Potential applications abounded. For one thing, Sarfatti reasoned, such a device could transmit a human voice across vast distances, with no possible eavesdropping. If the slit-detector efficiency at A were controlled by some transducer, such as a microphone, then the pattern of vibrations from the speaker’s voice would become encoded in the varying sharpness of the double-slit interference pattern. A loudspeaker on the other end could then retranslate the pattern of interference fringes received at B into sound waves. “The application to deep space communications is obvious,” Sarfatti concluded: messages could be relayed instantly across vast, cosmic distances. Benefits would accrue closer to home as well, such as “giving instant communication between an intelligence agent and his headquarters”—that is, espionage. Clearly his prior experiences with Harold Puthoff, Russell Targ, and their remote-viewing experiments at the Stanford Research Institute had left their mark. “In this case,” Sarfatti clarified, “we would not use the above system but would use the same principle using e.g. correlated psycho-active molecules, such as LSD, affecting the neurotransmitter chemistry.” Presumably the image of CIA agents doped up on LSD, communicating instantly with operatives half a world away via correlated brain impulses, seemed no more far-fetched than the parapsychological effects in which Sarfatti had been immersed for years.9
While Sarfatti dreamed of harnessing nonlocality, his proposal began to unravel, thanks entirely to local interactions. Another regular participant in the Fundamental Fysiks Group, physicist Philippe Eberhard, submitted a lengthy article to the Italian journal Il Nuovo Cimento the very week that Sarfatti filed his patent disclosure document. Eberhard, who had completed his doctoral training in France, had been working at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory as a theoretical physicist since the late 1950s. With Stapp, he began sitting in on Fundamental Fysiks Group discussions from the beginning, delivering several presentations to the group and also participating in the Esalen workshops.10 From the start, he impressed Nick Herbert as “an energetic, black-bearded, flirtatious Frenchman,” who fit right in with the group.11 Eberhard’s article on “Bell’s theorem and the different concepts of locality,” which he mailed to the journal during the first week of May 1978, clearly owed much to the group’s activities. The opening citations were all to works by group members or by John Bell; he closed by thanking group members Henry Stapp, John Clauser, and Nick Herbert for helpful discussions.12
Like Stapp, Eberhard emphasized that Bell’s theorem and Clauser’s experiments decisively demonstrated that the outcomes of measurements at detector B depended on the detector settings at A—just as Sarfatti hoped to exploit with his new device. But, Eberhard went on, the fact that the outcomes depended on the faraway settings did not mean that one could control that dependence to send an intelligible message. The catch was that the telltale correlations predicted by Bell would only be revealed when the two experimenters compared both their detector settings for each given run and the measured outcomes at each setting. Until they came together to compare notes—a decidedly slower-than-light process—the receiver at B would measure a random-looking series of events.13
Consider the original scenario that Bell had analyzed: measuring the spins of entangled electrons, as experimenters varied the orientation of the detectors on each end of the apparatus. Roughly half the time, the electron careening toward detector B would be registered as spin up, and half the time it would be measured as spin down. The individual outcomes at detector B—spin up for electron number 1175, say, and spin down for electron number 1176—might indeed have depended on what settings the experimeter at A had used. But without separate knowledge of what the detector settings at A had been in each case, the receiver at B would have no way of discerning any pattern or message. The measurements from her own detector—strings of spin-up results interspersed with spin-down results—would simply appear to be random: all noise, no signal.14
