The Quantum Telegraph

dclary said:

If I am right, and no one else has thought of this, could someone patent it for me? Thanks.

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Oh, I can patent it, but if I'm doing it 'for you' don't expect me to do it FOR you.
*Evil grin*


Christina

Sounds like an improved version of a Dirac transmitter.

Sure, you can patent it, it you can somehow think of how to make quantum teleportation work first

In quantum information, quantum teleportation, or entanglement-assisted teleportation, is a technique that transfers a quantum state to an arbitrarily distant location using a distributed entangled state and the transmission of some classical information. Quantum teleportation does not transport energy or matter, nor does it allow communication of information at superluminal speed, but is useful to quantum communication and computation.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation

I don't make the laws of physics, d ... I just enforce them.

In your post about fast space travel, you seemed to want to remain within "hard" Sci-fi ... so someone would bust you if you use FTL communications.

No story-telling shame there, just some hard sciencer would whine ... Me, I always figure that future drama shouldn't be limited by current ignorance. FTL will be "impossible" until the breakthrough that makes it "commonplace"

dclary said:

Except the last time that wiki page was modified was May...

And in June they DID transport information using quantum entanglement.

I don't invent the laws of physics either...

But I also don't rely just on old encyclopedias for my (limited) knowledge it.

And besides, if quantum physics has taught us anything...
It's that we have no idea what the f* the laws of physics are.

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Hmm, I don't like that article. It says in part:

The scientists did it by exploiting the "spooky" and virtually unfathomable field of quantum entanglement - when the state of matter rather than the matter itself is sent from one place to another.

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What I did not see in the article (perhaps the author doesn't know this) is that quantum entanglement apparently allows faster-than-light information transmission. One of those old scientists (probably Einstein, Bohr or Feynman, one of those who figured this stuff out) called it "spooky action at a distance" because it implies instantateous information transmission, which doesn't fit at all with the stuff Einstein came up with. If this is true (I can't even tell what is being CLAIMED in this article - I strongly suspect the reporter's knowledge of quantum physics is very weak), it causes problems for causality (a really important concept in physics). But I think this potential problen has been discussed at great lengths for many decades.

Long story short, I have my doubt about whether this story (as I understand it, it's saying they've achieved FTL information transmission) is really, REALLY true.

But I wouldn't let such trifling details stop me from writing a story based on it. I'm in the middle of reading Timothy Zahn's story "Time Bomb" (about 20 years old) and I find the quantum physics based ideas in the story fascinating, even if I "know" they're not true.

Patents. Yes, you could probably get a patent on that. Patents have been out of control in the past several decades, but last I heard they're trying to clean up the system. I've got a rant on patents somewhere, perhaps I could write it up as a blog entry. Meanwhile here are two numbers from my resume: 5,815,558 and 5,982,862. Those and about $4.50 will get me a fancy beverage at Starbucks.

small axe said:

FTL will be "impossible" until the breakthrough that makes it "commonplace"

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Then let's just quote my crypto-prophetic statements rather than the ones you disagree with, shall we?

From the newer article (so 'new' that it hasn't stood the test of peer review and response yet?)

This is done through a third photon, which is teleported from the photon in the transmitting station to the photon in the receiving station.

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Well, okay: how do they transmit this third photon at a speed faster than light?

Because that's not even using spooky entanglement properties (if I imagine it correctly) if they have to actually move a photon from point A to point B, through the distance in space/time in between, faster than light travels.

I grasp that entanglement deals in changing the characteristics of a distant particle, cool ...

Albert Einstein described quantum entanglement as "spooky action at a distance". It relies on the fact that two photons can be created in such a way that they behave as a single object, even if they are separated by large distances.
Behaving this way, they are acting as a teleportation machine because any changes to one causes similar changes to the other.

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Does the article mean the experiment 'creates' new photons ... ? In the same 'place'?

Or do they merely alter the characteristics/entangle two photons that already exist at the given distance apart?

