Tossing the quantum dice

In a contribution to The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology , Anton Zeilinger illustrates the “entanglement” of quantum entities by imagining a popular future Christmas toy – the quantum dice: “If we throw the two dice, they will always show the same number . . . . This number may vary from one pair of dice to the next, but for each pair, the first throw always specifies what the number will be” (35).

Move the two dice at a distance, and the same phenomenon continues, a result that Einstein regarded as “spooky” and a sign of the limits of quantum theory.

The reason is not because the dice or weighted, and not because the dice are somehow communicating with one another. The latter “local realist” position that “B can only be influenced by the state of A if there is a transfer of information from A to B maximally at the speed of light” has been shown to contradict the principles of quantum physics.

Most importantly, the phenomenon is not traceable to any inherent properties of the dice. In the phenomenon of entanglement, “the properties of the individual system (for example, the number that a die will show) are completely undefined, and the observed result is random in an absolute way,” but “the relation between the two sides is fully defined.” We can’t define the individual properties of each die but we can describe how they act together. More generally, “it is impossible to built an ontology of the individuals, but it is possible to built an ontology of relations . . . . We therefore conclude that one consequence of entanglement is that relations are more important than individuals” (36).

Spooky indeed, but pretty exhilarating too.