Alain Aspect and his Fantastic Quantum Experience

The first ideas that led to the knowledge of the quantum physics had beginning around 1900. In 1925, the equations of the quantum mechanics had been discovered, and the quantum physics became accepted as source of the truth for scientists. Thereafter, the knowledge of the intimate part of the matter and the physical forces that act in the interior of the atomic nucleus have been the main object of the researches of physicists. Many theories had experimentally been confirmed in sophisticated and very expensive laboratories, while others remain insolvable or even represent true inexplicable paradoxes. In 1982, Alain Aspect and his collaborators (3), at the Paris University – France had executed experiments that truly indicated the notion of the intangible and, specifically, the notion of transcendence in the sub-atomic world. In former years to this date, the quantum physics came giving indications that it should be levels of reality beyond the material level. Initially, particles like the electron for example, seemed sometimes to behave as wave, and sometimes, as particle (matter), that is, they seemed to have double "personality", or physically saying, they had a double character. From these comments, Heisenberg inferred his "Theory of the Uncertainty", in which he says to us that it is not possible to establish, at the same time, the position and the speed of an electron in each moment. It is not a usual wave, but a wave in potential. It was when Einstein ridiculed this theory, saying, "God does not play dice.” The potential of these quantum waves passed to be considered as surpassing the matter, or they had a transcendent character.

Until the Aspect’s experience, this concept was not very clear and was until denied by many physicists. Then, the Aspect’s experiment came to confirm that such fact is not just a theory, since this character of transcendentalism really exists in potential, or being, the particles have really connections with the exterior space and time. What this experience demonstrated is that when an atom emits two quanta of light, called photons, launched in opposite directions, in some form these photons instantaneously affect the behavior of each other at a distance, without exchanging any signal throughout the space.

Well, we know that Einstein had demonstrated, in the beginning of 20th century, with his Theory of Special Relativity that two objects cannot instantaneously affect one to the other in the space-time. Such event would takes a certain time to one of them reach the other, even that the space between them went through to the maximum speed of light, or say, approximately at a constant velocity of three hundred thousand kilometers per second. This is the idea of "locality" that derives from the fact that any signal is local in the sense that it should take a certain time to displace to another point in the space. And despite this, if the photons emitted by the atom in the Aspect’s experience (4) influences one to the other, at a distance, apparently without exchanging signals, is because this phenomenon is happening instantaneously, and therefore, to a greater speed than that of the light. Then, we must recognize that this influence should belong to the "transcendent domain of the reality.” This striking experience showed to physicists that something very important is subjacent to the sub-atomic particles, which nothing has to see with the material reality, of which physicists praise themselves so much. However, insofar as physicists are concerned, this experiment points out to new routes for the physical research, besides the creation of the non-locality concept applied to all that can be considered instantaneously. We will see more about this concept on the Amit Goswami ideas, to follow, in this chapter, as well as, in Chapter 10 –The importance of thought. However, to this point, it is enough to cite part of the Amit Goswami interview given, according to reference (4):

Henry Stapp, who is a physicist of the University of Berkeley, in California, affirmed, in one of his works, written in 1977, that the things “[…] out of the space-time affect the things inside the space-time.” It does not have any doubt that this occurs in the substratum of the quantum physics, where you are treating with quantum objects. Now, of course the “X" of the question is that we are always dealing with quantum objects because there is no doubt that the quantum physics is the physics of each object, be either submicroscopic or macroscopic objects, the quantum physics is unique and applies itself. Even so, although it is more applicable to photons and electrons, to submicroscopic objects, we believe that all this is reality and, that all manifested reality and the entire material world are governed by the same laws. And, if so it is, then the Aspect’s experiment is saying to us that we must change our point of view, because we also are quantum objects.