How do you get the two photons the necessary distance apart, at a FTL speed (even if they are then entangled and respond instantly to their partner's changes?)

What is the communicating object between the two? This third photon still has to move information FTL ... how?

I'll admit that I don't understand the article (but only if someone can explain the article ) The "information" that tells particles A and B (entangled, and one light year in distance apart) still cannot travel FTL.

I ask a sincere question there: explain it to us, someone, please?

Explaining

I ask a sincere question there: explain it to us, someone, please?

This looks like a very good explanation

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/


Note that nothing in entanglement situations travels faster than light and that:

a) the "information" just amounts to confirming what you already know about two photon states (note that Photons are Bosons so a "photon state" can have fluctuating "numbers" of photons in it)
b) the nice thing is that it doesn't take as much energy to send the "signal" as would say a radio wave and a radio detector
c) the "large amounts of information" is only paradoxical if (in typical Schoedinger paradox fashion) you ignore your knowledge of the situation as a whole and pretend the paradoxical part is ideal and isolated
d) Schoedinger seems to have been very impressed by his sexual adventures with a pair of twins (Ithy and Withy). One supposes that his obsession with twin photons and the attractions of "action at a distance" might have some basis there.

dclary said:

Ok, so, we already know that you can perform faster-than-light communications by some sort of quantum teleportation of protons or something ...I want to use this for interplanetary communications in my WIP (we're about 100 years from now, so I'm hoping we'll be there by then).

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It's SF, so you an do anything you want. Just be sure that the reader knows that you are at least aware of the the problem. Eg, you could have a character saying, "But that's impossible right? You can't transmit superluminally." And the other guy says, "Where have you been, in cryostorage? Professor Whatshisface did it fifty years ago."

Quantum

I can only repeat what my old physics prof has to say about this.

FTL quantum communication does not fall under the same restrictions as FTL relativity. A new proton can be created at extreme distances, and this new proton "mimics" the original.

In a sense, quantum physics does say you cannot send information faster then the speed of light. It does not, however, say you can't re-create information at another location at any speed. With the proton creation theory, no information is sent at any speed, slow or fast. The information is created at the distant point without being sent from the local point. Information does not travel from point A to point B, it's created at point A, and point B re-creates, or duplicates it, automatically because as far as the particles are concerned, as far as quantum law is concerned, both particles are one and the same thing, and at the same place, being treated the same way, even if we view them as being billions of miles apart.

While not really accurate or scientific, some use identical twins as an example. One twin in California, the second in Maine. One hits his thumb with a hammer, and the second yells ouch with no time lapse. Not FTL transmission, but the same object in two places at once, both feeling the impact of the hammer.

Quantum states and Causality

Jamesaritchie said:

...particles are one and the same thing, and at the same place, being treated the same way, even if we view them as being billions of miles apart.

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This is true under the assumptions of Quantum Mechanics...or Mechanics with the Schoedinger Eq. as your guide. It ceases to be of interest, though, when you apply elementry Quantum Field Theory. Or to put it another way...the assumption that the particles are not in a relativistic field situation was the problem with physics until the First Shelter Island Conference in 1947. Since 1947 there have been extremely accurate models that show why you cannot have the same particle billions of miles apart. Or to put it another way, once you use the Klein-Gordon eq. instead of the Schodinger eq., you no longer have the structural problem with causality that would let you have identical particles billions of miles apart.

Jamesaritchie said:

I can only repeat what my old physics prof has to say about this.

FTL quantum communication does not fall under the same restrictions as FTL relativity. A new proton can be created at extreme distances, and this new proton "mimics" the original.

In a sense, quantum physics does say you cannot send information faster then the speed of light. It does not, however, say you can't re-create information at another location at any speed. With the proton creation theory, no information is sent at any speed, slow or fast. The information is created at the distant point without being sent from the local point. Information does not travel from point A to point B, it's created at point A, and point B re-creates, or duplicates it, automatically because as far as the particles are concerned, as far as quantum law is concerned, both particles are one and the same thing, and at the same place, being treated the same way, even if we view them as being billions of miles apart.

