Answering Mermin’s Challenge

Hi dear fqxi friends, john, Stefan, Georgina, I liked a lot your discussions , friendly

John, Stefan, Steve. The dipole magnetic moment idea doesn't seem helpful here. John you said the electron is perfectly gimballed- but it doesn't need gimbals if it is like gyroscope but unsupported. Like a gyroscope in space.

There are some useful behaviours. 1. In the absence of twisting forces, a gyroscope 's axis will always point in whatever direction it was pointing when you started it spinning. Relevant to temporary maintenance of output state if frame test orientation is repeated. And maintenance of 'entangled pair' orientation correlation or anticorrelation. Ie. they do not spontaneously loose their relation when treated the same. This can be demonstrated with pairs of gyroscopes floating freely in space craft.

2. The separation of the pair gyroscopes does not affect their relationship- (so long as they do not collide!)Cf. particle pair members given huge separation, maintaining 'entanglement'.

Push it unsupported in space it maintains its orientation and moves across the cabin. ( It does not show 'circling' precession as it would if on a support of any kind on Earth.) 3. A twist is needed for it to change orientation. Cf. a gyroscopic ion or electron in SG apparatus, exposed to different field orientations. X, y, z.

Assumptions.

a. the particle is produced with a gyroscopic spin orientation.

b. That orientation is either aligned with the magnetic field OR experiences the magnetic field as a local environment exerting a twist. So its orientation adjusts accordingly.

c. the resulting orientation depends on starting orientation AND twists acting on it from the local environment.

TYpo. Should say-Relevant to temporary maintenance of output state if same test orientation is repeated.

Dear Georgina,

"b. That orientation is either aligned with the magnetic field OR experiences the magnetic field as a local environment exerting a twist. So its orientation adjusts accordingly."

Not sure if I understood this correctly. Could you please give a description for how in the case of a relative magnet angle of 0 degrees (perfect anti-correlation) the measurement results do come about with the two gyroscopes?

Georgina,

If the assumption that 'the particle is produced with a gyroscopic spin orientation' is true, and UP and DN are a thumbs up or thumbs down representation of the right-hand rule of thumb (revolving field at right angle to direction of current in a conductor), then there must be universally a physically preferred direction of rotation. If its "turtles all the way down" then we are searching for the last turtle.

The orthogonal relationship is presented a every point in the electromagnetic field, not just the particle(s) central to it. Likewise in the non homogenous region of the magnet group actually between the two shaped magnets, that orthogonal relationship permeates the field. The uniformity of negative charge of an electron will present an alignment of orthogonality whether it is rotating, wobbling, gyrating, tumbling or whatever. Nor would it matter if the unpaired electron of a silver atom is located any particular place on the outermost shell. The electron needn't exhibit a polarity to respond as if it did because there are only two opposite and equal possible physical orientations relative to the orthogonality of the non-homogenous field remaining relative to the direction of the atom's trajectory. On average, half will deflect upward, half downward.

John,

i read your last post and have a question:

If the measurement devices (magnets) at each side are identical in orientation and strength, the cause for the anti-correlation (up/down or down/up, but never up/up or down/down) at a relative angle of 0 degrees must be found in a difference between electron A and electron B. What difference is that???

Stefan,

Find any lab, business, NGO or govt agency that can produce any sort of detection system that can register the incidence of a single atom, electron, proton or photon. There are technologically none. Events are registered as least observable aggregates. And its only when things in aggregate move in unison with each other that we can detect differentiated polarity, whether be it charge or magnetism. ON AVERAGE then, given that an electron with its omnidirectional uniform charge will have its accompanying undifferentiated magnetic field which nonetheless will present an orthogonal relationship in any aspect relative to and aligned with the predominant orthogonality of the manufactured non-homogenous field, half of the registered detections will be UP or DN. It is really that simple, and statistical,

If you register only the DN detections and pass the UP projections through yet another magnet group same as the one they just exited, That projected batch that would register as UP will itself become split in two with half UP and half DN when registered. Resulting in the same 1/4 probability as what is observed by the Mermin 120* detection angle. It's a Bit, not a coin. jrc

John,

you have not answered my question. What is the difference between electron A and B that leads to what Mermin writes in his appendix as

"This probability is unity when phi = 0 [case (a)]"

Phi is the relative angle between the magnets A and B. So what causes the results at a relative angle of 0 degrees?

