What is Digg?65 Comments
- lokee73, on 10/10/2007, -4/+41Unfortunately, it still won't have enough power to run Crysis with all details set to "Maximum".
- 80hd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+19And people will honor the quantum internet with Schroedinger lolcats and comments will be unrelated to articles, only with quantum wierdness too
- asauterChicago, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14More like the telco monopolies begin plan to buy technology, hide it, lobby for regulation against it and force us to continue to use their wired based networks so quantum communication doesn't rend them useless.
- Meursault, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14A mullet exists in a similar superpostion of state, simultaneously business and party.
- Enderz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+92012: Porn traffic slowed down quantum internet to 56k.
- dheaddy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/schrodingers-lolcat1.jpg
- AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7"With something like this perfected couldn't you build one system that has its components spread over every part of the planet and the universe that we can reach and it would all work as one system?"
Not really. Quantum entanglement doesn't allow you to transfer information. At least, not directly. You'll still need classical communication channels for that. Its main uses are in the fields of computing and encryption. - Renork, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Universal AC anyone?
With something like this perfected couldn't you build one system that has its components spread over every part of the planet and the universe that we can reach and it would all work as one system? - PlagueMonkey, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6...but it will have Duke Nukem Forever and Spore as launch titles.
- rune420, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6"Einstein called this 'spooky action-at-a-distance,' and it was the basis for his nonbelief in quantum mechanics."
I think Einstein "not believing" in quantum mechanics is a bit of an overstatement. He may have thought that Quantum Physics was not a fundamental theory, but I don't think he ever doubted it's practical implications. In fact, Einstein was one of the co-authors of the original paper on entaglement, IIRC. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7So now when windows crashes, it'll destroy the universe?
- OrangeCrush, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Nope. IANAP and this is a pretty flawed analogy, but when you have two entagled particles, it's a little like having two pouches with a rock in each. They're entangled, so one rock must be white and the other must be black. You can send one pouch across the universe to your Aunt Tilly. Later, when you look in your pouch and see a white rock, you'll know that Aunt Tilly got a black rock. That's it. You can't even tell if Aunt Tilly ever bothered to look at her rock. If you paint your rock black, her rock will not magically turn white. So no information is actually transmitted between the rocks.
- AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I'm guessing that Schrödinger's lolcat both has and does not has cheezburger until ur in its box collapsin its wave funkshun?
- rune420, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Not really, because you can't tell the first particle how to behave. In the expirement in this article, they're not able to know how much energy the first ytterbium atom packs in its photon until they've measured it. But after measuring the first they know what happened to the second atom as well, that's where the communication happens.
(BTW, I'm not the ultimate quantum guru, so correct me if I'm wrong here) - 4degrees, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3im still waiting for the results.
- kaelyiesta, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Right. It was more of an issue of compatibility with his other ideas and how to resolve them.
- OrangeCrush, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3There is no "speed of thought." People think about things in different ways and take different amounts of time to solve problems.
A quantum computer is not a general purpose computer, but a very specific "calculator" of sorts. What it's (theoretically) very good at is factoring numbers. People and GP computers can only factor via the guess and check method (there are a few tricks to speed up the process, but it's still very slow). This is what modern encryption relies on. If you build a working quantum computer with as many qubits as bits that were used in encryption, you can crack that encryption almost instantly. - CCB0x45, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yea, why does this not allow transferring information? I'm not saying you are wrong, but like Renork said, couldn't you use separate entangled atoms? I don't know enough about physics, but i'd like to hear the reasons why not.
- RckmRobot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Here's about the simplest way I know how to explain why this is very impractical for communications purposes...
Let's say you and I both have entangled qubits, such that if I manipulate mine yours is also altered. As stated in the article, our qubits will be in a superposition of the values 0 and 1, but due to the entanglement our superpositions will correlate.
If I decide to alter my qubit to a particular superposition of 0 and 1, and yours is changed to the same superposition, you will never be able to figure out what that configuration is, because when you try to measure your qubit you will get a 0 or you will get a 1 - you cannot measure the particular superposition.
If I decide to alter my qubit to just 0 or 1, and thus will change yours in the process to the same value, I still will have to let you know when I'm done so you don't measure too early. But if I'm already talking to you, why not just tell you the value and avoid all the trouble?
