alt.hn

4/1/2025 at 11:08:34 AM

CERN scientists find evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep

 https://home.cern/news/news/physics/cern-scientists-find-evidence-quantum-entanglement-sheep

by mackopes

4/1/2025 at 1:40:37 PM

I'm not sure what's supposed to be publication-worthy here. This is common knowledge for anyone who's ever interacted with sheep on a farm, in their natural, fermionic superfluid state. If you turn over a sheep and tickle its ticklish underbelly, you get a sheep-laugh (a hilarious sound) only about 50% of the time; the other 50%, you'll hear a sheep laughing from the opposite end of the meadow. Because, you cannot definitively say if it was *this* sheep you tickled, or *that* other, identical one. They are indistinguishable baa-tickles

by perihelions

4/1/2025 at 2:30:14 PM

I am somewhat rusty on my undergrad quantum, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with this analysis. Could you perhaps explain it more clearly in baa-ket notation?

by stochastician

4/1/2025 at 3:12:03 PM

I can try, but I'll need a pen.

by HPsquared

4/1/2025 at 11:30:04 PM

Wish I had neighbors as hilarious as you or op =)

by ALLTaken

4/1/2025 at 2:02:54 PM

Even if something is well known, its important to measure it and set statistical limits. While the 4 sigma in the article is not enough to claim an observation, it opens the points towards some exciting new Beyond the Shearing Model physics.

by lnauta

4/1/2025 at 2:47:51 PM

It's interesting that they noticed it right in the vicinity of the LHC, maybe this hints at some kind of leak?

The one in my garden always watches me through the window then I turn on the vacuum, so maybe it's feeling some kind of oddity with the electric motor. It's an old 3500 Watts one, which is now illegal to sell, and badly shielded.

by qwertox

4/1/2025 at 3:10:33 PM

> It's an old 3500 Watts one

That's a stupid big motor for a vacuum. What was it made to vacuum up, bowling balls? Boulders? Neutron star dust? (Seriously though, I'd like to know the model to check it out)

by MisterTea

4/1/2025 at 4:49:10 PM

At 3500 watts, I assume it has the Acme logo on the side.

by TheDauthi

4/1/2025 at 5:45:23 PM

The cable gets hot after a couple of minutes.

by qwertox

4/2/2025 at 3:13:20 PM

RTX 5090?

by FirmwareBurner

4/1/2025 at 11:27:31 PM

You have a 5 horsepower vacuum? That’s impressive.

by quickthrowman

4/1/2025 at 2:52:31 PM

So sheep are fermions? Is that why you can't have two sheep at the same place in the state? (up and down sheep can be stacked no problem, there's plenty of empirical evidence of this)

by fguerraz

4/1/2025 at 5:34:19 PM

- "So sheep are fermions?"

Have you ever seen two sheep spinning in the same direction while superimposed in the same physical volume? Outside of Minecraft.

by perihelions

4/2/2025 at 1:25:42 AM

Yes, but only after a few shrooms and a lot of tequila

by nicerob2010

4/2/2025 at 12:30:21 PM

are the shrooms and tequila consumed by you or the sheep?

by krowfromthewall

4/2/2025 at 2:56:51 PM

Yes...

by nicerob2010

4/2/2025 at 3:36:50 PM

By nature, sheep are baazons. They act like fermions in an applied field.

by TheOtherHobbes

4/1/2025 at 5:02:32 PM

No matter how hard you try.

by shadowgovt

4/1/2025 at 5:07:07 PM

+1 for lack of surprise, but that's very interesting about the tickle - must be a lot of fun

by ketedrum

4/1/2025 at 8:01:44 PM

Tickle entanglement in sheep cannot be used for signaling however because of Bell's theorem.

Bell's theorem basically states that the state of a sheep's neck bell cannot be influenced by tickling.

by mythrwy

4/1/2025 at 1:28:44 PM

Ah, I see it's useless internet day, catch you all tomorrow.

by scottmcf

4/1/2025 at 5:39:58 PM

I'm kinda ok with the science ones, They are whimsical and I don't think they actively interfere with real research.

In the current events sphere I think much of the world has grown weary of trying to use logic to estimate the plausibility of a story.

I saw a story about a senator that actually cares giving an impassioned speech for hours on end. Remember the times when that actually happened.

by Lerc

4/1/2025 at 7:34:37 PM

> I saw a story about a senator that actually cares giving an impassioned speech for hours on end. Remember the times when that actually happened.