You can find Mermin's paper - and especially its appendix - at

https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/mermin/Mermin_short.pdf

If you think you know the answer - write the explanation. If you do not know - write that you do not know. And if you are dishonest - write as if you know something, for example what you wrote in your last post,

"If you register only the DN detections and pass the UP projections through yet another magnet group same as the one they just exited, That projected batch that would register as UP will itself become split in two with half UP and half DN when registered. Resulting in the same 1/4 probability as what is observed by the Mermin 120* detection angle."

what obviously isn't Bohm's version of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment and neither is the constellation i asked for to be explained.

"If you register only the DN detections and pass the UP projections through yet another magnet group same as the one they just exited, That projected batch that would register as UP will itself become split in two with half UP and half DN when registered. Resulting in the same 1/4 probability as what is observed by the Mermin 120* detection angle. It's a Bit, not a coin." jrc

Not so John, the spin outcome is temporarily preserved. So unless subjected to a different field orientation between outcomes it will not be changed. All still up.

Stefan,

"Not sure if I understood this correctly. Could you please give a description for how in the case of a relative magnet angle of 0 degrees (perfect anti-correlation) the measurement results do come about with the two gyroscopes?" Stefan

The pair is produced with anti correlated spins and that is preserved unless one or both experience a twist or series of twists that cause them to become out of alignment with each other. 0 and 180 degrees are the same alignment of field though at 180 they have reversed polarity of field compared to each other.

I think the 'sppoky'* correlation of the gyroscopes can be demonstrated either by using big magnets and tiny macroscopic gyroscopes in a weightless environment. Or maybe set up so the gyroscopes have neural buoyancy in a liquid-

* The gyroscopes don't need to communicate to co-ordinate keeping their correlation or too loose it. This un-spokifies spooky action at a distance.

Yes is so, Georgina,

usually in the various presentations and literature it is said that the subject atom 'forgets' its orientation. And in the better produced video presentations on Spin, the explanation is that the electron behaves "as if" there was a rotating charge. The Mermin Challenge is "why does" that non-orthogonal detection angle on one side of the source, produce results "as if" the Up and Dn detections were projected through a second asymmetric magnet element.

Re.John R. Cox replied on Oct. 31, 2020. I think your talk of fields, thumbs, turtles and tumbling etc. is a lot of obfuscations. What matters to an unsupported gyroscope is whether or not it experiences a twist. No twist no change in orientation.

Silver ions not atoms are used in the SG experiments; Ag. The outer shell electron of a silver atom is missing g, so doesn't unbalance the ion.

I don't think that is the challenge John. With an entangled' particle or gyroscope only one different exposure is needed to break the relationship, so that the outcome becomes random; not 100% correlated, Once the relationship is broken putting the output through a second apparatus of the same as last test orientation produces the same outcome as the previous test. The orientation is temporarily preserved; given same conditions. Once aligned to the new field orientation it remains in that alignment. Only a change providing a twist will change the orientation.

Accidentally posted this as a "new post", but here it is:

Georgina,

"All still up."

Correct.

"The pair is produced with anti correlated spins and that is preserved unless one or both experience a twist or series of twists that cause them to become out of alignment with each other. 0 and 180 degrees are the same alignment of field though at 180 they have reversed polarity of field compared to each other."

It is clear that your gyroscopes had to be anti-correlated for the relative angle of 0 degrees, experimental results as well as QM say so. The question was and is what this means: in which angles are the spin axis - in the first picture you find on wiki - oriented when sent out from the source???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope

In a local-realistic scheme one also has to explain what happens with these spin axis when they encounter the orientation of the magnetic fields. If that remains mysterious, then it is not a local-realistic explanation and i could as well claim that some tiny "anti-correlated" pink elephants - with trunks up or down (anti-correlated) - are responsible for the results at the relative angle of 0 degrees.

