Actually proving this effect may be the real challenge. The easy part is creating entangled photons: just shoot light through a special, “downconverting” crystal that acts as a beam splitter; it produces separate yet linked rays. One ray illuminates the object, and the other serves as a reference. The returning and reference beams then are merged together (basically, by making them go through a splitter in reverse); the photons that were entangled should be more likely to recombine, or “upconvert.” But any experiment to prove that quantum illumination can boost the sensitivity of imaging has to use weak signals, and creating materials capable of upconverting faint beams with high efficiency is technically daunting, Kumar says. Still, Lloyd predicts experimental tests of this scheme might come later this year.
Besides boosting imaging sensitivity, the effect might confer benefits on quantum computing or quantum cryptography, Kumar suspects. “The quantum world is quite exotic and complex, and this shows there are surprises there that lurk around corners all the time,” he says.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Quantum Afterlife".
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16 Comments
Add CommentWould this also explain how people are able to talk to the dead and how when an ol'coot decides to go somewhere at 25 mph, most of the town lines up behind him and goes in the same direction with him? This Spooky Action theory would just blow my mind if it is the cause for everyone following that ol'coot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid anyone else think 'spy rays' or is my head simply stuck in Thirties Science Fiction!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my graduate program, we are studying anxiety disorders. I recently learned there is a specific phobia that involves fear of infinity. After reading this article, I think I have it...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrom YUMMYPASTA:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an easy test for the reality of Quantum Entanglement: Transmission of Information. If Entanglement truly behaved as they describe, addition of a few lines of software code to their apparatus would suffice to transmit data. Claiming "action at a distance" without ability to transmit information is a fallacy. The scientific establishments acceptance and propagation of claims like those in this entanglement article demonstrates solidified dogma. Until we hear about the "Quantum Entanglement Radio" or "Quantum Entanglement Telegraph", these claims are not validated.
Found this note searching for more information on quantum illumination. This recent issue (Jan 09) of SciAm is also all about black holes versus "naked singularities." I wonder if "quantum holography" would offer a way to "see" the inside of a black hole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHidden Objects Revealed With Quantum Holography
American Institute of Physics, Physics News Update
Number 566 #1, November 21, 2001 by Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2001/split/566-1.html
Truth continues to astonish
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTruth continues to astonish
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYummy - Entanglement is not up to debate! It is proved - there is theory and practice that Einstein wanted to, but could not refute. And "information" using quantum entanglement is used loosely. If I understand correctly, even though our bias is to think of the particles as distinct, really, they share quantum state, and should be considered one. The action at a distance tends to blow our minds because it tends to violate our precepts of locality... that "here" and "there" are mutually exclusive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the risk of sounding metaphysical, I think everything is entangled from the quantum particles in the universe to the remote veiwer sitting in the government lab. Alot of the things that we know in this world as esp and intuition is the result of entanglement. What do you guys think? Am I crazy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear Yummypasta,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe individual calculating circuits in a computer do not "transmit" intact "information" either because the inputs are can result in quite a complex array of outputs. The entanglement has been proposed as a way to detect eaves dropping on fiber optic lines precisely because of the fact that it's bad for transmitting intact information.
Dear Dray,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think your crazy. However, part of the parallels we draw between math/science and these folksier subject areas might be due to the fact that scientists and mathematicians intentionally translate the concepts into something intuitive (for non-scientists like me). This way we get some appreciation for what they are doing (and they get funding :)).
This doesn't mean that science doesn't merge with philosophy. However, it's probably the case that if I fully understood quantum mechanics I would not be able to see a clear connection to ESP or intuition. A lot of this physics stuff sounds very dry... it's all about numbers and coming up with a "model" that happens to fit the facts. Then, it gets tested over and over until nobody alive can disprove it. Then, those equations are accepted theory until later proven false (or they get adjusted).
You never know, though!
So, let me get this straight...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere was no experiment? Just equations?
Bleh.
Dear Editors:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo one can beat "Spooky action at a distance," Albert Einstein's phrase for quantum entanglement, but
"quantum afterlife" demands its own verbal canonization. Fortunately, my muse told me to 'look in thy heart, and write,' so I did, as follows.
A PHOTON TO A SIGNIFICANT OTHER
Could it be we're so deeply entangled
We strike out a spark when we're jangled
That flits like a ghost
From pillar to post
When this loving relationship's mangled?
Stuart Jay Silverman
223 Rolling Trail
Hot Springs, AR 71913
Tel. (501) 760-2725
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo one can beat "Spooky action at a distance," Albert Einstein's phrase for quantum entanglement, but
"quantum afterlife" demands its own verbal canonization. Fortunately, my muse told me to 'look in thy heart, and write,' so I did, as follows.
A PHOTON TO A SIGNIFICANT OTHER
Could it be we're so deeply entangled
We strike out a spark when we're jangled
That flits like a ghost
From pillar to post
When this loving relationship's mangled?
Einstein said that under high-speed conditions, space-time is deformed. As the universe is shot through in all directions by light, space-time must surely be everywhere deformed? So perhaps entanglement is just our perception of locally deformed space-time, the two quantum objects perhaps being in the same place?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity," by David Z. Albert and Rivka Galchen (March PHYSICS) treats entanglement as a mechanism for the instantaneous teleportation of quantum states over arbitrarily large distances. However, as I explained in my paper "Entanglement Untangled" [Physics Essays, Vol. 19, pages 299-301 (2006)], entanglement is a conservation law which preserves quantum states over arbitrarily large distances, without any "spooky action at a distance." In photon entanglement experiments, for example, teleportation is an illusion caused by picturing the photons as widely separated particles, when in fact they are extended wave packets, so large in extent that they overlap completely, to the point where a measurement on one is a measurement on both. Quantum nonlocality is a reality manifested by the size of the wave packets, not by instantaneous teleportation, which Einstein correctly rejected as "spooky action at a distance." Quantum entanglement is a reality manifested by interactions and correlations between overlapping wave packets. In the photon experiments, preservation of entanglement is conservation of angular momentum, which follows from the Lorentz covariance of special relativity. Contrary to contradicting each other, quantum mechanics and relativity work together beautifully, as is already well known from the fact that relativistic quantum field theory is a strictly Lorentz covariant theory. -- Kenneth J. Epstein, Chicago
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