You know the James Randi Challenge right? James offers $1000000 to anyone that can demonstrate paranormal abilities under laboratory conditions. Well, today we have something big to announce: A very similar challenge (now officially on the archive here), but much easier to accomplish.

The rewards are immediate fame (in a few weeks from now if you like) and the reception of the Nobel prize in physics later on – no doubt about it.

In fact, we have our first contestant, but we need you to help him: Joy Christian at the prestigious physics department of Oxford University, also at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, and funded by a grant from the so called “Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi)”.



Joy Christian is waiting impatiently for you to drive to Sweden with him.

Local realism has been strictly disproved; here is a lay-person-accessible version of that proof. But this is just me talking.

The great news for you: Joy Christian claims that he has published a model that gives rise to the predictions of quantum physics via classical, local physics. Joy even managed to get this into a new book published by FQXi. The title of his chapter seems to be “What Really Sets the Upper Bound on Quantum Correlations?”

This great man’s great insight is that the so called “co-domain” is not the usual three dimensional XYZ space “R-cubed”, but a three dimensional sphere that happens to be the equator of a four dimensional sphere. Pure geometry and the formulas are subsequently simple. There are not even any imaginary numbers – just real valued tables that are called real quaternions. Basically high school math.

Why is this great news? Well, see, if there would be even a single case of somebody coming up with quantum behavior where it is proven impossible to do so, even just in the simplest case, this would go on the front page of every newspaper. Now we have a way to do just that. You can now do it with help of Joy, so hurry up before somebody else does it. He wrote to me in an email that he cannot write a single line of computer code, which may explain a lot, but apart from that: THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO DRIVE TO SWEDEN WITH HIM!

Here is the great news that I have for all who believe in local realism; I also already told Joy and he was excited about it – no joke(!):

Local realism of a model, any model, implies that a classical computer model must (must!) be possible!

You guys claim physics is local and real, so a setup with usual computers replacing all physical objects and measurement apparatus is possible – that is what local realism basically means: All information is locally available as if particles carry classical computers around, telling them what to do.

Now you may think that programs could still be very complicated. The good news is: it is simple. Programming the game described in Hidden Variable Madness according to the instructions given in the email from 16 May is in fact a piece of cake for anybody with just a little programming experience (here is the core algorithm already), and this is me saying so; I am one of those late adopters – not a computer geek at all.

It is a very simple setup that just needs considering few angles. The program does not need any graphics or knowing anything complicated about angles at all. All it does is sending 800 pairs of different message strings to Alice and Bob, who are maybe two players far apart or just two simulated players in the same computer for starters. Their computers select “angles” at random, read out the resulting “measurements” from the received strings, and then the 800 results are analyzed with a very simple formula kind of adding them up. The whole game can be played in a few seconds. Programming time modifying my program with using randomly generated “simple minded hidden variables”: Maybe two weeks - if you are slow.

The news become better and better: Joy’s claim is that if you just take care of that the computer simulation does not simulate Bell’s “simple minded hidden variables”, but instead use his ‘advanced minded’ four dimensional sphere, then you will be able to simulate quantum behavior with the help of his formulas. That modification of the program should take a day tops! Why?

Virtual reality in the computer is anyway anything you want it to be: actually the computer does not even know what space it is simulating. Joy insists on that our “simple minded hidden variables” somehow reflect R-cubed space. Well, there is absolutely no problem at all to simulate a four or five dimensional sphere in a computer instead. Gosh, there are simulations of crazy black hole/ ripped worm hole symmetries nowadays on computers. So, just go ahead and change the hidden variables so that their correlations mirror the spherical space instead of the simple minded R-cubed - a sphere is no more difficult than a cube (and I'd write the same if it would have to be a 5 dimensional torus, too). That is all – that is the claim – you are now a famous person!

If you are interested in becoming famous in about a couple of months at the latest, read the emails where I explain what to do. It is real simple: Bell’s “simple minded hidden variables” are programmed already. The simulation does of course not show quantum behavior. Just modify anything that looks like a simulated R-cubed space into a certain sphere that Joy describes in his archive papers – he will eagerly help you as he does with Albert Jan, who is also interested in simulating his model.

This is for real! Hurry before somebody else does it. From our email exchange, which by the way is quite entertaining with highlights such as "What are you trying to say? That the recorded data change inside Bob’s lab-log while he drives to Alice’s place?" answered by “Yes! In a sense, that is exactly what is happening.”:

“The programs are open source; everybody can check that the programs do not secretly establish an internet connection between Alice’s and Bob’s computers after the angles are chosen (in other words: there is no cheating via secret non-locality). If the Bell inequality is violated in this way, it will be a huge confirmation that is going to spread over the internet like a firestorm.”

Meaning: You do not need to publish anything in the biased peer review journals. The program is simply downloaded as a game and played by interested people who take on the role of Alice and Bob. If the Bell inequality is violated because of how you modified the “simple minded hidden variables”, then the game with your modification will be an immediate super star, just like you.

And to all those who think they have an even better theory than Joy:

The Quantum Randi Challenge:

Anybody with some crackpot “local QM” theory is cordially invited to either write the program (as described here) so that Bell’s inequality is violated or to shut up (precisely like the traditional Randi Challenge)! And we want to see no other angles but those where quantum physics maximally violates Bell’s inequality. We have no interest whatsoever in all the other amazing stuff that you claim you can do with it. Recreate quantum behavior in that simple experiment at the few angles including Pi/8 and become famous; don’t waste our time with emailing! If you are successful, fame is yours.

--------------------------

Update: Didactic part of the QRC is now also introduced and defended in:

S. Vongehr: “Exploring Inequality Violations By Classical Hidden Variables Numerically.” Annals of Physics 339: 81-88 (2013), www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003491613001863 Preprint version adds section on realisms and shows programs with output: arxiv.org/abs/1308.6752