(Possible FTL Advancement!)NASA Researchers Put New Spin On Einstein's Relativity Theory

Science Daily ^ | 2003-04-10 | Editorial Staff

[vannrox]

NASA Researchers Put New Spin On Einstein's Relativity Theory

Albert Einstein might be astonished to learn that NASA physicists have applied his relativity theory to a concept he introduced but later disliked namely that two particles that interact could maintain a connection even if separated by a vast distance. Researchers often refer to this connection as "entanglement."

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have discovered that this entanglement is relative, depending on how fast an observer moves with respect to the particles, and that entanglement can be created or destroyed just by relative motion. This might change the way entanglement is used on future spacecraft that move with respect to Earth or with each other.

"Imagine a particle on Earth entangled with a particle light years away," said Dr. Christoph Adami, principal scientist in the Quantum Computing Technologies Group at JPL. "Whatever happens to particle A on Earth happens to particle B, even if it is on another planet. Einstein referred to this connection as 'spooky'."

Einstein thought this connection violated the relativity rule that information can't travel faster than the speed of light. Adami and Dr. Robert Gingrich, also of JPL, are the first to apply Einstein's relativity theory to quantum entanglement between particles. They compared the amount of entanglement when the particles were at rest to when they were given a boost. Their findings show that while speeding up ordinary entangled pairs would lead to a loss of the precious entanglement, certain special pairs can be created whose entanglement is increased instead. This increases the connection between them.

Understanding how some of the characteristics of a particle can become entangled through relative motion alone when they seemed to be unentangled or unconnected when at rest could have many applications. For example, entangled particles could be used to synchronize atomic clocks, which are essential for navigating spacecraft in deep space.

"One of the amazing things about entanglement is that it connects objects over arbitrary distances, so that in principle the two clocks could be started and stopped simply by acting on only one of them," said Adami.

"However, no workable protocol has been found to date to achieve that."

Because the creation of entanglement in the laboratory is usually a delicate matter, discovering new ways to create entanglement is always a goal of the quantum technology community.

"If you can create entanglement just by moving with respect to what you're measuring, then seemingly you've created something from nothing," said Gingrich.

Another possible application of entanglement is quantum teleportation: the ability to transfer the precise quantum state of one microscopic object to another, while using only traditional communications, such as a phone line. This technique, which has been demonstrated experimentally, requires that the sender and receiver share pairs of entangled particles. But until now nobody knew what would happen to these pairs if the sender and receiver move with respect to each other, or if an observer moves with respect to them. This new theory gives researchers a whole new outlook on what happens to particle pairs when you apply the relativity theory.

The research also has ramifications for ongoing work in the area of quantum computation, which seeks to use the subtle effects of quantum mechanics to build faster and more efficient computers.

"Whenever new ground is treaded by theory, new applications are sure to follow in its wake," said Adami. Gingrich and Adami's findings appeared in a paper they co-authored titled, "Quantum Entanglement of Moving Bodies," which appeared in the December 2002 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The Quantum Computing Technologies Group at JPL investigates the design and capabilities of hypothetical computing and measurement devices that use delicate quantum effects for enhanced power and accuracy for future space missions.

More information is available at

http://cs.jpl.nasa.gov/qct/qat.html.

NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, D.C. provided funding for this work. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote any part of this story, please credit NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030410073215.htm

[vannrox]

This is ultra exciting! It is an amazing discovery!

[Support Free Republic]

God Bless America! God Bless This Man! Some of us VRWC volunteers think freedom is worth fighting for.
	Please join us. Or mail checks to FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794 or you can use PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD- It is in the breaking news sidebar!

[neutrino]

We live on the verge of a very exciting time!

[VeritatisSplendor]

No it isn't. The theoretical proof by John Bell in 1965 that quantum mechanics entailed entanglement, despite Einstein's criticisms, and the experimental observations of entanglement by Aspect and others in the 70's and 80's, were the amazing discovery.

A characteristic feature of this faster-than-light "entanglement" is that it can NOT be used to transmit information or energy faster than light, and so does not violate Relativity. You can instantaneously affect the state of an entangled particle on the moon, but you CAN'T instantaneously affect OBSERVABLE properties; the most you can do is change the random sequence your counterpart on the moon is seeing to a DIFFERENT random sequence, but it will still look random to him. Nothing in the posted article contradicts this.

[TwoStep]

**Bump**

[Jhoffa_]

"Whatever happens to particle A on Earth happens to particle B, even if it is on another planet. Einstein referred to this connection as 'spooky'."

I find this partcicularly amusing..

[Illbay]

I read a James Blish "Star Trek" novel many years ago (1970s I think) called "Spock Must Die!"

Blish posited a very, very long-distance transporter breakthrough using tachyons to allow basically "FTL" teleportation that could project the "passenger" a very long way (not just the 16,000 km or whatever the limit was in the old ST series).

The hitch: The tachyons in your body "entangled" with tachyons at the other end, and it was really a sort of "clone" of you that showed up at the other end.

