Quantum Entanglement

[Sukerkin]

News story on the BBC that I thought I'd share purely because it both made me go "Cool!" and also caused me to realise that science may be starting to investigate areas of the nature of reality that are hard for me to comprehend:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8081058.stm

 

[Chris Parker]

I love this stuff. Favourite topics for me include string theory/M-Theory/theoretical physics and anything else related. For something that also makes no sense at all, have a look at this:

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[Bruno@MT]

I've always been fascinated by theoretical physics. In college it was my favorite class. I mentioned this before somewhere, but I once calculated the shape of the P orbital of an electron. I solved the partial differential equation by hand (bragging, I know)

After my masters in electronics I thought about going for another degree in that area. When I looked at the math involved, it became apparent that it was at least an order of magnitude more complex than the math that I had seen so far. Then I got an interesting job offer and that was the end of my physics ambitions.

I still read about physics and math in popular press books. Love it still.
Some of the concepts are so weird that they make the mind boggle, and make you wonder what 'reality' really is or means... or maybe that's just me

 

[CoryKS]

Entanglement is an effect in quantum mechanics, a relatively new branch of physics that is based more in probability than in classical laws.
It describes how properties of two or more objects can be inextricably linked over "vast" distances.

I'm not going to pretend I understand ANY of this, but it sounds as though I am getting closer to realizing my fantasy of being able to choke the life out of stupid people over the phone.

 

[theletch1]

I'm not going to pretend I understand ANY of this, but it sounds as though I am getting closer to realizing my fantasy of being able to choke the life out of stupid people over the phone.

I like the way you think on the one hand... on the other that would make modding this site a real PITA.

Stuff like that fascinates me but I don't truly understand even 1% of it.

 

[Empty Hands]

It is cool, but deciding that this is "teleportation" is not really supportable at this point. The explanation could be as simple as the states of the particle pairs are set when they are together, and when you measure the states of the separated particles, you are just measuring what they already were. This gives you instantaneous information about what the other particle state is, but it does not necessarily involve "teleporting" the first particle state to the second particle. Of course, maybe it does, but that is not clear at this point.

 

[Bruno@MT]

Also, you cannot use this for faster than light communication, because when you start to manipulate one particle, you break the entanglement and they become plain old fashioned single particles again.