By the way, I am a physicist. With an emphasis in quantum computing and quantum key distribution. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2http://vanillamints.com/mirror/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/schrodingers-lolcat.jpg
- OculusOnDigg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2you sir, are the man
- Renork, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2This is roughly the same train of thought I was following when I made my previous comments.
- jcims, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I'm completely confused by the 'can't transfer information' myself, as i seem to find conflicting information on it, and with such a rapidly advancing technology, it's hard to know if what you're reading is current. If i were to hazard a guess, i would say it's because entanglement is 'read only'...you can't set the bit on one end without breaking the entanglement. But that leaves me with something fairly mundane, because if you know one value has to be '1' and the other '0', what's so special about separating them by a great distance before finding out which one is the '1'
And for what it's worth, the size of an atom relative to one meter (the distance they were separated in the experiement) is approximately equal to a basketball relative to twice the diameter of our sun... - MacGyver2210, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I don't care one way or another as long as the quantum particles aren't paired to anything inside me.
- mnemonix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I worded that wrongly...
"Initially, neither detector shows an interference pattern. Since we control the polarization of photons passing through the slits and we know the polarization accepted by each slit, we can deduce which way the photons travelled (counter-clockwise through the left; clockwise through the right). Thus no interference patterns are detected.
However, if we rotate the polarizing filter in front of detector A (NOT B!!) so that the polarizations of the photons that hit the detector are the same (that is, we can no longer distinguish between clockwise and counter-clockwise polarizations), then the interference pattern appears at both detectors!
How do the photons arriving at detector B know that the polarizations have been "erased" at detector A? "
@ http://www.davidjarvis.ca/dave/entanglement/spookiness.shtml - DariusMDeV, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"said Professor Christopher Monroe, the principal investigator who did this research while at U-M, but is now at the University of Maryland."
Dammit, we keep losing to talentless southern schools! - rune420, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Ok so the maximum speed of thought is 3*10^8 m/s? Just how do you measure "rate of thought" in distance over time?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well I hope the question is in the left hand because the right one will be busy.
- bejitunksu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Let me clear this up, when two particles are entangled one is in one state and the other is in another state. If you don't examine the atoms they are in a superposition of the two states, the instant you view one you instantly know the state of the other particle cause it can only exist in one of two states. No information can be transmitted in this fashion as it is impossible to send information faster than light. No information can be sent because it is impossible to decide which of the two states the atom will fall into.
- NecroSexy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Einstein's general contention with quantum theory was Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which undermined his scientific aesthetics, so to speak.
- staydead, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1If this allowed transfer of information, it would violate special relativity. Which may be the case but it would need quite a bit of good evidence to support it which hasn't been found yet. Just google it there's tons of info on it out there.
- PeppermintPig, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I sense several issues here, but it was an interesting study. If I were betting, I would still have my money on this model since it appears to deemphasize the need to fiddle with qubits manually: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/1997/Qc.html
(All I know about quantum theory, I learned on my own, so I could surely be wrong :) ) - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"Thought" is quantum computing, they just haven't figured that out yet.
- ichauffeur, on 11/11/2007, -0/+1yap this is very intersting.
- Renork, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1There is a very strong chance I am just completely misinterpreting the whole thing but couldn't you also use this for communication at least between just 2 devices?
Set up the two quantum computers, in each one you you have a separate compartment for entanglement communications by having one of each of the entangled atoms in each 'machine' then when one quantum computer does something or wants to transmit something it alters its end of the communication qubits and the other ends get changed to the exact same thing thus being readable by the second computer? - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It depends on what you mean by the speed of thought, I would say the speed of thought is slower than the most basic calculators.
How fast can you do any simple maths? Because computers do that basicly instantaniously.
Of course a computer doesn't do much other than that. - AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1My understanding is that the entanglement only lasts for as long as you don't attempt to alter the state that's entangled. For example, you entangle two particles based on their spin, and then send them off in opposite directions. If you measure the spin of the first particle to be UP, then the spin of the other particle will be DOWN. However, you can't predict ahead of time which particle will have which spin, and if you alter the spin of one of the particles, the spin of the other one doesn't change.