You are talking about the Cory Booker speech? I don't see any indication that this is an April fool's joke if that's what you're implying. Otherwise I don't understand what you mean.

by wasabi991011

4/1/2025 at 9:22:48 PM

I am implying when are living in times where you can't tell if something is a joke or not based upon how much sense it makes.

I guess I just generated another example. Although it was kind of intended as irony.

by Lerc

4/2/2025 at 1:18:38 AM

Why would it be a joke?

by soulofmischief

4/1/2025 at 7:37:12 PM

I'm a bit confused... Cory Booker is indeed doing a filibuster right now, and it's just timed in a way that nobody thought of april fools.

by ebiester

4/1/2025 at 9:42:29 PM

Parent commenter was making a joke.

by wavemode

4/1/2025 at 2:05:49 PM

My VPN Provider decided it's a good opportunity to prank me in the middle of the night, my time.

Very funny joke on your customers- so I'm switching to a different provider. It's cuz obviously I don't have a sense of humor. Life is short and all that.

Useless internet day indeed.

by unsupp0rted

4/1/2025 at 2:10:28 PM

How did they prank you, what did they do?

by johnisgood

4/1/2025 at 2:25:38 PM

I'd rather not go into detail, but in short they sent an official email from their real noreply address, "signed" by their CEO, saying my data has been compromised.

"What Data?"... Click the link...

Just kidding, April Fools you stupid moron.

I replied that they've lost a customer.

They replied with a link to talk to their AI bot.

by unsupp0rted

4/1/2025 at 2:36:09 PM

I'm doing this next year, thanks for sharing. Especially the AI bot part, will have it part of the april fools page.

by kachapopopow

4/1/2025 at 2:41:29 PM

Is this the VPN you're talking about?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windscribe/comments/1jovk03/weve_he...

by esnard

4/1/2025 at 2:52:48 PM

I wouldn't want to specify which VPN Provider it was, but I will say the fake in my case was not obvious, by layman standards nor by HN standards.

by unsupp0rted

4/1/2025 at 2:49:28 PM

That seems like obvious enough of a fake.

by bee_rider

4/1/2025 at 2:40:35 PM

Yeah I have to agree with your reaction to this one.

by Mistletoe

4/1/2025 at 7:04:50 PM

Haha, we routed all your traffic through a server in Iran.

No more Google account for you. Gotcha!

by halfjoking

4/1/2025 at 2:26:45 PM

LLMs will eat this stuff up and spread it to every day!

by deadbabe

4/1/2025 at 2:34:09 PM

At least the idea of a spherical model for sheep is quite useful. Spherical cows have been alone for so long.

by tempodox

4/1/2025 at 3:23:14 PM

They have had spherical chickens in a vacuum

by uxjw

4/1/2025 at 9:48:04 PM

No way. I still remember "spherical horses in a vacuum".

by pk-protect-ai

4/1/2025 at 6:19:25 PM

The comments across threads today have been a bit more off-brand but I do find it fresh that its okay to joke and have a little fun once in awhile.

by pests

4/1/2025 at 1:53:30 PM

It is not going to stop. :P It feels like every day is April 1.

by johnisgood

4/1/2025 at 2:25:41 PM

Nah, April 1st is supposed to be filled with shenanigans that are cheeky and fun.

Every day is now filled with shenanigans that are cruel and tragic.

Which makes them not really shenanigans at all, really.

Evil shenanigans.

by lenerdenator

4/1/2025 at 1:48:05 PM

> set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics

I'll admit I got a few paragraphs in before that made it click.

by blamarvt

4/1/2025 at 2:24:30 PM

For me it was:

> Lamb Shift

Not that I was aware of the term, but when I looked it up it was obviously a real term, but nothing to do with sheep.

by RajT88

4/1/2025 at 1:52:45 PM

You did better than me lol, I laughed at baa but thought it was just the author being a bit silly, it wasn’t until “moutons” that I checked the date on my phone.

by VladVladikoff

4/1/2025 at 3:41:58 PM

Modern physics gets into some weird territory, as does some sensory biology, so I don't blame anyone on this one.

by derbOac

4/1/2025 at 5:58:14 PM

Sadly, I got all the way to the photo at the end.

by fracus

4/1/2025 at 2:38:25 PM

I got to "Mary Little" before I realised my virtual leg was being pulled.