While not really accurate or scientific, some use identical twins as an example. One twin in California, the second in Maine. One hits his thumb with a hammer, and the second yells ouch with no time lapse. Not FTL transmission, but the same object in two places at once, both feeling the impact of the hammer.

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This looks like semantics to me, and it appears to violate causality regardless of whether you call it transmission or recreation.

But if the Universe suddenly crashes in on itself, I'll at least have one idea of why it happened...

Jamesaritchie said:

I can only repeat what my old physics prof has to say about this.

FTL quantum communication does not fall under the same restrictions as FTL relativity. A new proton can be created at extreme distances, and this new proton "mimics" the original.

In a sense, quantum physics does say you cannot send information faster then the speed of light. It does not, however, say you can't re-create information at another location at any speed. With the proton creation theory, no information is sent at any speed, slow or fast. The information is created at the distant point without being sent from the local point. Information does not travel from point A to point B, it's created at point A, and point B re-creates, or duplicates it, automatically because as far as the particles are concerned, as far as quantum law is concerned, both particles are one and the same thing, and at the same place, being treated the same way, even if we view them as being billions of miles apart.

While not really accurate or scientific, some use identical twins as an example. One twin in California, the second in Maine. One hits his thumb with a hammer, and the second yells ouch with no time lapse. Not FTL transmission, but the same object in two places at once, both feeling the impact of the hammer.

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This sure makes beaming someone trek style novel. Instead of being transported you're duplicated! What happens to the original you when the copy-you gets created? Can't have two you's running around. Does the first get put into holding until the second is confirmed then 'disposed' of? OOooooooh this could be fun.

I actually haven't seen it yet, but its on my list. Now I must rent it!

benbradley said:

This looks like semantics to me, and it appears to violate causality regardless of whether you call it transmission or recreation.

But if the Universe suddenly crashes in on itself, I'll at least have one idea of why it happened...

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I tend to agree with you, but my physics professor doesn't think casualty is violated because no information is actually sent. This is what happens. You create a particle and give this particle certain characteristics, say a spin rate of one revolution per minute. The duplicate particle also will have a one spin per minute rate. Now you assign this characteristic a meaning. You can assign any meaning you like. It can mean the letter A, or it can mean put this pixel here, or make this sound. A spin rate of two revolutions per minute can mean the letter B, or it can mean put the pixel here instead, or make this sound instead.

All you have to be able to do is detect the second particle, and note its spin rate. A computer program that knows the assigned meaning of the spin rates then creates a letter, a pixel, or a sound based on the spin rate.
Twenty-six spin rates gives you the alphabet, or enough spin rates give you any electronic picture you want.

Information cannot be sent faster than the speed of light, but there's apparently no law that says you can't interpret the spin rate of particles any way you like.

This may be one of those things that is "theoretically" possible, but that will remain forever impossible in the real world, who knows?

There's also the theory of sending nearly instantaneous information with gravity waves wherein casualty isn't violated because the gravity waves have already traveled the prescribed distance at the speed of light, but this one is waaayyy beyond me.

Oh. Oh. Well ... thanks for the explanation, at least now I know why I don't understand! It's ... 'spooky' physics and my little monkey brain is still better off banging the rocks together and getting termites with a twig.

But I assume alien species that have a few tens of millions of years of evolution and technology behind them will have figured these things out. Heck, where would we be by now, if the Greeks had stuck with their geared astronomical computers, and Rome hadn't slid into the Dark Ages? Living on Mars? Riding Ion drives or star-schooners to other stars?

Paul J. Andrew said:

This sure makes beaming someone trek style novel. Instead of being transported you're duplicated! What happens to the original you when the copy-you gets created? Can't have two you's running around. Does the first get put into holding until the second is confirmed then 'disposed' of? OOooooooh this could be fun.