Only when you have clarity about the angle of 0 degrees, you can proceed to the other angles and see whether or not your scheme is consistent with the other angles. Up to now it is not clear whether or not your scheme is at all feasible for 0, 90 and 180 degrees.

Stefan, imagine a gyroscope. It has two important characteristics. Mass that spins and axis of rotation. Imagine the gyroscopes weightless in space. The gyroscopes can have aligned axes of rotation, whether same way up or one is inverted compared to the other; so that they are spinning in opposite directions compared to each other. Relative spins are the difference between correlated or anti correlated .Spin axes relative to each other are the difference between 100% same outcomes and random outcomes.

After production the individuals of an entangled pair meet their own test apparatus. The axes of rotation will either be aligned with the fields so no change of orientation happens, or both experience twisting that aligns the axes to the fields. Same fields act the same on the axes of rotation. The axes of rotation are the same, remember. It's only spin direction that is different. So the relationship is preserved.

Georgina,

i am really not convinced - to the contrary.

I know what a gyroscope is. Your gyroscopes seem to be sensible to inhomogenous magnetic fields.

If you want to explain the experiment in question by a local-realistic theory, you should start by explaining what it is that is sensible to inhomogenous magnetic fields. Are there dipole magnets at the gyroscopes?

Further you must specify the different cases. You write that "the gyroscopes can have aligned axes of rotation", but you don't write whether or not they MUST have aligned axis to produce the known results.

Furthermore you write "whether same way up or one is inverted compared to the other". Please specify whether that means that only "same way up" is allowed to arrive at the magnets and no "same way down"?. "Same way up" should be the shorthand for a certain spinning direction, i guess?

If all this is clear you should write with which frequencies of occurrence your different pairings are generated by the source. One needs the complete set of all possible pairings and their frequencies of occurrence. Otherwise a serious evaluation of your scheme is utterly pointless.

Only then one can begin to discuss what physical mechanism(s) in your scheme lead to the well known Bell curve.

So it would be helpful if you would answer all these questions first.

After that it is necessary to explain your scheme for a certain angle.

So please explain the PHYSICAL (means CAUSAL) mechanism why for a relative angle of 60 degrees between the two magnets the measurement results are such that in 3/4 of all measured pairs under that 60 degree angle there is anti-correlation - and in 1/4 of all these measured pairs under that 60 degree angle there is correlation.

Stefan, sorry if I'm pedantic.

You ask a lot- I'll try.

Re. the particle gyroscope, there is just spinning mass with axis of rotation. That mass in your words is sensible to the environment produced by the test apparatus. I think it is a real disturbance of the base substance of existence. I don't think thinking about magnetic moments is helpful here after all.

Yes the axes of rotation must be pointing in the same direction in each pair to get 100 % correlated or anti correlated depending on how the 'entangled' pairs are produced, For 'random results the individuals of the pair have undergone different forces. Not knowing the orientation starting with and produced by the twists of the non-homogenous field the final outcome can't be predicted (looks random).

By 'same way up' I man same up pairs, same down pairs, and any other angle of same pairs. For anti correlation one must be inverted 180 degrees from the other. That's about axis of rotation . if a spinning mass is inverted, it spins in the opposite direction viewed from the same reference frame.

Results will be as are found experimentally. Bell's inequalities are violated because of the effects of changeable axis of rotation . The inequalities apply to fixed properties.

Georgina, never mind, i am as pedantic as you are :-)

So axis of rotation must be pointing in the same direction for each pair to get 100% (anti-) correlation.

No matter in which direction that axis is pointing before measurement, they will be aligned with the respective magnet fields by some forces.

"By 'same way up' I man same up pairs, same down pairs, and any other angle of same pairs."

Further you wrote at 1. Nov. @ 2:28 GMT

"The gyroscopes can have aligned axes of rotation, whether same way up or one is inverted compared to the other; so that they are spinning in opposite directions compared to each other."

