SPIN CITY: An artist's representation depicts the entangled spins of an atom's nucleus and electron.
Image: Stephanie Simmons
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Entanglement, that most counterintuitive quantum phenomenon by which particles share an unseen link that aligns their properties, is looking more mundane all the time. Just last week two groups of researchers reported entangling a photon with a crystal-based device, potentially paving the way for solid-state memories that can store and then release entangled particles as needed.
Another week, another advance. In a paper published online January 19 in Nature a team of physicists announced that they have developed the capability to churn out pairs of entangled particles, billions at a time. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The advance might someday allow for the streamlined development of quantum processors with a large number of quantum bits working in parallel.
Stephanie Simmons, a graduate student at the University of Oxford, and her colleagues created entangled states in phosphorus atoms embedded in a silicon crystal, entangling the spin of each atom's nucleus with the spin of one of its electrons. (Spin is a quantum property analogous to the pointing of a tiny bar magnet—an atomic nucleus or an electron can spin up or spin down.) "This is the first demonstration of repeatable, on-demand entanglement of an ensemble of spins," she says.
Phosphorus-doped silicon holds promise for solid-state quantum computing and quantum information processing, because each phosphorus atom has a relatively free electron that is open to manipulation, and because information can be encoded on both the spin of that electron and on the spin of the nucleus itself. And quantum devices based on silicon offer a relatively clear path to integration with existing, classical electronics. But no one had demonstrated the ability to mass-produce entanglement in such silicon crystals, which is necessary for some implementations of solid-state quantum information processing.
With a series of radio-frequency and microwave pulses, Simmons and her colleagues set the approximately 10 billion phosphorus atoms in the silicon crystal into an entangled state wherein each atom was in a superposition of two states at once—both nucleus and electron in a spin-up configuration in one state, or both spin-down in the other. Measuring the spin of either the nucleus or the electron collapses the atom's superposition into one of the two possible states. "If you measure up on a given electron, you know that the nucleus is up," Simmons says. (The entangled state was not completely pure, so some atoms did not cooperate.)
Ultimately, ensembles of entangled particle pairs could find use as quantum bits, or qubits, in quantum computers. A qubit's capacity to be both 0 and 1 simultaneously, and to interact with its neighbors via entanglement, would give quantum computers a huge leg up on ordinary machines. A massively powerful quantum computer based on an ensemble of entangled spins would need nowhere near 10 billion qubits, but it would require some way to move quantum information from one qubit to the next—perhaps by inducing the phosphorus electrons to jump between atoms. That feat, if it could be achieved, would help sidestep the difficulty of adding entangled qubits one by one, Simmons says, making for a more scalable approach to quantum computing.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Just last week two groups of researchers reported entangling a photon with a crystal-based device, potentially paving the way for solid-state memories that can store and then release entangled particles as needed."
Unless I misunderstood, that article described quartz amplification devices that were purportedly capable of acting as repeaters in long distance communications of entangled particles. It's unclear whether any particles were entangled by those devices or whether they effectively produced a single amplified photon from an input photon, maintaining its entangled state with a remote photon. While the term 'memory' was used in that article inappropriately, I'm pretty sure there was no mention by the researchers of any potential for long term storage of entangled state photons using those quartz devices to produce persistent memory devices.
In this case it's not at all clear to this reader how the spin state entanglement between an atoms' nucleus and one of its electrons could be used in any quantum computing device.
I'm very concerned that, rather than clarifying the complexities of entangled particles and/or quantum computing, your articles are merely confusing your readership with misinformation.
I am a lay reader, but I avidly read practically every Scientific American article online, and have been reading your journal since I was about 12 years old, i.e. for the last 45 years. I love this subject of quantum entanglement and the futuristic development of quantum computing. Honestly, quantum entanglement is not "counterintuitive"; it is simply a matter of being familiar with how particles in the nano world function -- getting a feel for them, so to speak. Computers themselves don't come as natural to me as they do to my two daughters, who have been totally immersed in them from babyhood, and now are respectively 10 and 15. I ask them to install or upload programs and files for me. In a sense, entangled particles are similar to a couple in love. Between my wife and myself, over the years, we have saved a lot of money on long-distance calls because we could rely on our intuition. I would be reading a book and suddenly an inspiration popped into my head, "Call Fujiko-san now!" I did so, and, to our surprise, she had just come back to her office or was just about to leave. We have become completely used to this. In other words, for the "new age person", so to speak, quantum phenomena are natural, normal, and intuitively understandable! Thanks for your great article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForgive me for repeating myself but any device that accepts a bit of information and gives it back at a later time IS a memory device. It doesn't matter how long it holds it because it can be re-stored endlessly to be available at any time in the future. I believe the previous clearly stated that the photon entered the crystal and reemerged several nano-seconds later with its entanglement preserved. This qualifies it as a memory device. Am I missing something in your challenge of the term?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think I'm finally beginning to understand this entanglement thing...it sounds like all that is required is to produce two particles/waves(atom/electron/photon) with the same spin and send them in different directions...if you read one..you know what the other one is and vice versa...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that calling them entangled is so untrue...if they were truly entangled(as I understand the word) you would be able to change the spin on one and it would be instantly seen on the other one...
any thoughts....
ps...the capability to store and retransmit negates all the hyping about the use in security....
Actually, not quite. The magic (there is no other every-day word for it) is that changing the spin of one of the entangled particles INSTANTLY changes spin of the other no matter how far apart they might be, the speed of light be damned! This is the biggest mystery in all of science but it has been tested and verified many, many time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismwaikg...so following your statement and the article...I should be able to capture both particles at their end points...change one of them...and have that change show up at the other one...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this is the case, then in my mind this is a great discovery....why string fiber, etc anywhere...all you need is to entangle two particles...transport them where ever you want to and have instant communication...go go....
Precisely, that is why these articles are news. Of course, it's a little more complicated than you describe but, YES, that is the what is so exciting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo magic is required if, for example, the entangled particles are produced by physically splitting a singular energy wave into two independently directed wave fronts. In this case both wavefronts still represent the same singular energy wave, distributed across spacetime. Have experiments actually intentionally altered the state property of an entangled particle producing the identical state change in its paired particle? I'm only aware of experiments that demonstrate that the detected states of entangled particles are found to statistically match.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the memory issue, a memory device provides persistent storage of information. As this article states: "potentially paving the way for solid-state memories that can store and then release entangled particles as needed."
There has been no discussion of how the demonstrated signal amplification crystal can be used to persistently retain entangled photons for subsequent repeated retrieval of stored information.
If some information retention method could somehow be developed a memory using a quartz crystal for each qubit of information would be very difficult to miniaturize. Miniaturization is the fundamental principal providing the foundation for improving computational performance and the only reason for pursuing quantum computing. Eventually, miniaturization of electronic components will increasingly encounter quantum instability effects, rendering them unreliable.
There has been no discussion by these researchers presented here of producing memory storage devices - only misinformed speculations by overexcited journalists and commentators.
As I mentioned in the context of the other article, the length of the 'persistence' of a memory device in unimportant. As with the 'Delay-line' memory used in the very earliest computers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory), all that matters is that information can be placed somewhere and retrieved at a later time. If the information is not needed at the end of the storage cycle then it is just restored or refreshed for another cycle. Actually, the faster the cycle, the faster the memory. I'm not suggesting that the devices described are functional memory devices, just the delay could be the basis for a memory device.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt isn't QUITE like that. Think of it like this Anne and Beth have a pair of magic coins. If either of them flips her coin then when the other coin is next flipped it will come up the same. Oddly enough this doesn't involve any transmission of information between the two coins at all. Neither Anne nor Beth can communicate anything to the other by use of this 'magic'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason is neither of them can determine when they flip their coin which will come up, heads or tails. The only know that the OTHER coin will come up the same way. You could prearrange certain things by this means, such as Anne and Beth don't want to decide where to have lunch yet, so they decide if their coins come up heads they'll eat at Franks and if they come up tails they will eat at Joes. They can go away and later flip their coins and both will arrive at the correct place. However they could have simply done the flipping of an ordinary coin in the morning. No actual information was exchanged by the remote flip.
Thus QM has 'spooky action at a distance' but this is not transluminal information transfer. It really has no analog in the macro world and doesn't really correspond to anything in our common experience.
And how many times do you think that an entangled photon could be retrieved from this memory device? Could entangled photons still be retrieved after their couplet photons have been detected?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile a photonic memory storage device might someday be possible (no, optical disks don't store photons), I don't think they can offer the cost/performance or miniaturization currently available with semiconductor digital memory. I don't think that persistent storage of meaningfully entangled particles is feasible.