Eberhard’s thorough analysis was the first published attempt to reconcile Bell-styled entanglement with the dictates of relativity. It introduced what has become the standard response to the question of whether quantum nonlocality can lead to faster-than-light communication. Eberhard’s paper has made a respectable impact in the scientific literature, receiving nearly 120 citations to date.15 It has also been picked up in more accessible settings. Nick Herbert’s friend and former roommate Heinz Pagels, for example, prominently featured Eberhard’s argument in his book The Cosmic Code (1982). (Pagels, the executive director of the New York Academy of Sciences, later helped to organize the 1986 meeting on the foundations of quantum mechanics in New York City’s World Trade Center.) In the light of Eberhard’s argument, Pagels lambasted anyone who claimed they could use Bell’s theorem to communicate faster than light. Such people had “substituted a wish-fulfilling fantasy for understanding.”16
Though Eberhard’s article has usually been invoked as the death knell for superluminal telegraphy, Eberhard in fact ended on an upbeat note. As he made clear, his no-go theorem rested on several assumptions, any one of which might break down. Perhaps quantum mechanics was not the final word on the behavior of the microworld; perhaps the principles of Einstein’s relativity required fine-tuning; perhaps physicists’ intuitive model of causality was the weak point. Eberhard mentioned that members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group were at present scrutinizing each of those options. “Consequently, any attempt to discourage the work that is being performed” would be “either futile or counterproductive.”17
On that final point, Eberhard and Sarfatti certainly agreed. Sarfatti worked tirelessly to find some loophole by which his superluminal signaling scheme might survive Eberhard’s test. Henry Stapp got into the mix, too, having quickly appreciated the significance of Eberhard’s demonstration. Back and forth the arguments flew. Perhaps, Sarfatti suggested, the Eberhard-Stapp argument had neglected some means by which the various experimental arrangements in Sarfatti’s scheme—slit detector in the photons’ path or not—could be distinguished by an observer at the faraway detector.18 Other times, Sarfatti leapt on Eberhard’s parting observation that quantum mechanics itself might be surpassed by some more general theory, in which controllable superluminal signaling might survive. After all, Sarfatti reminded his interlocutors, “superluminal precognitions”—psi visions of the future—“exist as facts in abundance in my own laboratory of the mind. Am I to ignore facts simply because old men are afraid to experience them?”19
A Bay Area newspaper reporter captured some flavor of the intense discussions at the time. In his article about “maverick physicist Jack Sarfatti” and his quest for faster-than-light communication, the reporter noted that few physicists outside Sarfatti’s immediate circle paid much attention to his latest schemes. Perhaps that was because Sarfatti was leading “an admitted ‘bohemian’ existence in San Francisco’s North Beach, hanging out in espresso coffee houses and working on his theories or talking with a small group of followers.” Henry Stapp offered a different explanation: Sarfatti was “slow to admit his mistakes,” as the reporter put it. Stapp and Sarfatti had “argued for a year before Sarfatti admitted” that his original scheme would not work.20
In the midst of those heated arguments, Sarfatti floated a new corporate vision. Having been cut off from Werner Erhard’s est funds for nearly two years, Sarfatti’s financial situation had become dire. Even bohemians needed to eat; it was time to drum up some new patrons. In place of the Physics/Consciousness Research Group Sarfatti created “i 2 Associates, a Meta-Corporation of the Emerging Post-Industrial Order.” Its goal: “To initiate and catalyze faster-than-light quantum communications technology based on the development of quantum correlation physics of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect.”21
Where once Sarfatti had looked to human-potential gurus like Erhard and Esalen’s Michael Murphy for underwriting, this time he trained his eye on the defense establishment. The principal objective of i 2 Associates, Sarfatti proposed, would be the “transformation of the entire United State
s national defense communications network to untappable, unjammable, zero-time delay, quantum correlation systems.” By relying on Bell-styled quantum entanglement rather than ordinary signals, such as radio waves or light, the superluminal communication system would be impervious to the weaknesses that hampered present-day communications, be they poor weather or security breaches. In a footnote, Sarfatti acknowledged the problem of whether the superluminal correlations could be controlled or modulated, so as to produce intelligible messages. Not to worry: “Dr. Sarfatti believes he may have found a fruitful approach to the modulation problem,” and i 2 Associates would make that its first priority.22 After all, even Eberhard had called for further research.
Sarfatti promised a slew of benefits once the hurdle of controlling the superluminal correlations could be cleared. Alongside improved “control of nuclear missiles in flight” and “more reliable communications for Polaris-type submarines under the sea,” his efforts would also lead to the “development of more accurate remote viewing,” beyond the results that Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ had logged in their psi lab at the Stanford Research Institute. There was even the prospect of developing “a proper quantum psychopharmacology” that could deliver “highly specific drugs to induce sharply selective experiential effects,” thereby “amplifying desired behavioral capabilities.”23
Desperate for sponsors, Sarfatti circulated his i 2 Associates proposal far and wide.24 Among the recipients was the Central Intelligence Agency. A CIA analyst prepared a formal review of Sarfatti’s proposal. Suddenly, thanks to Sarfatti’s prodding, the CIA had to go on record about how best to interpret quantum mechanics. The analyst cited several recent expositions of Bell’s theorem—from sources such as Scientific American—to concede that “non-local reality implies an interconnectedness which appears to allow instantaneous signalling, i.e., superluminal signals, giving credence to Dr. Sarfatti’s claims.” However, the analyst noted that no consensus had emerged among experts about just how to interpret quantum entanglement and its relation to relativity. “It would seem there are interpretations of advanced physical theory, i.e., quantum theory and relativity, which are consistent with the possibility of superluminal communications.” But Sarfatti’s leap to controllable signaling piled “speculation on top of speculation.” Given the theoretical uncertainty, the CIA analyst cautioned, “the only convincing experiment would be the demonstration of macroscopic subliminal signals.” (Sarfatti relished the analyst’s typographical error—or Freudian slip?—that had turned “superluminal” into “subliminal.”) In the end, the analyst adopted a wait-and-see attitude. “These concepts are genuine basic research and should be evaluated and funded by those in the federal government charged with that responsibility.” Funding “should not come from Intelligence Community research programs.”25 Close, but no cigar.
While Sarfatti tried to interest new patrons, Nick Herbert entered the superluminal fray with a design of his own. Herbert aimed to exploit differences between various polarizations of light. Classically, polarization refers to the direction in which a light wave’s electric field varies. The field may vary along a straight line (“linear polarization”), oscillating up and down and up and down as the wave speeds on its way. Or the electric field may spin around in a circle (“circular polarization”), tracing out a helical shape as the light wave travels.26 (Fig. 9.2.) For each type of polarization, light waves can come in one of two varieties. Linearly polarized light, for example, can be polarized either horizontally—its electric field waving back and forth in the horizontal direction—or vertically. The corkscrew pattern of circularly polarized light, meanwhile, can be either right-handed or left-handed. (Hold out both of your hands, stick out your thumbs, and curl your other fingers toward your palms. Your thumbs point in the direction that the light wave travels. The other fingers on your right hand curl in the direction that the electric field varies in right-circularly polarized light; likewise for the fingers on your left hand and left-circularly polarized light.)
FIGURE 9.2. The electric field associated with a light wave may vary in many different patterns. Left: In linearly polarized light, the electric field (small black arrows) oscillates up and down, perpendicular to the direction of the light wave’s travel (large gray arrow). Right: In circularly polarized light, the electric field traces out a helical shape. (Illustrations by Alex Wellerstein.)
A polarizing filter, such as the plastic often used in sunglasses, acts like a picket fence. Linearly polarized light, whose polarization axis lines up with the orientation of the filter, passes through unhindered; light waves whose polarization axis differs from the filter’s orientation by 90 degrees are blocked. That’s why polarized sunglasses allow you to avoid squinting at ocean waves while relaxing at the beach: most of the light reflected off the water is horizontally polarized, so the vertically polarized filters cut down on most of the glare. Circularly polarized light, meanwhile, can be broken down into equal parts horizontal and vertical (linear) polarization. When circularly polarized light shines on a polarizing filter, half of the light makes it through.
At the quantum level, polarization behaves much like electrons’ spin. Just as electrons can only exist in one of two spin states—either spin up or spin down along a given direction—photons, the tiny quanta that make up light waves, come in various polarization states. Physicists often abbreviate the states by their initials: H for horizontal linear polarization; V for vertical linear polarization; R for right-handed circular polarization; and L for left-handed circular polarization. Pairs of photons that emerge from a common source in a state of zero total angular momentum, as in Clauser’s experiments on Bell’s theorem, show perfect correlations. If one member of the pair is measured to be linearly polarized in the H state, then its companion must be linearly polarized in the V state (when measured along the same direction); if one photon is measured to be circularly polarized in the R state, then its twin must be circularly polarized in the L state.
