John Stewart Bell
Faithful readers of Robert Anton Wilson will be familiar with Bell's theorem, the idea that under quantum mechanics, two particles can influence each other, no matter how far apart they are.
On Tuesday, a Nobel Prize in physics was announced for three scientists who ran experiments that found hard evidence for the theorem. You can read the New York Times story, which even quotes David Kaiser, author of How the Hippies Saved Physics, the book about scientists such as Nick Herbert whom RAW wrote about. Michael Johnson, who emailed me about the news, sent me a link to an also really good Washington Post article.
Here is the lead for the Times' article:
"Three physicists whose works each showed that nature is even weirder than Einstein had dared to imagine have been named winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
"John Clauser, of J.F. Clauser and Associates in Walnut Creek, Calif.; Alain Aspect of the Institut d’Optique in Palaiseau, France; and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna in Austria, will split a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor."
No response yet from Nick Herbert on his blog.
2 comments:
Thank you for sharing this. Man, I haven't read much on physics in recent decades. I remember getting a book of Bell's papers out of the Arizona State University Science Library in the 80's. I read it, but a lot of the math went over my head.
The Austrian winner, Anton Zeilinger, appears alongside RAW and John Bell in Die Raupe kann den Schmetterling nicht verstehen (1987) (The caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly), a documentary about Erwin Schrödinger (1987 was his 100th birthday).
The documentary is also available on YouTube with English subtitles.
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