You statesd:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If the information is not needed at the end of the storage cycle then it is just restored or refreshed for another cycle. Actually, the faster the cycle, the faster the memory."
For your information, the requirement to refresh transient storage devices to provide effective persistence introduces a delay in the memory access time. The information in the transient storage device must always be refreshed before its storage state decays. The refresh cycle introduces a memory access delay: faster refresh rates merely reduce the access delay, reducing access time relative to a memory with a slower refresh rate. However, faster refresh rates increase power consumption and heat, affecting miniaturization considerations, etc.
In digital memories, the storage bit charge state is retrieved, then reestablished. How could a superposition spin state be detected, then reset to is entangled superposition state? That would be quite a challenge, even for a magical device.
speak for yourself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand how/what is the state of the first particle afterward? does it even still exist?
http://davidjarvis.ca/entanglement/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There has been no discussion of how the demonstrated signal amplification crystal can be used to persistently retain entangled photons for subsequent repeated retrieval of stored information."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDifferent experimenters using different setups have demonstrated qbit retention times of 1's to 10's of nanoseconds. They didn't mention it because it was more or less implied. The word 'crystal' in the above article does not necessarily refer to a honking monster crystal you find in a head shop. They're tiny little seed crystals grown specifically for the experiment. Did I mention the word 'tiny'?
The crystals aren't signal amplification devices - exactly. Prior to this advancement, entangled states were achieved in clouds (of 200 - 1000) of rubidium atoms supercooled with lasers and teased into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Quantum computing was demonstrated this way a few years ago. Needless to say, this is a little cumbersome. Solid state devices are far preferable, no matter how finicky.
Thank you for your insights. My wife will be pleased to learn that I'm not the only person in the world who thinks he knows everything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the additional info. No charge technical reference material would be preferable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDiscrete crystals are required for the amplification of each light wave, correct? How does the spatial storage density of tiny seed crystals compare to current silicone memories?
If the crystals aren't amplifying the light wave transmissions in the repeater application, what are they doing? If the crystal's atoms absorb the received light wave's momentum, detecting a photon, measuring its spin, how is it reemitting a photon with a superposition spin state entangled with the original photon's entanglement partner?
Anything to help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeriously, IMO those who know something are obligated to question conflicting information in search of a resolution. That's how I always did my job, anyway.
Is,nt it an obvious fact that by now we are certain that there is more of the unknowns than what is known to us....it seems the more we drill into the mysteries of the universe...the spectrum of unknowns keep widening ..Is it not the time that we begin to question our own beliefs and convictions of our knowledge and intelligence been too primitive to comprehend what may seem comprehensible only by a being of a higher state of logics and understanding..or an human cognitive instrument adequate enough to percieve its reality. Are we to continue this journey of discovering the unknowns with our existing intelligencies and abilties one by one stage by stage or isn,t it a time when we turn all our energies and efforts in exploring and discovering an adequate human cognitive instrument that has the capacity to comprehend The Universe in fullness...perhaps we may need to form a new community of extraordianry individuals comprising of experts in all fields and with this shared consciousness arrive at some amazing conclusions rather than leave the dust under the carpets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding this article, I finally tracked down free access links to related articles published in the American Physical Society journal Physics, beginning with a Viewpoint article: “Towards superconductor-spin ensemble hybrid quantum systems”;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://physics.aps.org/pdf/Physics.3.80.pdf
“Strong Coupling of a Spin Ensemble to a Superconducting Resonator”;
http://physics.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.140502.pdf
“High-Cooperativity Coupling of Electron-Spin Ensembles to Superconducting Cavities”;
http://physics.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.140501.pdf
“Storage of Multiple Coherent Microwave Excitations in an Electron Spin Ensemble”;
http://physics.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.140503.pdf
I also admit that I did find a statement by a researcher relating some of this work to possible optical storage device. In a letter to Nature Physics 5, 494 - 498 (2009), “Realization of collective strong coupling with ion Coulomb crystals in an optical cavity”, Peter F. Herskind, et al, stated:
“The obtained coherence times are in the millisecond range and indicate that Coulomb crystals positioned inside optical cavities are promising for realizing a variety of quantum-information devices, including quantum repeaters and quantum memories for light.”
