David_Kaiser1

In principle, the effects of quantum entanglement should be observable across arbitrary distances, if the experiments can be set up with sufficient care. And in fact colleagues have demonstrated entanglement across some pretty long distances: about 100 miles in some beautiful experiments from a few years ago (e.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3129 , https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.0009 ); and now well over one thousand miles (https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01339), using entangled particles emitted from an orbiting satellite. So I think we now have some real-world demonstrations that quantum entanglement need not only be observable across short distances.

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Nonetheless, I do think it's interesting that some of the first physicists to think carefully about entanglement were doing so long before they could have imagined the kinds of instruments and technologies with which researchers can conduct these experiments today. It's interesting to wonder about how our own imaginations today might be similarly limited!

That's an interesting question. On the one hand, historical studies suggest that scientific research has never been entirely outside of politics. Aristotle had to navigate difficult political and patronage relationships in his day, and so did Galileo, let alone more recent researchers. So I don't think we should be looking back for some golden age when science was entirely isolated from the politics of the society in which it was embedded.

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Nonetheless, we can ask whether the pursuit of scientific research was affected more or less strongly by political forces in other times, or in ways that made certain kinds of research particularly difficult, and whether those past examples might offer any lessons for today. From that perspective, I think a shift to short-term expectations for specific "deliverables" attached to various grants, and volatile funding levels year-by-year make it more difficult to plan for and support certain types of ambitious research projects than might have seemed feasible a few decades ago.

I think Einstein's biography continues to be really fascinating. One thing that becomes clear (which shouldn't really be surprising) is that he was, after all, a person -- a real-live person, with faults and shortcomings and blindspots like any other person, as well as (of course) extraordinary talents and insights. He himself noted later in his life that he had not always treated people as fairly as he (later) wished he had; he admitted to a close friend that he had difficulty forming close relationships and envied friends who had such happier family lives, etc.

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His relationship with his first wife, Mileva Maric, ended particularly poorly. A few years before they got divorced, they were barely on speaking terms. Einstein was so confident that he would win the Nobel Prize (which had a large cash component) that he put into his divorce negotiations a promise to hand over the prize money to his ex-wife -- even though he hadn't won the prize yet!

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Whereas his personal life was (even by his own, later evaluation) not always what he hoped it would be, he also was at times very brave, speaking out in favor of political causes that were quite unpopular at the time, standing up for positions he believed in.

Yes, thanks -- that's a very good clarification! The *distances* across which entanglement can be measured can be very very large, but the *objects* that are entangled continue to be very, very small. Indeed, it's an on-going challenge among physicists to see just how large an object can be, and still show tell-tale signs of quantum effects like entanglement. There was a very cool recent experiment that got much bigger than single particles, but still much much smaller than the size of everyday objects: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.10615 .

Interesting question. One thing that has definitely changed since Einstein's day is the exponential growth in the number of scientists (including, e.g., physicists), and -- not surprisingly -- the need to specialize in topics since so much research is going on across so many areas within physics. Back in Einstein's day, a very talented researcher could aim to keep up to date on many interesting topics, and even to contribute across multiple fields of study. But today the volume of research output is so enormous, and increasing so quickly, that most people need to narrow their sights to focus on a few specific topics. I don't know if that effect is enough to explain what does feel like a slower pace for major changes across a big field like physics these days, compared to 100 years ago, but I bet it plays some role.

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I don't really know what to expect from AI moving into the future. Some of my colleagues in the field have been able to use machine-learning techniques very creatively to help with (e.g.) pattern detection within large amounts of experimental data. I'm not sure that's quite the same thing as having AI algorithms really contribute to generating brand-new hypotheses or asking questions in a new way, but perhaps the kind of tandem / partnership that you mention really will lead to some fruitful new directions.