Quantum gravity: The most exciting discovery in physics could come about thanks to telecoms satellit

aeon ^ | 11/11/14 | Sidney Perkowitz

[MUDDOG]

They still do experiments? I thought they just sat in their offices and spun string theories.

[mikrofon]

a length of about 10^-35 metres . . . The Planck length, far smaller than any elementary particle or distance that we could measure, is the ultimate quantum uncertainty in location

Thus making it extremely problematic to "walk the Planck" .....

[left that other site]

Of Interest.

A little beyond my expertise, but I’ll just string along.

[M Kehoe]

Everything is binary.

I will leave it at that.

5.56mm

[freedumb2003]

>>A little beyond my expertise, but I’ll just string along.<<

Are you trying to monopole-ize the discussion?

[bigbob]

Fascinating!

[left that other site]

I wouldn’t do that!

We FReepers play on a unified field.

[GeronL]

lol

OK... what did all this mean again

[Beowulf9]

This was very interesting but what will be more so is if they do find something.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“I thought they just sat in their offices and spun string theories.”

While having spaghettification and meatballs!

[MUDDOG]

And send the bill to the NSF!

[Valin]

All together now.....

GROOOOOAN :-)

[Valin]

The thing is, you never know what you’ll find until you start looking. Often its something you never expected...and that’s very very cool.

[mc5cents]

Or Donald Rumsfeld would put it: Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.

Got that? Good.

[mc5cents]

The thing is, you never know what you’ll find until you start looking.

Or as Yogi Berra once put it: "You can observe a lot just by looking."

[MHGinTN]

Two steps of 10^-52 metres each ... it's a short walk.

[zeugma]

Similarly visionary experiments could use entanglement to examine the history of the Universe. In theory, as the cosmos grew from its tiny beginnings, the corresponding changes in spacetime curvature should have altered entanglement in ways that can be traced back to presently unknown details of cosmic development. Entanglement studies could even bear on an old cosmological question: are the physical laws that we have derived on Earth valid for the whole Universe? Since the time of Copernicus, scientists and philosophers have considered this question from different perspectives, but have had little direct evidence to draw on. If entanglement proves to be truly infinite in scope, it could be the ultimate tool to glean answers from distant cosmic locations.

For some reason, when reading this part it reminds me of the details of the Infinite Improbability Drive in the HHGTTG.

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood — and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance to the theory of indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sorts of parties.

Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered while trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars, and at the end of the day they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning in this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must have finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out how exactly improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!

He did this and was rather startled when he managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator. He was even more startled when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he was lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had realized that one thing they couldn't stand was a smart-ass.

[Boogieman]

“And there’s one area where the use of qubits is anticipated with particular eagerness: data security. In any communications system, sensitive information such as financial data can be encoded and sent to a recipient who has the key to the code. The trouble is, it’s always possible for a third party to sneak into the network and secretly learn the key. It was this kind of breach, for example, that recently leaked the credit card numbers of millions of customers of US retail chains such as Target and Home Depot. Qubits should prevent that.”

This is a double-edged sword, actually. Qubit based encryption might be much stronger, however, the appearance of usable quantum computers would instantly make insecure all non-qubit based encryption that was previously used. So all the historical data that is sitting around, encrypted under the old standards would be like open books to anyone with a quantum computer, since they could brute force the encryption open in minutes, perhaps seconds.

[Boogieman]

“Two steps of 10-52 metres each ... it’s a short walk.”

Aye, but here’s the rub: there’s no such thing as 10 ^-52 metres. Nothing can be shorter than the Planck length.