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Qualified Newtonian

. This holds that the universe is composed of independent particles moving in an absolute space-time. On the very small scale they are governed by quantum theory, which occasionally results in large-scale (non-local) correlations. But because the particles are independent, in virtually all cases of interest the quantum aspect of particles gets averaged out when one passes to the large scale. This view is challenged by the effect proposed by Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky (called the ERP effect) in which an atom emits spinning particles, where the directions of the spins, even when the particles have separated to a large distance, exhibit a correspondence of behaviour that points to an underlying unity. The qualified-Newtonian has to regard this as a sort of freak, in which the averaging out, which is the norm in the universe, is somehow avoided.



Chris Clarke
Tue Feb 4 16:22:05 GMT 1997