- InvisibleMan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well that may be true, but if you want wireless instant communication that is totally secure, then google up Quantum Pairs. Enjoy.
- AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1But that's not how quantum entanglement works. I'm not as well-versed in the subject as I'd like for this conversation, but my understanding is that, as soon as you attempt to force the state of one of the particles, you break the entanglement, and the state change does *not* instantly propagate to the entangled particle.
- kaelyiesta, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Ansible anyone?
With only my limited introductory quantum theory education, I wonder is it possible to disentangle these atoms? And what about chaining, or other complex connections between qubits(think graph theory)? The questions that arise from their findings is making me giddy. - sriel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_century#Inventions.2C_discoveries.2C_introductions
...and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change - espot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Wow. This is like telepathic atoms.
- jmoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Quantum Internet - does this mean I'll get my porn before I search for it? Will spam be in two places at once? Will comcast still be able to block bittorrent once the casimir effect is in place?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1AFAIK it doesn't break the speed of light so its no more use than radio or laser communication, so sticking it on a Mars rover and expecting real time Mars video won't work.
The reason information can't be transferred is because as soon as you read a state of a quantum bit, you change it. If you think about it in order to 'observe' something you need to interact with it some how, when you look at something what you are actually seeing is light bouncing off that object therefore changing it, for most object it doesn't matter but because quantum is so small the tiniest change will be massive. So you can either measure the speed of it or the position of it but not both since by measuring one you change the other, think of a cop with a radar gun, except the gun blasts the object away from it when the inferred light bounces off it.
IANAP (I am not a physicist) - liminaldust, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1the particles at physorg are sometimes crappily written or edited with some obvious mistakes ... eh i meant articles
- xMedic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0"the two atoms would remain entangled, even if one were '(carefully) taken to Jupiter.' "
Wow. Now THIS is something. - pyrates, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Is it just me or does this sound more like someone from marketing wrote it?
- mnemonix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I just don't get this; so you have two atoms that have somehow become entangled, somebody said they could have hit each other at the molecular level... So by then measuring one of the atoms after this collision you can determine the state of the other atom via calculation? I feel I'm wrong as this doesn't sound very spooky at all...?
Then again I don't think I understand this uncertainity principle stuff; where if you put a cat in a box, is it really there? Well if you don't look then you don't know, you're not uncertain, you just don't know and take it as unknown -- but then opening the box means you now know... I really hope someone can clear this up for me..! - mnemonix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1in case it helps anyone... weirdness is how I understand it now; in an experiment if you shine light through the double slit experiment you see an interference pattern, as if it were a wave with the crests and troughs cancelling or amplifying the result where they meet. But the weird thing is, an electron behaves the same way, sending it through the double slit experiment gives a interference pattern as if it were a wave... even if you just send one electron/photon at a time through the slits you'll still end up with the same pattern (not just two lines where a straight line path of the electron would lead), so each SINGLE electron/photon emitted at one time must somehow go through both slits and interfere with itself? WEIRD.
It gets weirder though...
Like if you have a beam of light, it enters a crystal which splits it into two entangled separated beams. Now place two detectors, one for each beam heading off in the differing directions.
In front of the first detector place a rotatable polariser so that only that type of polarised light makes it through.
In front of the second (spatially separated by the split light beam from the first sensor) place a double slit experiment but only allow counter-clockwise polarised photons through the left and clockwise polarised photons through the right slit.
As it stands you'll get a normal pattern at both sensors if the photons were behaving as a particle (i.e. travelling in straight lines), BUT... if you change one of the slits to be like the other (so you don't know the true path of the photon[s]), then you'll have an obvious interference pattern at that sensor, but weirdly, the spatially separated sensor A will also show the pattern.
This is because we now don't know what path the light took, it magically split and interfered with itself and somehow knew that at the second sensor because we knew the path of the light, the results on the first sensor changed instantly, and vice versa...
why? Perhaps since the big bang everything is actually connected, and that "space is just the construct that gives the illusion that there are separate objects". w00t! - bakegreg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Its funny, he taught the discussion section in my introductory physics class at U of M(ichigan). I'm not surprised he left.
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