All that was old hat by the time Nick Herbert began brainstorming about superluminal signaling. The basic ideas about polarized light had been around since the early nineteenth century—right from the dawn of the wave theory of light—and the application to individual photons had been postulated during the 1920s.27 What Herbert wanted was some way to exploit observable differences between individual H, V, R, and L photons; some property that could be used to encode messages between distant experimenters.
As luck would have it, Herbert stumbled across a handy volume of reprints not long after finishing his PhD at Stanford. His dissertation had been on nuclear physics, and by the time he wrapped up that work he had had his fill of the subject. He cast about for something new to think about and quantum optics caught his eye.28 Just a few years earlier, the American Association of Physics Teachers had bundled together some of the most important articles on the subject and republished them as Quantum and Statistical Aspects of Light. Included was an article dating all the way back to 1936 by a physicist working at Princeton who had managed to measure the angular momentum of circularly polarized light. That physicist, Richard Beth, had received some pretty impressive help: Beth thanked both Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky for extensive discussions, just months after they had published their famous EPR article.29
In Beth’s clever arrangement, he used a special device called a “half-wave plate” suspended from a thin quartz fiber. When right-circularly polarized light shone on the half-wave plate, it set the plate spinning in one direction; left-circularly polarized light spun the half-wave plate in the opposite direction. Moreover, the half-wave plate flipped the light’s polarization: incoming light that had been right-circularly polarized emerged as left-circularly polarized, and vice versa. (A diagram of Beth’s novel half-wave plate graced the cover of the 1963 reprint edition in which Nick Herbert first discovered Beth’s article.) As Einstein helped confirm, the amount of rotation that Beth measured in his device was consistent with the notion that individual photons in ea
ch state of circular polarization carried equal and opposite units of angular momentum.30
Beth’s early device had measured the angular momentum for light waves, that is, huge collections of photons all acting together. Herbert imagined a similar device, appropriately sensitive, that could measure the angular momentum of individual photons. He reasoned that R and L photons would each impart a fixed amount of rotation to the half-wave plate (in opposite directions), whereas H and V photons—because they were not in states of definite angular momentum—would pass through the hypothetical device unaffected: their polarization would remain unchanged, and the half-wave plate would not rotate.
Here was the distinction between photon states that Herbert had been looking for. In the spring of 1979, he wrote a preprint detailing his design and sent it on its way. Herbert, who has a knack for puns, limericks, and the like, called his paper “QUICK,” an acronym so clever even he can’t remember what it stood for anymore. He sent a copy to Ira Einhorn, who put Herbert’s paper into circulation just before being arrested for the murder of Holly Maddux; Herbert’s paper was likely in one of the last Unicorn-network mailings that Bell Telephone would ever send out. Herbert also mailed out copies on his own, to a mailing list he had been cultivating for a few years as part of his “C-Life Institute.” Like Sarfatti’s i2 Associates, Herbert’s C-Life Institute never amounted to more than a fancy name for his post office box. He chose the “C” to signal his interest in the physics of consciousness.31
In Herbert’s QUICK scheme, an experimenter at detector A measures the polarization of the photon headed his way. At detector B there is a half-wave plate inserted in the photon’s path. By choosing whether to measure linear or circular polarization on his end, the experimeter at A could control whether the plate at B would rotate. Whenever the experimenter at A chose to measure linear polarization, he would find H half the time and V half the time. He wouldn’t be able to control which state of linear polarization resulted on any given run—the data would be a random series of H’s and V’s, averaging out to fifty-fifty each over the long haul—but he could guarantee that when measuring linear polarization, he would always get either H or V. Upon measuring linear polarization at A, the twin photon heading toward B would instantly enter into the complementary state of linear polarization. If experimenter A’s measurement result were H, then the photon heading toward B would be V, and vice versa. Whether photon B entered the H state or the V state on a given run didn’t matter—neither, according to Herbert, would set the half-wave plate in motion. On the other hand, if experimenter A chose to measure circular polarization, then the twin photon heading toward B would instantly enter into a state of circular polarization. Whether it entered state R or L, the photon heading toward B would make the half-wave plate rotate. Thus the experimenter at A (the transmitter) could dispatch a message to B instantaneously, simply by choosing whether to measure linear or circular polarization.32
How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival Page 24
