color:black;font-weight:bold'>Quantum
Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory<br>
<br>
</span></font></b><font size=2 color=black face=Geneva FAMILY=SANSSERIF><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Geneva;color:black'>By DENNIS OVERBYE<br>
<br>
Einstein said there would be days like this.<br>
<br>
This fall scientists announced that they had put a half dozen beryllium atoms
into a "cat state."<br>
<br>
No, they were not sprawled along a sunny windowsill. To a physicist, a
"cat state" is the condition of being two diametrically opposed
conditions at once, like black and white, up and down, or dead and alive.<br>
<br>
These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time.
Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing whatever it was they
were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should one of them realize, like the
cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn't fall until he looks down,
that it is in a metaphysically untenable situation and decide to spin only one
way, the rest would instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test
tube or across the galaxy.<br>
<br>
The idea that measuring the properties of one particle could instantaneously
change the properties of another one (or a whole bunch) far away is strange to
say the least - almost as strange as the notion of particles spinning in two
directions at once. The team that pulled off the beryllium feat, led by
Dietrich Leibfried at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Boulder</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Colo.</st1:State></st1:place>,
hailed it as another step toward computers that would use quantum magic to
perform calculations.<br>
<br>
But it also served as another demonstration of how weird the world really is
according to the rules, known as quantum mechanics.<br>
<br>
The joke is on Albert Einstein, who, back in 1935, dreamed up this trick of
synchronized atoms - "spooky action at a distance," as he called it -
as an example of the absurdity of quantum mechanics.<br>
<br>
"No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit
this," he, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen wrote in a paper in 1935.<br>
<br>
Today that paper, written when Einstein was a relatively ancient 56 years old,
is the most cited of Einstein's papers. But far from demolishing quantum
theory, that paper wound up as the cornerstone for the new field of quantum
information.<br>
<br>
Nary a week goes by that does not bring news of another feat of quantum
trickery once only dreamed of in thought experiments: particles (or at least
all their properties) being teleported across the room in a microscopic version
of Star Trek beaming; electrical "cat" currents that circle a loop in
opposite directions at the same time; more and more particles farther and
farther apart bound together in Einstein's spooky embrace now known as
"entanglement." At the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">California</st1:PlaceName>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City
w:st="on">Santa Barbara</st1:City></st1:place>, researchers are planning an
experiment in which a small mirror will be in two places at once.<br>
<br>
Niels Bohr, the Danish philosopher king of quantum theory, dismissed any
attempts to lift the quantum veil as meaningless, saying that science was about
the results of experiments, not ultimate reality. But now that quantum
weirdness is not confined to thought experiments, physicists have begun arguing
again about what this weirdness means, whether the theory needs changing, and
whether in fact there is any problem.<br>
<br>
This fall two Nobel laureates, Anthony Leggett of the University of Illinois
and Norman Ramsay of Harvard argued in front of several hundred scientists at a
conference in Berkeley about whether, in effect, physicists were justified in
trying to change quantum theory, the most successful theory in the history of
science. Dr. Leggett said yes; Dr. Ramsay said no.<br>
<br>
It has been, as Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, noted, "a 75-year war." It is typical in reporting on
this subject to bounce from one expert to another, each one shaking his or her
head about how the other one just doesn't get it. "It's a kind of funny
situation," N. David Mermin of Cornell, who has called Einstein's spooky
action "the closest thing we have to magic," said, referring to the
recent results. "These are extremely difficult experiments that confirm
elementary features of quantum mechanics." It would be more spectacular
news, he said, if they had come out wrong.<br>
<br>
Anton Zeilinger of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Vienna</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> said that he
thought, "The world is not as real as we think.<br>
<br>
"My personal opinion is that the world is even weirder than what quantum
physics tells us," he added.<br>
<br>
The discussion is bringing renewed attention to Einstein's role as a founder
and critic of quantum theory, an "underground history," that has
largely been overlooked amid the celebrations of relativity in the past
Einstein year, according to David Z. Albert, a professor of philosophy and
physics at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Columbia</st1:City></st1:place>.
Regarding the 1935 paper, Dr. Albert said, "We know something about
Einstein's genius we didn't know before."<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'><br>
The Silly Theory<br>
</span></b>From the day 100 years ago that he breathed life into quantum theory
by deducing that light behaved like a particle as well as like a wave, Einstein
never stopped warning that it was dangerous to the age-old dream of an orderly
universe.<br>
<br>
If light was a particle, how did it know which way to go when it was issued
from an atom?<br>
"The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it seems,"
Einstein once wrote to friend.<br>
<br>
The full extent of its silliness came in the 1920's when quantum theory became
quantum mechanics.<br>
<br>
In this new view of the world, as encapsulated in a famous equation by the
Austrian Erwin Schrödinger, objects are represented by waves that extend
throughout space, containing all the possible outcomes of an observation -
here, there, up or down, dead or alive. The amplitude of this wave is a measure
of the probability that the object will actually be found to be in one state or
another, a suggestion that led Einstein to grumble famously that God doesn't
throw dice.<br>
<br>
Worst of all from Einstein's point of view was the uncertainty principle,
enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927.<br>
<br>
Certain types of knowledge, of a particle's position and velocity, for example,
are incompatible: the more precisely you measure one property, the blurrier and
more uncertain the other becomes.<br>
<br>
In the 1935 paper, Einstein and his colleagues, usually referred to as E.P.R.,
argued that the uncertainty principle could not be the final word about nature.
