Tocky on 6/12/2011 at 06:22
Quote Posted by Pyrian
The experiment, in effect, substitutes extremely brief periods of time for ultra cold and/or ultra small. It's nice to see that the theory holds under such circumstances, but not surprising. If the people performing the experiment couldn't come up with any pie-in-the-sky applications, I'm guessing this isn't a route to quantum computing, which is kind of a pity. But again, not surprising, since last I heard one of the primary challenges to quantum computing is storing quantum states for any meaningful period of time. We don't
need fleeting macroscopic effects, we need chip-scale effects that
aren't fleeting under reasonably attainable conditions.
But, if I understand correctly, interstellar morse code is now possible with the detecting equipment we now possess.
Also there is no spoon, only energy held in check by other energy detected by a different configuration of conflicting energies known as eyes by reflected energy and relayed by electrical impulses along another configuration of energies in check to be interpreted among a storage of previous memory recognition, also only energy patterns, as being the thing we arbitrarily named a spoon.
Poon however....
DDL on 6/12/2011 at 11:32
I could simply be misunderstanding entanglement (well, I'm certain I am, but I'm just not sure about which bits -Phyisics isn't exactly my strong suit), but isn't the point that it's in "a superposition that collapses into one of two possible states when measured", rather than "a superposition that collapses into a state we choose, when we decide"?
I.e. for communication purposes it's actually rather limited, since it can't really convey any information beyond "has been read/has not yet been read", and telling if it's been read or not in the first place is presumably fairly tricky without accidentally..reading it, I'd imagine.
The impression I get is that the main current potential 'use' would be in encoded messages, where it doesn't actually encode the message itself, but acts like an unbeatable read-receipt attached to it, simply acting to tell the intended recipient if the message has been intercepted at any point.
I guess if you can/could detect collapse of the superposition without affecting the superposition itself if it hasn't collapsed (i.e. if constant superposition monitoring is possible), then you could transmit a sort of morse, like tocky suggests, by deliberately measuring your half of a collection of entangled pairs in a timed fashion, thus causing the other half on, say..alpha centauri to collapse in synch. Possibly?
But then you'd still need to get that half over there in the first place, and it'd be a once-off communication, too..right?
I mean, I'd love it if Mass Effect 2's qbit transmission system* was even close to plausible, but my instincts tell me that they were very, very liberal with their interpretation.
*The hawt blue alien sex would be nice too
Pyrian on 6/12/2011 at 15:07
That's my understanding, too; this stuff can theoretically be used for unbeatable encryption, but not for meaningful instantaneous communication.
demagogue on 6/12/2011 at 17:03
That's what I read too. When I said "talk to each other over lightyears" in my first post, I was thinking in that way. The particles themselves "know" about each other and it looks like some kind of instant message(?), not that you could actually send a message through them (anyway that's what I should have meant). I read about the full-proof encryption idea, and that made sense to me; but I don't know what other things it'd be good for.
I just thought it was an inherently interesting thing about reality that it happens and I wonder what it means about time and space and causation and hidden dimensions and what not... Not that I could fully understand it, but I hope some genius figures out an interpretation that works and writes a popular book or an undergrad level textbook that I'd like to read.
dj_ivocha on 6/12/2011 at 18:49
Quote Posted by Azaran
If they can entangle objects, it stands to reason that they might be able to entangle people...I wonder what that would be like....:o
I think that's the perfect place to pitch my new book, "Quantum Sutra", available on Amazon for $9.99. :cool:
