Physicist trying to send a signal back in time

If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington
physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for quantum "retrocausality."

That`s science talk for saying he hopes to find evidence of a photon going backward in
time.

"It doesn`t seem like it should work, but on the other hand, I can`t see what would
prevent it from working," Cramer said. "If it does work, you could receive the signal 50
microseconds before you send it."

Uh, huh ... what? Wait a minute. What is that supposed to mean?

Roughly put, Cramer is talking about the subatomic equivalent of arriving at the train
station before you`ve left home, of winning the lottery before you`ve bought the
ticket, of graduating from high school before you`ve been born -- or something like
that.

"It probably won`t work," he said again carefully, peering through his large glasses as if
to determine his audience`s mental capacity for digesting the information. Cramer, an
accomplished experimental physicist who also writes science fiction, knows this sounds
more like a made-for-TV script on the Sci Fi Channel than serious scientific research.

"But even if it doesn`t work, we should be able to learn something new about quantum
mechanics by trying it," he said. What he and UW colleague Warren Nagourney plan to
try soon is an experiment aimed at resolving some niggling contradictions in one of the
most fundamental branches of physics known as quantum mechanics, or quantum
theory.

"To be honest, I only have a faint understanding of what John`s talking about,"
Nagourney said, smiling. Though claiming to be "just a technician" on this project,
Cramer`s technician partner previously assisted with the research of Hans Dehmelt, the
UW scientist who won the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics.

Quantum theory describes the behavior of matter and energy at the atomic and
subatomic levels, a level of reality where most of the more familiar Newtonian laws of
physics (why planets spin, airplanes fly and baseballs curve) no longer apply.

The problem with quantum theory, put simply, is that it`s really weird. Findings at the
quantum level don`t fit well with either Newton`s or Einstein`s view of reality at the
macro level, and attempts to explain quantum behavior often appear inherently
contradictory.

"There`s a whole zoo of quantum paradoxes out there," Cramer said. "That`s part of the
reason Einstein hated quantum mechanics."

One of the paradoxes of interest to Cramer is known as "entanglement." It`s also known
as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, named for the three scientists who described its
apparent absurdity as an argument against quantum theory.

Basically, the idea is that interacting, or entangled, subatomic particles such as two
photons -- the fundamental units of light -- can affect each other no matter how far
apart in time or space.

"If you do a measurement on one, it has an immediate effect on the other even if they
are separated by light years across the universe," Cramer said. If one of the entangled
photon`s trajectory tilts up, the other one, no matter how distant, will tilt down to
compensate.

Einstein ridiculed the idea as "spooky action at a distance." Quantum mechanics must be