So, we have 4 different kinds of pairings send off from the source:

up/up

down/down

up/down

down/up

By assuming all these pairs orrcur with equal frequencies at the source, it is obvious that for the cases of 0 degrees as well as 180 degrees, you can't neither have 100% correlation nor 100% anti-correlation. Sorry for being pedantic but you wrote that exactly so. Therefore i wondered why you wrote

"Results will be as are found experimentally."

So for the sake of further discussion let's assume that your theory has only 2 kinds of pairings:

down/up

up/down

This would give 100% anti-correlation at 0 degrees relative angle and 100% correlation at 180 degrees of relative angle. Since the axis of rotations can be inverted by the magnet fields, it doesn't matter if both members of a pair have the opposite directions of the magnet's fields they will encounter, they simply get "flipped" (or inverted as your terminology says).

Consequently it also doesn't matter whether or not the axis of rotation (spin axis) is oriented such that it is in line with the horizontal plane (means it lies in the plane of the tabletop-experiment, in the plane of the board of your desktop). What matters is the same alignment of the spin axis for both pairs and that the pairs differ concerning the direction of their rotations.

The interesting case of 90 degrees relative angle between the magnets is explained by you such that the equal frequencies of the pairings

up/down

down/up

down/down

up/up

comes about by

"the individuals of the pair have undergone different forces. Not knowing the orientation starting with and produced by the twists of the non-homogenous field the final outcome can't be predicted (looks random)."

So if you assume that only up/down or down/up pairs are send off the source, it comes as a surprise that we now should also have down/down and up/up measurement results.

You only have to imagine that case:

Both spin axis are oriented in the horizontal plane. The left magnet is turned 90 degrees relative to the other. What happens at that turned magnet? For obtaining the known result (50% correlation, 50% anti-correlation), the "different forces" that act on this left side must act randomly, so are no forces in the classical sense.

This is easy to see if you make the gedankenexperiment:

Assume that the left magnet is turned 90 degrees relative to the other. The other magnet remains unchanced.

Now assume that a particle pair comes in whose left member rotates anti-correlated compared to the other.

Lets examine what happens to the right. The particle to the right can have two measurement outcomes. This depends only on its original direction of rotation. It is *determined* whether the outcome will be "up" or "down".

For the left particle the same should be valid. Since we do not know the particles' original spin directions, we could say that whenever the right particle is measured "up", the left particle should be measured "down" and vice versa - because they are entangled and the 90 degrees (the environment) does not change. This then would result in 50% "up/down" and 50% "down/up".

But the experimental results are very different as you know.

For obtaining each 1/4 of up/down, down/up, down/down and up/up mesurement results the left side cannot act deterministically according to some locally-realistic physical forces. Because, as you know, at the left side the particle can only have 2 alternatives, either "up" or "down" with equal frequencies according to your theory. This would result in 50% "up/down" and 50% "down/up".

And NO, that does NOT mean that the cases "up/up" and "down/down" can also occur - because you anti-correlated all the pairs per assumption AND you assume that same physical LOCAL forces on same physical LOCAL properties results in same measurement results. So if the right particle is measured "up" - then the left particle CANNOT be measured either "up" or "down" according to local realism. The same is also true for the case that the right particle is measured "down". Then the left particle cannot be measured either "up" or "down" but must remain correlated to the right particle.

"Not knowing the orientation starting with and produced by the twists of the non-homogenous field the final outcome can't be predicted (looks random)."

This is not consistent. Why should the magnet and the particle to the right suddenly have changed behaviour only because the left magnet was turned 90 degrees? If it wouldn't have turned (and the magnets remain 0 degrees relative to each other), you wouldn't either expect results like "down/down" and "up/up".

You can't smuggle in these measurement pairings for the case of 0 degrees by assuming that the source does send them out. Because as i have noted above, this would disturb the experimental results for that angle.

You also cannot smuggle in these pairings for the case of 90 degrees to obtain the correct measurement results - since the source cannot know whether or not there is a relative angle of 90 degrees involved (but who knows, maybe the source knows "non-locally" :-).