Quantum Entanglement, or as Einstein put it, “spooky action at a distance” has great promise in communications and computing. An added side effect will be a greater understanding of the universe, and possibly a proof or rebuttal of String Theory.
At the University of Queensland, American physicist Devon Biggerstaff, 22, is working on the mysteries of entanglement. He is the newest member of a team seeking to make light work in a way that would revolutionise computing and communications.
“The quantum properties of small particles can carry information, probably even do computing,” Mr Biggerstaff says. “Entangled particles interact: even when separated they have strong correlating properties that would be impossible for the macro world, communicating faster than light speed.”
At the moment these entangled photons are created using crystals and a continuous laser beam. But Mr Biggerstaff hopes to use new man-made crystals and short, high-energy pulses from a laser beam, which could act as a clock signal for an optical quantum computer.
I wish them every success.
Yeah yeah. I wish them success too.
But “interacting” faster than light, and “transferring information” faster than light are two VERY different things.
IANAP, but I believe the former has been demonstrated, while the latter may never be. Since it’s impossible.
If you think that something is impossible wait a few years. We are very clever apes.
Concepts are kind of like quantum particles; they, too, can interact over seemingly impassable irevelant points of contact. Take for instance the Starship Enterprise, shown to be capable of faster than light travel, and these lyrics from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”: “If you can dream it, then be it.”
For the less than super-luminal mentalities amonsgt us, that means if we can imagine faster than light travel, then we can do it.
1,
A signal is a material thing, but the nformation itself is an intangible, so we may be able to bend the laws of physics there.
1,
Take two complementary particles, seperate them, change one to affect the other. You have now done a binary operation that took effect faster than the speed of light. Using a binary system this means you have transmitted data fater than the speed of light. That is how it is possible.
If you can dream it, then be it.”
Then why hasn’t chucky gray dreamed himself up a neck?
I really hope FTL is possible. I’m just afraid it isn’t, although something else will come along that will make it irrelevant.
Eventually. I want one of those flying cars with an interior the size of a Bel-Aire mansion, full of naked chicks, courtesy of RAH’s dreams, as long as we’re wishing and hoping.
You can’t “change one to effect the other” and keep them entangled. That’s the reason data transmission is impossible. They are entangled because of how they are made, in effect, exact opposites of each other. Getting one of the properties of one gives you the properties of the other, by definition. That is how they are entangled.
You can’t, however, “capture” these particles and then manipulate them. It doesn’t work like that.
You can’t “change one to effect the other” and keep them entangled. That’s the reason data transmission is impossible. They are entangled because of how they are made, in effect, exact opposites of each other. Getting one of the properties of one gives you the properties of the other, by definition. That is how they are entangled. The reason why this is important is that you shouldn’t be able to do this, classically. It gives the appearance of one system “influencing” the other.
You can’t, however, “capture” these particles and then manipulate them. It doesn’t work like that.
Comment by FormerUTstudent
How do you keep an aggie in suspense?
Hence the tachyon, which may have a negative component that travels backwards in time to prevent causality paradoxes.
“You can’t, however, “capture” these particles and then manipulate them. It doesn’t work like that. ”
Yet. We once didn’t even know the phenomena existed. Never say never.I may be wrong, but then again a lot of very respected people said flight was impossible.
Actually, it was theorized long before it was observed. Einstein was the one who called it “spooky action at a distance” and used the theorized ability to know with 100% accurate information about a particle without observation – (the hallmark of quantum theory being that everything is probabilities and not absolutes) as a *refutation* of quantum theory, because such theorized action could not possibly be true.
And yet, it was.
It’s not a concept of “yet.” You can’t use entanglement to send information. Period. It is a phenomenon that simply doesn’t work in the way you suggest it should work.
This is not to say that there won’t be some form of FTL communication discovered in the future (although I doubt it) but entanglement ain’t it.
sounds like the instant sub-space communication in “Enders Game” series of books
I was on the Central Park carousel a couple of weekends ago and thought how the outside horses had to go much faster than the ones on the inside in order to catch up and align itself to the centripetal momentum of the horses closer to the center. What if a light beam is attached to a rotator and pointed away directly apposite the center (a radius). Spin that rotator close to the speed of light. Put a screen up much farther away and obverse the light transverse it. Wouldn’t it be faster than the speed of light?
Light is faster than a sprinkler, but that’s what it would have happened to light… the droplets of water travel away from the center, not in a circumference around the center. If you stand in the water path droplets come at you from the sprinkler, not sideways. Same happens to light.
Those melancholy Danes have been looking into this stuff:
http://tinyurl.com/f8tya
#15, JoaoPT, good point that covers the particle theory of light. But what about light’s other nature, wave?