Don't remember all the implications--I was only about 12 or so when I read it--but it sounds like a similar concept, probably based on the same Einsteinian physics.

[PeterPrinciple]

Einstein: I was only wrong once and that was when I thought I was wrong but I really wasn't.

[NetValue]

"This is ultra exciting! It is an amazing discovery! "

Seems obvious to me (LOL).

[#3Fan]

I think there was another story that they (can't remember who) changed a photon into a zero-velocity particle than can be stored. Combining that with this, you split a photon causing it to entangle with it's twin, store them in zero-velocity particle state, then re-velocity them and affect them at a future date for instantaneous communication.

Just speculating.

[coloradan]

Einstein postulated an answer to the so-called "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox," asserting that "God does not play dice with the universe." An experiment was done about a decade ago that shows Einsteins answer is incorrect, experimentally: the God does play dice with the universe. Einstein also tried to get around the uncertainty principle, and Bohr would always slap him down, in a famous case using Einstein's own theory of the influence of gravity on time in the refutation.

[billorites]

"If you can create entanglement just by moving with respect to what you're measuring, then seemingly you've created something from nothing," said Gingrich.

Yeah, that sounds like Newt alright.

[coloradan]

Suppose there's a starbase a light year away, and you are using your method to communicate with them, sending entangled photons to them in the manner you describe. You must send them a one bit message in one minute, that they will instantaneously receive.

In each entangled pair, you have one stored for a year, and the other has been travelling for a year, just to be detected in about one minute by the remote station. What do you do to your stored photon to convey the bit "1" to the remote station, a light year away, a minute from now? What would you do differently to convey the bit "0" instead? They are expecting the photon, they have been getting one every minute for the last year and the next one is just coming up to them right now. What do you do now to make them receive the bit you intend to send?

[newyorkronin]

It is with great urgency that we MUST endeavor to ensure that humanity's future in space must NOT be gay like Star Trek, but manly, like Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

When the nations of the world start laying claim to the planets of the solar system, I predict that France, of course, will take Uranus.

[#3Fan]

Suppose there's a starbase a light year away, and you are using your method to communicate with them, sending entangled photons to them in the manner you describe. You must send them a one bit message in one minute, that they will instantaneously receive. In each entangled pair, you have one stored for a year, and the other has been travelling for a year, just to be detected in about one minute by the remote station. What do you do to your stored photon to convey the bit "1" to the remote station, a light year away, a minute from now? What would you do differently to convey the bit "0" instead? They are expecting the photon, they have been getting one every minute for the last year and the next one is just coming up to them right now. What do you do now to make them receive the bit you intend to send?

I was think more along the line that there would be an entangling apparatus, on earth say. You take a beam of light and split the photons in that beam into their zero-velocity particle state and store these entangled pairs in two separate "containers". When, let's say a Mars mission, comes up, you take one of the "containers" with the mission to Mars. By affecting the photons in the "container" on earth, you get an immediate reaction in the "container" on Mars instead of having to wait for twenty minutes for our contemporary Speed-of-Light communication. Of course, I'm just speculating theoretically and have no idea how the "containers" would be built or how you would measure the effects of the photons in them or apply them to machinery like say that rover. We had to wait twenty minutes each time we sent a command to that rover.

[coloradan]

By affecting the photons in the "container" on earth, you get an immediate reaction in the "container" on Mars instead of having to wait for twenty minutes for our contemporary Speed-of-Light communication.

How do you do this? What do you do to your stored photon to make the already-sent and remotely-detected photon convey the bit you wish to send? "Ordinary" entangled photons can't be used to send information. It's true that you can measure yours and therefore instantly know what measurement the remote station will obtain with theirs, even if they're a light year away, but you can't force it to become a certain bit, thereby forcing the remote bit to also become a known bit.

[#3Fan]

How do you do this? What do you do to your stored photon to make the already-sent and remotely-detected photon convey the bit you wish to send? "Ordinary" entangled photons can't be used to send information. It's true that you can measure yours and therefore instantly know what measurement the remote station will obtain with theirs, even if they're a light year away, but you can't force it to become a certain bit, thereby forcing the remote bit to also become a known bit.

From what I understood an experiment was carried out in Germany (or France?) where a photon was split and and it's entangled pair was sent down two fiber-optic lines 2 miles apart at the ends of the city. By adjusting the sensor at one end, they affected the readings at the other faster than the speed of light could get through the city. So it seems that the sensor could "see" what was happening at the other sensor instantaneously. I wish I still had that article handy because I saw the significance of it as it relates to this. It was in Discover magazine two or three years ago and I would have to really go digging to find it.

[Centurion2000]

When the nations of the world start laying claim to the planets of the solar system, I predict that France, of course, will take Uranus.

The let's make sure that America takes Jupiter and Saturn for itself.

Jupiter is practically a solar system in it's own right (56 moons, trojan asteroids ... really nice views)

[LTCJ]

Possible FTL Advancement!

Application to underwear? Highly advanced underwear.

This could be hugh! I'm very series!

[ovrtaxt]

I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken.