Can Quantum Entanglement Create Faster-Than-Light Communication? (mit.edu)

Slashdot reader StartsWithABang writes: If you were to send a space probe to a distant star system, gather information about it and send it back to Earth, you'd have to wait years for the information to arrive. But if you have an entangled quantum system -- say, two photons, one with spin +1 and one with spin -1 -- you could know the spin of the distant one instantly by measuring the spin of the one in your possession.
This "incredible idea to exploit quantum weirdness" for communication was the subject of a recent Forbes article [which blocks ad-blockers] as well as a NASA mission directorate. ("Entanglement-assisted Communication System for NASA's Deep-Space Missions: Feasibility Test and Conceptual Design".) And Friday MIT News reported a research team is now making progress toward capturing paired electron halves for quantum computing on gold film. "Our first goal is to look for the Majorana fermions, unambiguously detect them, and show this is it. "

This week even 85-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner cited quantum entanglement in a discussion of Star Trek's transporter technology, arguing that "Although a lot of the concepts in science fiction are absurd to our Newtonian minds, anything is possible because of the new language of quantum physics."

Comments

test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally im suprised they havent tryed this allready. Imagine cabability to send commands to mars in realtime with hardly any delay. In fact that would be perfect test for this. Snd prome to mars that uses entagelment pairs are primary communication method and have old tech radios just as backup... tests once and for all if its really can go faster then light or not.

Cornodium

[mcgrew]

I used quantum entanglement in a SF story I posted in my journal (a better copy without /.'s patented smart quote mangler is here). I called them "jump radio" in the story.

Working article link

[evilviper]

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