There must be a deeper theory that looked behind the quantum veil.<br>
<br>
Imagine that a pair of electrons are shot out from the disintegration of some
other particle, like fragments from an explosion. By law certain properties of
these two fragments should be correlated. If one goes left, the other goes
right; if one spins clockwise, the other spins counterclockwise.<br>
<br>
That means, Einstein said, that by measuring the velocity of, say, the left
hand electron, we would know the velocity of the right hand electron without
ever touching it.<br>
<br>
Conversely, by measuring the position of the left electron, we would know the
position of the right hand one.<br>
<br>
Since neither of these operations would have involved touching or disturbing
the right hand electron in any way, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen argued that
the right hand electron must have had those properties of both velocity and position
all along. That left only two possibilities, they concluded. Either quantum
mechanics was "incomplete," or measuring the left hand particle
somehow disturbed the right hand one.<br>
<br>
But the latter alternative violated common sense. Such an influence, or
disturbance, would have to travel faster than the speed of light. "My
physical instincts bristle at that suggestion," Einstein later wrote.<br>
<br>
Bohr responded with a six-page essay in Physical Review that contained but one
simple equation, Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. In essence, he said, it all
depends on what you mean by "reality."<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Enjoy the Magic<br>
</span></b>Most physicists agreed with Bohr, and they went off to use quantum
mechanics to build atomic bombs and reinvent the world.<br>
<br>
The consensus was that Einstein was a stubborn old man who "didn't
get" quantum physics. All this began to change in 1964 when John S. Bell,
a particle physicist at the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">European</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Center</st1:PlaceType> for Nuclear Research near <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City
w:st="on">Geneva</st1:City></st1:place>, who had his own doubts about quantum
theory, took up the 1935 E.P.R. argument. Somewhat to his dismay, <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Bell</st1:City></st1:place>, who died in 1990,
wound up proving that no deeper theory could reproduce the predictions of
quantum mechanics. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Bell</st1:City></st1:place>
went on to outline a simple set of experiments that could settle the argument
and decide who was right, Einstein or Bohr.<br>
<br>
When the experiments were finally performed in 1982, by Alain Aspect and his
colleagues at the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Orsay</st1:PlaceName> in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">France</st1:country-region></st1:place>, they agreed with quantum
mechanics and not reality as Einstein had always presumed it should be. Apparently
a particle in one place could be affected by what you do somewhere else.<br>
<br>
"That's really weird," Dr. Albert said, calling it "a profoundly
deep violation of an intuition that we've been walking with since caveman
days."<br>
<br>
Physicists and philosophers are still fighting about what this means. Many of
those who care to think about these issues (and many prefer not to), concluded
that Einstein's presumption of locality - the idea that physically separated
objects are really separate - is wrong.<br>
<br>
Dr. Albert said, "The experiments show locality is false, end of
story." But for others, it is the notion of realism, that things exist
independent of being perceived, that must be scuttled. In fact, physicists
don't even seem to agree on the definitions of things like "locality"
and "realism."<br>
<br>
"I would say we have to be careful saying what's real," Dr. Mermin
said. "Properties cannot be said to be there until they are revealed by an
actual experiment."<br>
<br>
What everybody does seem to agree on is that the use of this effect is limited.
You can't use it to send a message, for example.<br>
<br>
Leonard Susskind, a Stanford theoretical physicist, who called these
entanglement experiments "beautiful and surprising," said the term
"spooky action at a distance," was misleading because it implied the
instantaneous sending of signals. "No competent physicist thinks that
entanglement allows this kind of nonlocality."<br>
<br>
Indeed the effects of spooky action, or "entanglement," as
Schrödinger called it, only show up in retrospect when the two participants in
a Bell-type experiment compare notes. Beforehand, neither has seen any
violation of business as usual; each sees the results of his measurements of,
say, whether a spinning particle is pointing up or down, as random.<br>
<br>
In short, as Brian Greene, the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Columbia</st1:City></st1:place>
theorist wrote in "The Fabric of the Cosmos," Einstein's special
relativity, which sets the speed of light as the cosmic speed limit,
"survives by the skin of its teeth."<br>
<br>
In an essay in 1985, Dr. Mermin said that "if there is spooky action at a
distance, then, like other spooks, it is absolutely useless except for its
effect, benign or otherwise, on our state of mind."<br>
<br>
He added, "The E.P.R. experiment is as close to magic as any physical
phenomenon I know of, and magic should be enjoyed." In a recent interview,
he said he still stood by the latter part of that statement. But while spooky
action remained useless for sending a direct message, it had turned out to have
potential uses, he admitted, in cryptography and quantum computing.<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'><br>
Nine Ways of Killing a Cat<br>
</span></b>Another debate, closely related to the issues of entanglement and
reality, concerns what happens at the magic moment when a particle is measured
or observed.<br>
<br>
Before a measurement is made, so the traditional story goes, the electron exists
in a superposition of all possible answers, which can combine, adding and
interfering with one another.<br>
<br>
Then, upon measurement, the wave function "collapses" to one
particular value. Schrödinger himself thought this was so absurd that he
dreamed up a counterexample. What is true for electrons, he said, should be
true as well for cats.<br>
<br>
In his famous thought experiment, a cat is locked in a box where the decay of a
radioactive particle will cause the release of poison that will kill it. If the
particle has a 50-50 chance of decaying, then according to quantum mechanics
the cat is both alive and dead before we look in the box, something the cat
itself, not to mention cat lovers, might take issue with.<br>
<br>
But cats are always dead or alive, as Dr. Leggett of <st1:State w:st="on">Illinois</st1:State>
said in his <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Berkeley</st1:City></st1:place>
talk. "The problem with quantum mechanics," he said in an interview,
"is how it explains definite outcomes to experiments."<br>
<br>
If quantum mechanics is only about information and a way of predicting the
results of measurements, these questions don't matter, most quantum physicists
say.<br>
<br>
"But," Dr. Leggett said, "if you take the view that the
formalism is reflecting something out there in real world, it matters
immensely." As a result, theorists have come up with a menu of alternative
interpretations and explanations. According to one popular notion, known as
decoherence, quantum waves are very fragile and collapse from bumping into the
environment. Another theory, by the late David Bohm, restores determinism by
postulating a "pilot wave" that acts behind the scenes to guide
particles.<br>
<br>
In yet another theory, called "many worlds," the universe continually
branches so that every possibility is realized: the Red Sox win and lose and it
rains; Schrödinger's cat lives, dies, has kittens and scratches her master when
he tries to put her into the box.<br>
<br>
Recently, as Dr. Leggett pointed out, some physicists have tinkered with
Schrödinger's equation, the source of much of the misery, itself.<br>
<br>
A modification proposed by the Italian physicists Giancarlo Ghirardi and Tullio
Weber, both of the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Trieste</st1:PlaceName>, and Alberto Rimini of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Pavia</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>,
makes the wave function unstable so that it will collapse in a time depending
on how big a system it represents.<br>
<br>
In his standoff with Dr. Ramsay of Harvard last fall, Dr. Leggett suggested
that his colleagues should consider the merits of the latter theory. "Why
should we think of an electron as being in two states at once but not a cat,
when the theory is ostensibly the same in both cases?" Dr. Leggett asked.<br>
<br>
Dr. Ramsay said that Dr. Leggett had missed the point. How the wave function
mutates is not what you calculate. "What you calculate is the prediction
of a measurement," he said.<br>
<br>
"If it's a cat, I can guarantee you will get that it's alive or
dead," Dr. Ramsay said.<br>
<br>
David Gross, a recent Nobel winner and director of the Kavli Institute for
Theoretical Physics in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Santa Barbara</st1:City></st1:place>,
leapt into the free-for-all, saying that 80 years had not been enough time for
the new concepts to sink in. "We're just too young. We should wait until
2200 when quantum mechanics is taught in kindergarten."<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'><br>
The Joy of Randomness<br>
</span></b>One of the most extreme points of view belongs to Dr. Zeilinger of <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Vienna</st1:City></st1:place>, a bearded,
avuncular physicist whose laboratory regularly hosts every sort of quantum
weirdness.<br>
<br>
In an essay recently in Nature, Dr. Zeilinger sought to find meaning in the
very randomness that plagued Einstein.<br>
<br>
"The discovery that individual events are irreducibly random is probably
one of the most significant findings of the 20th century," Dr. Zeilinger
wrote.<br>
<br>
Dr. Zeilinger suggested that reality and information are, in a deep sense,
indistinguishable, a concept that Dr. Wheeler, the <st1:place w:st="on">Princeton</st1:place>
physicist, called "it from bit."<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>In information, the basic unit is the bit,
but one bit, he says, is not enough to specify both the spin and the trajectory
of a particle. So one quality remains unknown, irreducibly random.<br>
<br>
As a result of the finiteness of information, he explained, the universe is
fundamentally unpredictable.<br>
<br>
"I suggest that this randomness of the individual event is the strongest
indication we have of a reality 'out there' existing independently of us,"
Dr. Zeilinger wrote in Nature.</span></b><br>
<br>
He added, "Maybe Einstein would have liked this idea after all."<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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