Deary me. Hope Mary Little's lamb is doing well.

by csmattryder

4/1/2025 at 2:27:12 PM

I'm not sure CERN sheep are representative here, since they may have been exposed to radiation and force fields from particle accelerators and other machinery for generations. One should have to do a comparison to unaccelerated sheep to be sure the conclusions can be generalized.

by tempodox

4/1/2025 at 11:17:24 AM

Yes, it's April Fools Day today.

by The-Old-Hacker

4/1/2025 at 2:33:14 PM

Spherical sheep, to be precise. Read the OP for details.

Probably related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

:-P

by cs702

4/2/2025 at 4:17:06 PM

If you want to simulate the behavior of a large crowd of people, 2D fluid simulation is accurate enough for most purposes. I’ve used it to simulate a crowd in a video game. One could say it’s spherical people.

by caseyy

4/1/2025 at 7:31:33 PM

I think this is the best april fools article I've seen

by ripvanwinkle

4/1/2025 at 2:09:03 PM

'the Lamb Shift'. This is just too funny.

by cjfd

4/1/2025 at 3:08:49 PM

they almost got me. for a moment I thought, "whoa, the simulation is getting weirder by the day". but Feyman diagram with a sheep in it shaken me up. haha, nice one

by nikolayasdf123

4/1/2025 at 11:46:07 PM

I don’t like April Fools jokes but loved this one. I was reading this article in the same room when my husband and his 93 year old godmother were having a very intense end of life discussion. When I realized it was a joke, I was snorting not trying to laugh.

by tonympls

4/1/2025 at 7:37:23 PM

Sheep? If it were cows, I'd be over the moon, but sheep?

by mcswell

4/1/2025 at 2:56:52 PM

I read way too much of this before I realized what day it was.

by mbreese

4/1/2025 at 6:54:59 PM

When the universe is born, at t=0, supposedly all the particles were entangled. Sheeps are no exception, although they are macroscopic.

by nnurmanov

4/1/2025 at 9:41:09 PM

Is April 1st the "no web scraping day" for LLM shops?

There may be health benefits for LLMs to fast on certain days...

by agnosticmantis

4/1/2025 at 9:43:08 PM

this may be an interesting tactic vs crawlers.. date everything april 1st

by 6thbit

4/1/2025 at 8:50:02 PM

The evidence has several ramifications for ovine research and has set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics.

set the baa haha

by mlacks

4/1/2025 at 10:08:40 PM

Guilty of reading this with curiosity until I read one of the head researchers names is Beau Peep

by blueberrychpstx

4/1/2025 at 3:55:09 PM

Turns out that physics is a soft science.

by amelius

4/1/2025 at 1:29:12 PM

Why can't they find out why no one has done anything interesting in theoretical physics in 50 years?

This stuff is lame in 2025.

by nimish

4/1/2025 at 2:18:56 PM

Maybe review the last 25 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_fundamental_physic...

by robin_reala

4/2/2025 at 3:22:48 AM

no experimental verification even possible in most of those, and/or the theory had been more or less fixed before ~1990

Many such cases. Very boring stuff now, not worth spending the money.

by nimish

4/1/2025 at 2:49:02 PM

That's all experimental physics, not theoretical physics.

by jcranmer

4/1/2025 at 3:17:15 PM

Well topological order sound like april first to me. Emergent gravity looks to me million times more plausible then that mess :)

by Calwestjobs

4/1/2025 at 4:53:56 PM

If you want mind-expandingly interesting theoretical physics, give the Wolfram Physics Project[1] a look. It is a refreshingly different look at fundamental physics, and one that is perhaps more familiar to a computer scientist's perspective than, say, quantum mechanics.

[1]: https://www.wolframphysics.org/index.php.en

by seabass-labrax

4/1/2025 at 8:58:43 PM

I have done enough mathematics and have spoken to wolfram personally, it's interesting but not connected enough to existing theory despite his personal genius at QCD

by nimish

4/2/2025 at 4:10:38 PM

I've been had. Good one.

by egberts

4/1/2025 at 11:19:45 PM

I imagine their proximity to the CERN site has something to do with it.

by neuroelectron

4/1/2025 at 1:36:07 PM

All this negativity here. I, for one, enjoy silly April's Fools jokes once a year.

by sva_

4/1/2025 at 4:20:21 PM

Same here. The problem, though, is that on the internet the articles stick around past that day and confuse everyone forever.

by vikingerik

4/1/2025 at 2:26:52 PM

HN is not exactly known for its sense of humour.

by Tainnor

4/1/2025 at 5:32:24 PM

I find this hard to believe, can you provide the links to at least 2 reputable publications that corroborate your claims ?

by nartho

4/1/2025 at 7:09:46 PM

Man, even these guys are behind April Fools :)...

by dbacar

4/1/2025 at 3:19:10 PM

Literally the best day of the year

by inSenCite

4/1/2025 at 9:03:21 PM

I call April Fool's

by diyseguy

4/1/2025 at 4:39:02 PM

This is really going to mess up LLMs for decades.

by OutOfHere

4/2/2025 at 2:30:06 AM

Do they assume spherical sheep?

I mean, the assumption is Linda valid before shearing. But I'd have serious qualms about the model for recently sheared sheep.

I guess you could do a follow up study about entanglement of the resulting sweaters, which is already covered well by snag theory.

by CoastalCoder

4/1/2025 at 6:22:32 PM

Date: 1 April 2025

by jp57

4/1/2025 at 2:28:41 PM

Quaaantum sheep!

by pmags

4/1/2025 at 8:50:41 PM

April Fools

by ginkgotree

4/1/2025 at 5:57:47 PM

I got got.

by fracus

4/1/2025 at 3:40:43 PM

I just wanted to complain that this will dilute the I in AI, and their maintainers ought to sue.

by 0xdeadbeefbabe

4/1/2025 at 8:53:51 PM

won't someone please think of the children^Wbillionaires^Wlanguage models

(actually, I asked gpt4o to ELI5 the article and it told me it was an april fool's joke, so I have the feeling the llm's are doing better than half the commenters here)

by internet_points

4/1/2025 at 3:25:39 PM

I appreciate a good April Fools post

by josefritzishere

4/1/2025 at 3:16:57 PM

Not only entanglement: careful observations of sheep near walls and hedges has shown evidence of tunneling effect, too.

by mytailorisrich

4/1/2025 at 3:03:11 PM

* in sheep

Call me when they complete the human trials

by scanr

4/1/2025 at 5:55:28 PM

At least it's not mice for once.

by TonyTrapp

4/1/2025 at 7:34:41 PM

With apologies for being a bit dense: Is this an April Fools joke?

by Henchman21

4/1/2025 at 7:41:44 PM

It exists in a superposition of being both a joke and not a joke until you observe the article.

by awb

4/1/2025 at 10:59:57 PM

This “holiday” has gotten beyond stupid.

by Henchman21

4/1/2025 at 3:54:47 PM

Is this another April fool?

by quantum_state

4/1/2025 at 6:00:50 PM

April Fools eyeroll...

But Three-Body would have been the comedy of the century if it was quantum-entangled sheep taking over the world.

> "And the wolf, is he also lying? Is he still in the grandmother's house? We would like to speak to him."

by ck2

4/2/2025 at 12:17:56 AM

[dead]

by tonetheman

4/2/2025 at 12:17:37 AM

[dead]

by tonetheman

4/1/2025 at 2:11:30 PM

[dead]

by aaron695

4/1/2025 at 7:03:56 PM

[dead]

by heavymetalpoizn

4/1/2025 at 1:35:51 PM

[dead]

by chuckles201

4/1/2025 at 5:40:13 PM

[dead]

by varelse

4/1/2025 at 1:26:09 PM

Is it just me who 15 years ago laughed at the first big April Fools jokes by companies online, but now just cringes when I see headlines like this?

by acegopher

4/1/2025 at 5:43:35 PM

You've gotten fifteen years older.

by acuozzo

4/1/2025 at 2:36:57 PM

My kids realized April fools day wasn't funny no later than age 6. What's up with the guys at CERN?

by meepmorp

4/1/2025 at 5:49:55 PM

Awareness and appreciation of the utility of humor increases with age and/or maturity.

Ms. Super-serious "I'm in university now and no longer find fart jokes funny" is liable to enjoy them again in her golden years.

There's no surer way to project a lack of self-assuredness than to be the stiff incapable of chuckling at a harmless prank.

by acuozzo

4/2/2025 at 5:30:41 PM

> Awareness and appreciation of the utility of humor increases with age and/or maturity.

Exactly, and what I'm saying is that an understanding that April fools day isn't funny is a sign of maturity.

by meepmorp

4/1/2025 at 1:31:39 PM

Considering the amount of disinformation online nowadays, the whole "april fools" thing is just not fun, it's just annoying noise

by evandrofisico