Category: Culture

There was a very interesting programme on BBC 4 last Thursday, 16/01/2020, 22:00 about quantum entanglement. I had recorded it and just got round to watching it. I wanted to let you know in case anyone else with Swisscom TV wants to watch it before it’s a week old.

What I like about the program is that it gives the history, starting with the 1927 Solway conference and onto Einstein’s paper and the work of John Bell. It does not try to describe any of the mathematics but rather gives one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the physical phenomenon and what they are currently doing to verify it.

I already sent this as a note to members of the GIN Kulture group since I definitely believe this qualifies under our definition of Culture. Since there was reasonable interest I’m adding it to the blog.

Brian Allardyce refers us to an article by the Austrian Academy of Sciences at oeaw.ac.at in case you missed the programme. This describes what they did.
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/detail/news/quantum-entanglement-confirmed-with-light-from-distant-quasars/

I also found an interesting YouTube video which goes a step backwards and explores the origins of Quantum Mechanics and spends some time on the endless arguments between Bohr and Einstein at the 1927 conference. These are referred to in the BBC programme but only related to entanglement whereas the disagreement was much more fundamental.

Here is the link
https://ch.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=solvay+conference#id=19&vid=e36e4a2e5c40902eb79a7761d344a8b9&action=view

As an opening venture, some of us have been reading Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Machines Like Me. We were meant to meet to discuss it, but it has proved impossible to get folk together so this blog will be our virtual meeting point.

I’ll just mention a few things I enjoyed, admitting straight away that I’m a long term McEwan fan, and hope that you will comment on what you thought.

Firstly, note that the title can be read in two ways, which immediately presents an ambivalence. Typical of his writing and central to this work, I enjoyed his weaving of the main theme, the moral dilemma facing society regarding machine intelligence , with the sub-plots of the dystopian Britain  ( a simile for  the Brexit future?) and the human stories.

I am not sure about the reason for his  distortion of recent history, except perhaps to illustrate more vividly what the near future holds for the UK both politically and socially.

OK?   Now lets have your views.

Tony