Personally, I have to assess such a statement as nothing more than a long term objective of researchers to develop an optical storage device using entangled atomic nucleus/electron qubits to store spin encoded optically transmitted information – certainly not an announcement of any demonstrated capability. At any rate there seems to be no real research concerning the physical implications of storing a copy of one particle of an entangled pair – something that has not been clearly alluded to, as much as I can determine.
At this point any casual discussion of potential capabilities for any such possible future devices is purely irresponsible speculation. IMO, we might as well be discussing the societal benefits of compact cold fusion power generation devices.
Why not concede entangled photons are an electromagnetic wave?Atomic spectra are explained simply by assuming they are waves but until now they were not explained by photons. When an atom consisting of a nucleus and a number of electrons is supposed to be governed by the laws of Newton and Maxwell its atomic spectrum is easily derived,inversely the composition of an atom can be derived from its spectrum.The calculated orbits are all ellipses, the calculated spectrum of hydrogen,a Bessel function,is different from the empirical hydrogen spectrum found on Internet but corresponds well with some star spectra.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFundamentally, superposition states of, for example, particle spin are by their nature probabilistic and cannot deterministically represent a specific value. While there are some applications where probabilistic determinations are adequate, such as image processing, would you like you social security number to be probabilistically determined for the purposes of payroll contributions?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is one of several critical issues that are not being addressed as quantum physicists race to implement computing capabilities using quantum devices. Frankly, I don't think that someday reaching a plateau in personal electronic device capabilities will collapse the world economy.
How much real personal productivity does the continued doubling of electronic processing capacity really impart to society? We now spend more and more of our time on personal entertainment and system maintenance. Yes, we can now be told where to go by our telephones, but how much more of any real value do we produce when we get there? The most productive society in the world is now China: they do not generally require the continuation of Moore's law to increase manufacturing productivity.
I suggest that enormously beneficial new applications could be produced for many decades using the current level of processing power available in discrete devices and networks. Of course, the economy might have to adopt a new marketing model for generating sales demand - it's been done before!
Very nice conceptual presentation site you have there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, in perusing your pages on entanglement, I came across one Q & A entry I must take exception to:
"Q: How do physicists know entanglement works over billions of miles?"
"To date, researchers have only observed the effects of quantum entanglement over a distance of several miles ... since we don't have the technology to observe the effect first-hand at distances spanning much more than that of the Earth and Moon."
"However, a cosmological experiment was done using quasar 0957+561A,B (Entanglement, The Greatest Mystery in Physics, by Amir D. Aczel pp.92-93) that showed how a photon can simultaneously travel two paths across great distances. A galaxy splits the space between Earth and the quasar, acting as a gravitational lens, thus creating two light rays separated by 50,000 light years. When we observe the arrival of a photon we can, by using half-silvered mirrors, determine which ray the photon travelled or whether it travelled both rays. What makes this experiment interesting is that when we put in the silvered mirror (or not), the photon has already passed the galaxy! In effect, we wind up changing history. I urge you to read Dr Aczel's book for details."
"This doesn't show that the effects of entanglement persist across great distances, but it does serve to illuminate that some quantum behaviour is consistent at these lengths."
Sorry, I won't be reading the referenced book from which you apparently extracted the interpretation of experimental results. However, I don't think that there's any indication that the separated images produced by some galactic gravitational lenses are produced by splitting singular light waves.
Instead, I suggest that the imaged quasar emits multiple light waves, each independently directed from the quasar. In simple terms, some light waves are curved towards the observer having passed to the 'left' of the lensing galaxy, some are curved to the same destination having passed to the 'right' of the lensing galaxy.
In this interpretation, there is no entanglement of photons produced by splitting singular light waves required to produce the observed effect, and no postobservational determination of photon paths. This interpretation better meets the requirements of Occam's razor.
Generally a nice, informative site, though.
By the way, there is a reflector with a special surface positioned on the moon such that laser light can be reflected back to their emission source. It is used to determine distance from transmission time, which has increased since these measurements began.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, this could enable a longer distance test of entanglement by transmitting entangled photons (from Earth or especially space) to the reflector. If the received photon(s) retained their entangled state with their singlet partners, entanglement would have been tested to (about) twice the distance to the moon.
