View from the North 40: What makes us intelligent sentient beings?

How did we get where we are?

Quantum entanglement is back in the lime light again after three scientists won the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics for their research in quantum whatever.

The quick summary of quantum entanglement is when two particles, such as photons, electrons, neutrinos and molecules, link together in a certain way that no matter how far apart they are in space their state remains the same. (And as an FYI, state means condition or status not, like, Montana or Kentucky.)

Basically quantum anything is the most confusing of all the sciences with terms and branches of study like quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement, quantum theory, quantum field theory, quantum collapse theory (which isn’t as bad as it sounds), quantum teleportation (which is both not as cool as it sounds and cooler), and quantum weirdness (a term which I didn’t even make up).

I mean, even Albert Einstein didn’t fully understand quantum stuff. He called it “spooky action at a distance,” which makes me laugh every time because the genius who basically defined modern physics and changed views on space, time, mass and energy, looked at the evidence of quantum entanglement, failed to explain it and declared it just too weird for words, or rather too weird for mathematical calculation.

The Nobel Prize Committee also took their sweet time handing out this award for quantum science juju.

After long decades of saying, “Huh? They’re doing what, with the which? I’m going with Einstein and just hoping this quantum nonsense just goes away,” they finally awarded a Nobel to three scientist, saying: “Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.”

The prestige is great, even though much of the scientific work was completed in the 1970s and ’80s, which makes one-third of the 10,000,000 Swiss kronor prize worth about $5,867 per year of research and development. Before taxes.

But it’s not about the money. At least not the Nobel money.

Because multiple-billions of dollars are being invested in quantum thingy research in everything from quantum computers, which are touted as potentially being the most secure computers in the world, and quantum teleportation — which is about communication not transporting of objects like a “beam my up, Scottie” “Star Trek” situation (but if you still need the coolness factor: the communication does happen faster than light).

Undoubtedly, there are hundreds of secret, hush-hush, need-to-know-only quantum research projects out there, and if it all seems well beyond your brain’s reckoning, don’t lose faith in yourself. Because while scientists are moving into realms beyond Einstein, the Nevada State Athletic Commission just authorized sanctioning slap fighting.

In case you, like me, are imagining two ineffectual fighters in a tiff, rapidly flinging their hands at each other, like cats batting at a laser light, until a bell rings to stop the action before someone gets scratched, you should know: that’s not it.

It’s worse.

Slap fighting, a worldwide sport, pits two opponents against each other — face-to-face — taking turns standing there flat-footed and unflinching while the other person takes a windup and slaps them in the face as hard as they can. For up to three rounds. The winner is determined by knockout, by a competitor being unable to proceed within 30 seconds of being slapped or by scoring from three judges.

Not being awarded sanctioned-sport status or a Nobel prize are researchers at Cortical Labs in Melbourne, Australia, who took human and mouse brain cells growing in a petri dish, hooked them to a computer and taught them to play Pong – one of the original computer video games.

Invented in 1972, Pong is a simple, two-dimensional, black and white video game that simulates table tennis. Opponents maneuver paddles, which look like short, fat, white lines, up and down their edge of the screen to block/hit a ball that looks like a white dot bouncing back and forth across the screen.

“(Neurons playing Pong) is the start of a new frontier in understanding intelligence,” one of the authors said in the Oct. 12 journal “Neuron.” “It touches on the fundamental aspects of not only what it means to be human but what it means to be alive and intelligent at all, to process information and be sentient in an ever changing, dynamic world.”

Pong didn’t seem to do that much for me when my family got it back in the ’70s, about the same time Nobel prize winner John Clauser was cracking open the world of quantum entanglement by measuring the polarizations of a pair of photons. Whatever that means.

Still, perhaps I played Pong just enough to elevate me out of the Slap Fighting League of Nevada.

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Everything is relative, I guess, at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .