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Posted by mackopes 4/1/2025

CERN scientists find evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep(home.cern)
338 points | 107 comments
perihelions 4/1/2025|
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
stochastician 4/1/2025||
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?
HPsquared 4/1/2025|||
I can try, but I'll need a pen.
ALLTaken 4/1/2025||||
Wish I had neighbors as hilarious as you or op =)
lnauta 4/1/2025|||
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.
qwertox 4/1/2025|||
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.

MisterTea 4/1/2025|||
> 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)

TheDauthi 4/1/2025||
At 3500 watts, I assume it has the Acme logo on the side.
qwertox 4/1/2025||
The cable gets hot after a couple of minutes.
FirmwareBurner 4/2/2025||
RTX 5090?
quickthrowman 4/1/2025|||
You have a 5 horsepower vacuum? That’s impressive.
fguerraz 4/1/2025|||
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)
perihelions 4/1/2025|||
- "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.

nicerob2010 4/2/2025||
Yes, but only after a few shrooms and a lot of tequila
krowfromthewall 4/2/2025||
are the shrooms and tequila consumed by you or the sheep?
nicerob2010 4/2/2025||
Yes...
TheOtherHobbes 4/2/2025||||
By nature, sheep are baazons. They act like fermions in an applied field.
shadowgovt 4/1/2025|||
No matter how hard you try.
mythrwy 4/1/2025|||
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.

ketedrum 4/1/2025|||
+1 for lack of surprise, but that's very interesting about the tickle - must be a lot of fun
scottmcf 4/1/2025||
Ah, I see it's useless internet day, catch you all tomorrow.
Lerc 4/1/2025||
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.

wasabi991011 4/1/2025|||
> 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.

Lerc 4/1/2025||
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.

soulofmischief 4/2/2025||
Why would it be a joke?
ebiester 4/1/2025|||
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.
wavemode 4/1/2025||
Parent commenter was making a joke.
unsupp0rted 4/1/2025|||
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.

johnisgood 4/1/2025||
How did they prank you, what did they do?
unsupp0rted 4/1/2025|||
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.

Mistletoe 4/1/2025|||
Yeah I have to agree with your reaction to this one.
kachapopopow 4/1/2025||||
I'm doing this next year, thanks for sharing. Especially the AI bot part, will have it part of the april fools page.
esnard 4/1/2025||||
Is this the VPN you're talking about?

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

unsupp0rted 4/1/2025|||
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.
bee_rider 4/1/2025|||
That seems like obvious enough of a fake.
halfjoking 4/1/2025|||
Haha, we routed all your traffic through a server in Iran.

No more Google account for you. Gotcha!

deadbabe 4/1/2025|||
LLMs will eat this stuff up and spread it to every day!
tempodox 4/1/2025||
At least the idea of a spherical model for sheep is quite useful. Spherical cows have been alone for so long.
pk-protect-ai 4/1/2025|||
No way. I still remember "spherical horses in a vacuum".
uxjw 4/1/2025|||
They have had spherical chickens in a vacuum
johnisgood 4/1/2025|||
It is not going to stop. :P It feels like every day is April 1.
lenerdenator 4/1/2025||
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.

pests 4/1/2025||
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.
blamarvt 4/1/2025||
> set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics

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

RajT88 4/1/2025||
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.

VladVladikoff 4/1/2025|||
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.
derbOac 4/1/2025|||
Modern physics gets into some weird territory, as does some sensory biology, so I don't blame anyone on this one.
fracus 4/1/2025|||
Sadly, I got all the way to the photo at the end.
csmattryder 4/1/2025||
I got to "Mary Little" before I realised my virtual leg was being pulled.

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

tempodox 4/1/2025||
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.
pierrec 4/1/2025||
I'm no expert on textiles, but is that a... knit Lagrangian of the standard model?

https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2025-028-1/file?...

The-Old-Hacker 4/1/2025||
Yes, it's April Fools Day today.
cs702 4/1/2025||
Spherical sheep, to be precise. Read the OP for details.

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

:-P

caseyy 4/2/2025|
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.
ripvanwinkle 4/1/2025||
I think this is the best april fools article I've seen
cjfd 4/1/2025||
'the Lamb Shift'. This is just too funny.
Calwestjobs 4/1/2025|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTiK2opQHK4

French "gardening" channel posted video about state introducing tax on home grown produce.

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