Like A Circus

"I write as a mathematician uses a sheet of paper for doing calculations: because I think better that way."

(Alright, the feedback on this is killing me. Relax.)

The habits of 16 years die hard. The mind asks a question. The question does not go away. If the question does go away, another takes its place. (sigh)

Not too long after the Really Big Idea decided that NOW - right as I was about to become Dr. N, with a career trajectory that went nowhere near physics - was a good time to emerge, I read a book on entanglement. (At this point I was still optimistic that the answer to creating a 5-dimensional model was simple, and that all I had to do was find it.) I won't mention which book, because after finishing it I still didn't understand what entanglement was. I was mildly aggravated that someone could write an entire book on entanglement and still not give a satisfactory explanation of what it was.

'Satisfactory' meaning that I now knew what creates entanglement, as well as how entanglement is destroyed, if/how multiple entanglements are sustained, etc. etc. Since reading that book, it seems to me as though the 'E' word is increasing in popularity, and has become a default explanation for many things. I might go so far as to say that 'entanglement' seems to be the new 'quantum'...

I didn't pay much attention to entanglement while I was developing ideas about the nature of a conscious interface with the 'smear', because I couldn't see a direct link between it and the dynamics of 5-dimensional navigation. (State exclusion seemed to be a more relevant principle.) Which is not to say that there isn't one, simply that I haven't seen one yet and have therefore simply added entanglement to the long list of things that will eventually require explanation. Even certain scientists, whose books we will not name, have said "Particles that are quantum entangled do not imply that signals pass between them. Entanglement means that separated systems are correlated. Psi, on the other hand, seems to involve information transfer, like signal passing." So what does entanglement mean for a 5-dimensional model?

Let's not start with something like this - "let's assume that our bodies, minds, and brains are entangled in a holistic universe." Let's not start with this because there is a process by which particles become entangled. Or at least there was the last time I checked... "When pairs of particles are generated by the decay of other particles, naturally or through induced collision, these pairs may be termed 'entangled', in that such pairs often necessarily have linked and opposite qualities, i.e. of spin or charge." (W)

Which begs the following questions... 1) Do these particles remain entangled forever? 2) What would destroy the entanglement between these two particles? 3) Can a single particle sustain multiple entanglements created at different times with several other particles? (Are particles polygamous or monogamous?) and 4) What about particle threesomes, where a third particle joins a pre-existing entanglement? How has this new addition changed the entanglement relationship between the original two particles? (Why do all these questions bring to mind sexual relationships?) And what's up with this - "The doubly mysterious part of entanglement swapping is that the entangling photons never interact; in normal entanglement, particles must interact and then separate before demonstrating correlative behavior."? I'm getting confused. Are we expanding the ways in which particles can become entangled?

And if one particle is continuously becoming newly-entangled, while retaining all of its previous entanglements unaltered, then is a particle simply the sum total of all of its previous partners? (This opens a new set of questions about the qualitative differences between a particle with few versus many entanglements...) If one particle is continuously becoming newly-entangled, and this causes its previous entanglement obligations to be destroyed or modified in some way, then attempting to use entanglement as an explanation for anything becomes exceedingly difficult, as there is no telling when that entanglement might be/has been destroyed. (Someone out there probably knows which option is correct, and it would be ever so helpful if you would just drop a comment with your explanation. I have the feeling that I'm spinning wheels that don't need to be spun...)

My interest in entanglement is renewed when I read papers like this, which uses entanglement to explain memory (for reasons I'm missing), or articles like this, which talks about the history of the idea of entanglement more so than the properties and limits of entanglement. My interest is further stoked by the notion that entropy provides a measure of entanglement, and a 'connection between quantum information theory and thermodynamics' - a concept which I don't completely understand, but which I nevertheless now fantasize might be the missing link in this 5-dimensional model.

My questions are like a program that is always running in the background, consuming whatever spare resources can be found. They're not going away anytime soon. I know, I know - I should go study physics.

Until that happens though, you'll have the pleasure of listening to a cognitive psychologist butcher, twist, and mangle all of your cherished physics concepts. And it's not going to be pretty. If you're not tired of it already, you'll get there. I promise. :)