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Sabine Hossenfelder·Science & EducationThis is how faster than light signalling could work
TL;DR
Faster-than-light signalling is possible if quantum mechanics is statistical rather than fundamental, meaning hidden variables underlie reality.
Key Points
- 1.The causality objection to FTL signalling is flawed. Causality paradoxes only arise if you ignore time's directionality; a preferred slicing tied to the arrow of time eliminates all causality violations, even with FTL signals.
- 2.Einstein's theories don't definitively rule out FTL travel. They are non-quantum and incomplete — no physicist believes they are the final word — so their speed-of-light barrier need not persist in a correct quantum gravity theory.
- 3.Quantum entanglement does NOT transmit information. Measuring one particle of an entangled pair does nothing to the other; 'non-locality' in quantum physics is only about knowledge retrieval, not actual signal transfer.
- 4.Wavefunction collapse is assumed, not proven. Physicists accept collapse as a physical process largely because they presuppose FTL signalling is impossible — making their reasoning a circular argument.
- 5.Superdeterminism is the only fully local explanation for quantum observations. If hidden variables are real, quantum mechanics is merely a statistical average of a deeper deterministic theory — deviations from that average would enable FTL signalling.
- 6.Hossenfelder predicts AI will crack this within a decade. She expects quantum computing experiments to produce anomalous data that AI will explain with hidden-variable theories, revealing how to send signals faster than light.
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