Well it would be fun to watch both of the quarters land on their edges. The trick of course is to have the quantum bits lined up in a pattern, (more than one) so they can represent words, or some other value that can be encoded with the information you want to send. You only have to occasionally read the information in the receiving device to see if the information has changed, thus new data has been received, or one qubit could be used to tell you, hey this is new data, or I guess in this case one qubit could give you more than one possible state I guess, for example it could say the output is in a state of change at the moment for example. It may be simpler if someone created a alphabet,or numbering system using the quantum states, so examples could be made of the process. The Idea of using the device for instantaneous communication across interstellar space is an old one, but the draw back is you have to transport the device to where you want to communicate first.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps we can petition the National Security Agency to provide the clearest description of this process...but then they may NOT want anyone to understand it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe truth is out there.
All mass coheres at the same physical location. All energy emerges from the same interval.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEntanglement is the basic state of all things.
Lets walk to Mars, or the next galaxy. The path is plain as the nose on your face.
The space between physical bodies exists as a boundary feature, not an interval that invites transit.
Will someone explain the entanglement demonstrated in random number generators when they react to local behaviors in the physical environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWHAT is a 'nano' world?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is fundamental to nature that entanglement at this level is the natural state that 'records' patterns in physical processes. It is not an invention to have discovered something fundamental to all physical description.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt may be practically useful to impose a kind of use of this feature of nature to benefit human endeavor.
Bell phone systems once had a slogan, "The next best thing to being there...".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, the message... and then those who communicate.
It is not a huge step conceptually to move from discussing transmission of a message to transmission of an object.
Why transit the vacant boundaries between galaxies when all you need to do is take a single STEP and 'poof' you're THERE?
They will discover an interesting combination of this kind of entanglement and the recent discovery of a novel form of electron action when the electron is shot at a hologram. The result are electrons that move in a spiral... The spiral action allows optical features that are omnidirectional rather than unilateral. Combine this with the entanglement in the research focus of this article and we are a step closer to 'movement' of physical objects from here to there instantly. Actually, all physical objects are already 'everywhere' at the same time. All that is needed for practical application is a device/instrument by which to achieve a desired perception of the reality of holographic omnipresence of all things. We are on the cusp of a change in our understanding of the nature of all things, and human beings in particular.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNicoli Tesla knew about all of this before he died.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisreply to 33 Didonal
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy Tesla,why not Maxwell?
For those of you who have trouble understanding quantum engtanglement, it may be helpful to think of quantum entanglement on a holographic universe level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA holograph is a fractal pattern that can project the same image no matter how large or small of the holograph is examined. Imagine a holograph of a bird. If you break a holograph in two pieces, one 99.99% of the original size, and the other .01%, both pieces would contain a 3-D projection of the original image of the bird. This means the distance in the image, say between the birds foot and his bill, is only an illusion, there is no distance, only a pattern that projects the illusion of distance.
Imagine you had a holograph 100LY wide, and let's say that holograph contains the information of one photon and two points A and B as one giant fractal pattern. Let's say the 3-D image that the holograph projects is an image of two points at each edge of the image that are exactly 1LY apart. When point A emits its photon, it takes one year for the photon to reach point B on the 3-D image, but how long does it take for the actual holograph to show the entire change since the holograph is 100LY across? Answer-- one year. Now, let's say you took a slice of that holographic 2-D surface that was only one picometer square and emitted the photon, it would still take one year for that one picometer sized image to show the change of information of the photon reaching point B. If you take two photons and entangle them, that association is reflected in the overall fractal pattern of the 2-D holograph, so even though it takes 1LY for the entangled photon to travel from point A to point B in the projected image, the spin information is already encoded on the pattern of the holograph. Hope this helps.
Seems to me that entanglement suggests that this pair is entangled at a level of abstraction that subsumes space-time. This is the putative state of the universe before the big-bang occurred. We have to grasp that time and motion are merely a function of human perception. Since there is really no present, the past and future are one. (The present is merely the point in the universe that our consciousness has arrived at. Like an involuntary fetch command in a computer, there is no necessary interval for the window,since the programmer can arbitrarily set it as wide as he wants. [As a techie back in the 70s the programmers at a company called Univac,changed the access window at their mainframe from millisecs to microseconds without informing my company, which was manufacturing clones of their terminals. It was several days before our informant back at the plant discovered what the problem was and relayed the info to us. Our clients were not amused.])
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact that the present is actually and infinitesimal, merely means that all possible features of the universe exist simultaneously and unchangeably. What we perceive as motion, and time and change are merely the journey of our dna through these states dictated by the outcome of our dna's encounter with each environment it encounters. These particles may well be our doorway into the future. Journeys into the past will be less exciting, since retrogression will inevitably bring us back to a form that will be identical to the one we had before with no memory of the future we left, so we would probably repeat the same experience in similar fashion.
Point is that the access window for these particles is obviously infinitesimal. That is, so small that it is actually non-existant, like the infinitesimal point on the curve in calculus. String theory would suggest simply that it is possible that they remain linked in or at a more basic dimension than we can measure, where time (as we measure it, which I call photometric, i.e. the unit of measurement is always one metric up from the spin of the photon, which arbitrarily assign a mass of zero to. Zero to us but not to tachyons like the neutrinos that will flood Earth sometime after this year.) Where time is irrelevant to our means of perceiving it.
reply to tharter, Time is a real function of our universe, but distance is not. Time is relative to relative speed, acceleration and gravity, but at the holographic level, distance does not exist because distance does not make sense in a hologram, only time relative to the reference frame and information exist. Entangled particles are entangled at the holographic level, their association is woven into the fabric of the holographic pattern.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf someone was to move one entangled particle at light speed for one year, the time function of no faster than light is satisfied, but the holographic connection is part of the grand pattern. The time to move the particle takes one year in this case, but since the holographic pattern between the two entangled particles is already established, the spins are associated. Its a phenomena called simultaniety, that parts of the same particle experience changes at the same time no matter how large the particle is, in part because the actual particle is in all locations at the same time, so for entangled particles, each particle acts as one unit, their uncertainty is associated.
Perception of time is a very different issue compared to actual time, because quantum frequencies vibrate regardless of whether they are observed or not. There is a finite limit to how small of an increment of time can exist, planck time, the minimum time that a given amount of information can maintain without collapsing into a black hole. It could be that our brains decode the fractal patterns of the holographic universe and present a 3-D illusion that we see as information and the illusion of distance. The most obvious example is vision and the visual cortex acting very much like a holographic decoding device, and though time is relative to the oberserver, it keeps ticking at the local speed regardless if our perception of time is also holographically decoded by our brains.
I think that processing information is just as important as storing information. Perhaps you might explain why we do not search for a sensor that could discern the full spectrum of light at the atomic or photon scale.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that electronics are based on a two-state electrical signal (off/on) that forms 8 bit bytes, forcing an unnecessary and overly complicated use of binary or hexadecimal machine language, foundational to the higher level languages.
If I were a researcher, I would devise a scheme to divide the spectrum of light wavelengths into ten, to coincide with our ten finger (or toe) system of mathematics (base ten). If, we say that white is 1 (or 10), and black is the opposite, then the scheme would provide that the wavelength or frequency for 2 and the wavelength for three would yield a color that happens to be the frequency we would use for 5.
In other words, the frequencies of light would not represent numbers, they would represent actual values. By making the spectrum additive, (and making addition visual) processing is instantaneous, while the transmission of processing results are at the speed of light. Since current computers are in fact additive, and do not actually multiply, I would think we could strip away layers and layers of unnecessary processing.
If such a scheme were so devised, it would need a gate mechanism, and perhaps a filtering mechanism, preferably at an molecular (or even atomic) scale, to be harnessed with storage/input/output/interface modules or devises such as the quantum research may evolve.
I know IBM was working on a computer that worked by light, and while that entire group of people was smarter and better educated than I, I do not think they were looking beyond a base two machine. I cannot help but to wonder why, or what I do not understand, as this idea has been crawling around my head for two decades now. I do not see why it has not been pursued.
Here is a simple photon storage device that is easy to build.You take a coil of fiber optic and connect the two ends with a repeater splitter in between for reading,adding and amplifying the information on the coil.The data just keeps going around and around.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow let's take two of these devices,and now we have many entangled photons on each.Or is the entanglement lost on each loop around?Only a test will tell,And if entanglement isn't lost?Now one is years in the future and something terrible has happened by our own actions or other,and now we can send a message back in time through wave function drop to prevent this event.Scary isn't it?Can we be sure we are not dealing with a self fulfilling foretelling event?What do we do?But what if we could prevent an asteroid or comet from striking the Earth coming out of the direction of the sun that we didn't see coming?What would we do it?But what about other event's of our own doing?These are thing's that understanding entanglement will bring us.Who will decide?What a brave new world this will bring.I am almost afraid to hit the submit comment button.But I am going to any way and may this all go well it is my hope this doesn't all goes wrong.Is this just science fiction or are the effects of entanglement real?And is this really possible?I guess we about to find out.Well here's goes nothing if you will pardon the pun?.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see that entanglement, by having an instantaneous effect on another particle regardless of distance, would provide for transportation of information, and perhaps, someday teleportation of matter in the sense of a facsimily. I would think transfer of living tissue would be a concern, given the mechanics of it's working.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut I do not see entanglement as a premise for time travel. Assuming it would be true, would the change in time be a one way movement? And since time is inexplicably linked to space, time travel would have to distort or leap space in some manner. So I would think a trip back would not be to the same concept of space that occurred previously in time (or vise-versa, if you insist). Perhaps it would be to one of an infinitely different number of possible realities, but that would lead to a different future than that from which we started. So I think of time travel as somehow linked to dimensional travel, which is not in the realm of current pursuit that I know of.
It is my hope that my ideas will influence student's to begin testing these theories in their school labs to pursue these new realms.Who knows what exciting things may happen including first contact.As for traveling back in time,we are doing that every time we are looking up at the stars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll try to respond.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It seems to me that electronics are based on a two-state electrical signal (off/on) that forms 8 bit bytes, forcing an unnecessary and overly complicated use of binary or hexadecimal machine language, foundational to the higher level languages."
As I understand, binary charge state data storage enables simple bit-shifting functions to support implementation of foundational mathematical operations.
"If I were a researcher, I would devise a scheme to divide the spectrum of light wavelengths into ten, to coincide with our ten finger (or toe) system of mathematics (base ten). If, we say that white is 1 (or 10), and black is the opposite, then the scheme would provide that the wavelength or frequency for 2 and the wavelength for three would yield a color that happens to be the frequency we would use for 5."
As I understand, charge state representation of binary data values is actually determined by charge thresholds: an n-ary value system could hypothetically be implemented using charge state threshold ranges, but implementing logic gates to provide mathematical operations would be much more difficult than with binary systems.
If I recall correctly, light spectral ranges are used to multiplex transmission signals over optical transmission links; my messages would be assigned to a range of EM spectrum while yours would be assigned another. In this way our binary encoded messages could simultaneously be independently transmitted over a single optical fiber.
Quantum computing may offer a significant increase in miniaturization to subatomic scales of data storage, multiplexed by some probabilistic value range for each bit's spin state, I guess, but providing reliably dense packaging of quantum logical processing components will be quite a challenge. Unless that challenge can be met it's unclear what real benefit quantum computing may bring.
In my opinion, the whole idea of quantum computing is based on providing a significant increase in data storage and especially logic density, to provide for increased performance once we reach the lower threshold for reliable electronic component miniaturization.
I think that quantum computing might offer an increase in miniaturization, but once that increase is achieved, there is no likely continuation of miniaturization to support the continuation of improved cost/performance benefits in accordance with Moore's self-fulfilling 'law'. I don't think that quantum computing can truly offer a future developmental path for the continued growth of the electronics industry.
I agree, once you go to the past, you are in a different dimension because of the uncertainty principle, there is no way that the future of the time traveled past would be the same as the future the time traveler came from. There would be no going back. With the uncertain nature of conception it might be that the same people might not exist in a different dimension, and so any information gained in order to cheat the system might be useless. Even worse if someone traveled back a billion years when life started, and if they then went light speed to stay in relative stasis humans might not ever exist at all. Even worse, travel back to just after the Big Bang when galaxies first started forming, the Milky Way might not exist, therefore Earth would not exist either in that dimension.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBillions of quanta is too modest,infinity is the reality.Nature does not what humans say,even when the name is Einstein. Nature listens to Nature. What is called "entanglement" is in reality a continuous "wave".Atomic spectra cannot be explained by quanta,they are simply explained as radiations from accelerated electrons. Atoms are miniature solar systems where Newton and Maxwell reign.Entamglement and atomic spectra can only be explained by physical laws,not by human sayings.
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