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Too late. Watch "The Prestige" -- Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman beat you to it. In Victorian England, no less.

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And James Patrick Kelly did it back in 1997 (then OUTER LIMITS did it as a tv episode too)

The most traditionally science-fictional story in the book, "Think Like a Dinosaur", uses two props of the genre, aliens and matter transmitters, to set up the narrator's moral dilemma.

Michael Burr works for the hanen, an alien race resembling dinosaurs: he guides infrequent human star-travellers through the 'migration' process. In the course of the transfer, the humans are copied, one of the copies travelling on to their stellar destination, while the other is exterminated before regaining consciousness - the hanen way of thinking (hence the story's title) allows no sentimentality over the eradication of the copy left behind.

When Burr releases a traveller from a malfunctioning device, only to discover that transfer has actually been effected, he must end the life of the copy he can only view as human... In this story, the technology is not cutting edge but a device of artistic licence, which aficionados of Hard SF might deplore - a clever method of achieving an artistic end: the unflinching examination of the human psyche, and Kelly does it brilliantly.
http://www.iplus.zetnet.co.uk/nonfiction/dinosaur.htm

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Paul J. Andrew said:

This sure makes beaming someone trek style novel. Instead of being transported you're duplicated! What happens to the original you when the copy-you gets created? Can't have two you's running around. Does the first get put into holding until the second is confirmed then 'disposed' of? OOooooooh this could be fun.

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dclary said:

Too late. Watch "The Prestige" -- Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman beat you to it. In Victorian England, no less.

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small axe said:

And James Patrick Kelly did it back in 1997 (then OUTER LIMITS did it as a tv episode too)

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Try the 1940s -- George O. Smith, in the last three or four Venus Equilateral stories. Although it isn't fully developed until the very last story, which was written considerably later than the others.

There is a simple way to do the same thing .. without using photons.

1. Have a small urn with a black pebble and a white pebble in it.
These pebbles are the equivalent of the 'entangled photons'

2. Take out a pebble, and hide it in a drawer WITHOUT LOOKING AT IT.

3. Put the urn in a spaceship, and send it out a few lightyears away.
There is a 50% probability that there is a black pebble in the urn.

Now is the step where you do something at faster than the speed of light...

Ready?

4. You open the draw and look at the pebble you kept.

That simple action collapsed the probability waveform of the OTHER pebble INSTANTLY .. even though that other pebble was light years away !!!

Wow!!

Now I just have to go and explain to Schrodinger that he needs to drill some air-holes in the box, if wants the experiment to work...

Mac

Mac H. said:

That simple action collapsed the probability waveform of the OTHER pebble INSTANTLY .. even though that other pebble was light years away !!!

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There are a few holes in your logic. While it is true that the probability of the transported stone being black is 0.5, knowing the result does not change the calculated value or the outcome. And when the reverse is true; a white stone was transported, the probability that it could have been black remains at 0.5, or 50% if you prefer.

No matter the point of view, discovering the color of the other stone has only educated the viewer. No change has taken place or information transported.

Draco…
[o]

Some stray thoughts. The "quantum telegraph" idea certainly was guessed in the 1950s; James Blish wrote a story predicated on it. Synchronous communication doesn't mean instantaneous transmittal of a complex packet -- sure you can communicate "instantaneously" but it's going to be like downloading the LOTR trilogy in High Def over a dialup line... during a thunderstorm -- which is to say "bandwidth."

It's a great plot device, but don't try to hang more technobabble on it than the plot can support. You might want to go Wiki some basic info on Claude Shannon's definition of information theory (though I'd have to recommend Khinchin's expansion & corrections if you get into the math).

Paul J. Andrew said:

This sure makes beaming someone trek style novel. Instead of being transported you're duplicated! What happens to the original you when the copy-you gets created? Can't have two you's running around. Does the first get put into holding until the second is confirmed then 'disposed' of? OOooooooh this could be fun.

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The Resurrected Man by Sean Williams