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Is it possible to send messages faster than light using quantum entanglement? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I have a question for you that you
0:10
Speaker 1: might not like. Oh, what is it? It's about aliens,
0:14
Speaker 1: your favorite topic. I love it already. What is it? Okay? So,
0:17
Speaker 1: if we can't send messages faster than light, right, all
0:22
Speaker 1: the other planets are light years away, wouldn't any communication
0:27
Speaker 1: or messages exchanged with aliens take years or decades? Ah,
0:32
Speaker 1: you're right, I don't like that question. Hi. I'm or Hamming,
0:51
Speaker 1: cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
0:56
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and the co author of our
0:59
Speaker 1: book We Have No Idea, a guide to the Unknown
1:02
Speaker 1: Universe that tells you all the things we don't know
1:05
Speaker 1: about the universe. Yeah. It's a great book, which also
1:07
Speaker 1: functions as a nice quantum banana stand or in anything
1:11
Speaker 1: stand really, once you're done reading it. It's multi purpose.
1:14
Speaker 1: You could buy thousands of copies and build a house
1:16
Speaker 1: out of them. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and
1:18
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of My Heart Radio
1:22
Speaker 1: in which we try to find amazing and crazy and
1:25
Speaker 1: fascinating things about our universe and explain them to you.
1:28
Speaker 1: We want to take you to the cutting edge of
1:30
Speaker 1: science and break it down so that you have a
1:32
Speaker 1: working understanding of it. Science is not something meant just
1:35
Speaker 1: for a few people in an ivory tower. Sciences by
1:38
Speaker 1: the people of the people and for the people. That's right.
1:41
Speaker 1: It's a constitutional right to know your science and to
1:45
Speaker 1: have physicists explained it to you. That's right. It doesn't
1:48
Speaker 1: make it democratic, but it should be accessible. Do you
1:52
Speaker 1: think is physics governed by democratic principles? Daniel? Maybe awesome
1:56
Speaker 1: if we could change the laws of the universe by
1:59
Speaker 1: voting on it, like he who wants to have faster
2:01
Speaker 1: and light travel me, and we all vote on it,
2:03
Speaker 1: and then it's possible. That would be pretty awesome, And
2:05
Speaker 1: the universe has to follow the rules. Hey, if it's
2:07
Speaker 1: a democracy, right, then we could like amend the laws
2:10
Speaker 1: of physics. Right well, if if our government is any
2:13
Speaker 1: indication that I think would be in deep trouble, I
2:17
Speaker 1: think Mitch McConnell would stand in the way of any
2:19
Speaker 1: uh any revolution we want in the laws of physics. Yeah,
2:22
Speaker 1: I think would probably splinter into different universes. That's right.
2:27
Speaker 1: I would have people arguing for these set of laws
2:29
Speaker 1: and other people saying no, we want this to be possible.
2:31
Speaker 1: Maybe we should not wish to have that kind of power. Yeah, yeah,
2:34
Speaker 1: let's take to the undemocratic universe in which we actually
2:37
Speaker 1: live in the dictatorial um quantum universe. That's right. So yeah,
2:43
Speaker 1: so today on the program, we'll be talking about a
2:47
Speaker 1: problem that a lot of people see if we ever
2:49
Speaker 1: do find other life in the universe, right, Yeah, there
2:53
Speaker 1: are certain things about the laws of physics which are
2:56
Speaker 1: fascinating but also frustrating that put limits on us. And
3:00
Speaker 1: you know, if we did find aliens, even in one
3:03
Speaker 1: of the nearby stars that are light years and light
3:05
Speaker 1: years away, it would be difficult to have a conversation
3:09
Speaker 1: with them because light or anything else takes years to
3:12
Speaker 1: get there in years to get back. Yeah, it would
3:15
Speaker 1: be a really awkward conversation. Right, You'd be like, hey,
3:17
Speaker 1: how's it going, and then you have to wait twenty
3:20
Speaker 1: years or more maybe to get an answer that says
3:24
Speaker 1: pretty good you they have like a revolution since then,
3:29
Speaker 1: or have evolved into something else or whatever. How do
3:32
Speaker 1: you have a conversation? Yeah, you might not even be alive, right, Like,
3:35
Speaker 1: if we talked, we're trying to talk to another civilization
3:38
Speaker 1: that's a hundred light years away, it would take two
3:42
Speaker 1: hundred years to get a response, just to get a response,
3:44
Speaker 1: and then imagine what that conversation would be like. You know,
3:47
Speaker 1: the first statements of that conversation would be like, huh,
3:50
Speaker 1: what were you? Wait? Can you hear me? Is this
3:53
Speaker 1: being on? You know that's a thousand years right there,
3:55
Speaker 1: you know, just to decode our language to right? Would
3:59
Speaker 1: it would be kind of awkward? Would be like talking
4:00
Speaker 1: to my nine year old right like, hey, can you
4:02
Speaker 1: pick up your shoes? Hey? Can you pick up your shoes?
4:05
Speaker 1: Twenty years later? Would be like what it would be
4:09
Speaker 1: like having any video conferencing meeting. You know, the first
4:11
Speaker 1: ten minutes of every video conferencing meeting between humans who
4:15
Speaker 1: speak the same language, use the same technology. It's still
4:18
Speaker 1: I can't hear you? What what was that? No, this
4:20
Speaker 1: is not working, like the ultimate nightmare conference call, wouldn't it?
4:26
Speaker 1: We would waste years just to say you're on speaker
4:29
Speaker 1: phone or you're muted, or sorry I thought I was muted,
4:33
Speaker 1: or hey, you're in the bathroom and you're not muted, right,
4:37
Speaker 1: Although actually I would like to hear what it's as
4:39
Speaker 1: sound like when the alien goes to the bathroom. Oh really,
4:41
Speaker 1: that would be your opening question. No, but if that's
4:46
Speaker 1: if that audio was just delivered to me somehow, Yeah,
4:49
Speaker 1: I would like to hear that. That would be fascinating.
4:51
Speaker 1: What if that's the only thing we ever learned about
4:53
Speaker 1: aliens is that they accidentally but dialed us when they
4:55
Speaker 1: were in the bathroom and we got to hear it.
4:59
Speaker 1: I see you, assuming they have a butt, or they
5:02
Speaker 1: might only they have m I'd have multiple buds. You
5:04
Speaker 1: don't know. So many questions could be answered by that
5:06
Speaker 1: accidental phone call. Yeah, you might get like two separate
5:09
Speaker 1: calls on your phone. But hey, your left button your right,
5:14
Speaker 1: but are both calling me? I gotta go? And maybe
5:17
Speaker 1: they must have a whole different call waiting system depending
5:21
Speaker 1: on the number of butts they have. But you know,
5:23
Speaker 1: this is a fun topic to explore, But I read
5:25
Speaker 1: a lot of science fiction, and in science fiction they
5:28
Speaker 1: often have this same problem. Like, let's say it's a
5:31
Speaker 1: million years in the future and humans have colonized the
5:33
Speaker 1: galaxy and have a galaxy spanning empire. How do you
5:36
Speaker 1: even govern an empire if it takes a thousand years
5:39
Speaker 1: to send a message from one side of it to
5:41
Speaker 1: the other, Right, Like, if you think about it. One
5:44
Speaker 1: fact that always blows my mind is that the United States,
5:46
Speaker 1: it's only like two fifty years old or less. So
5:51
Speaker 1: imagine having a conversation in between the declaration of independence
5:56
Speaker 1: and now it's a whole different country. Absolutely, it's a
6:00
Speaker 1: whole different country. And I think there's also something interesting there.
6:03
Speaker 1: I think something about the size of nations was determined
6:06
Speaker 1: basically by the speed of information transit at the time
6:11
Speaker 1: that you know, nation states came to be. And the
6:14
Speaker 1: reason we don't have globe spanning empires might also be
6:17
Speaker 1: because we didn't have instantaneous communication until fairly recently. Oh,
6:21
Speaker 1: I see, like your furthest calling. You could be like, hey,
6:24
Speaker 1: I am peace out, I'm leaving, and by the time
6:27
Speaker 1: you get the message and say no way, dude, they're gone.
6:30
Speaker 1: Tighter coordination between the UK and the American colonies might
6:33
Speaker 1: have prevented the American Revolution, right, and England could still
6:37
Speaker 1: be a globe spanning empire anyway. That's um ridiculous speculation
6:41
Speaker 1: on a topic I have no expertise in. But that's
6:44
Speaker 1: a that's a different topic. That's uh. Dano and j
6:47
Speaker 1: confuse History another production of I Heart Radio. That's right,
6:53
Speaker 1: but I think this is a really interesting one. And
6:55
Speaker 1: in those books and science fiction novels, they often try
6:58
Speaker 1: to avoid this problem them by inventing some way for
7:02
Speaker 1: these people to communicate faster than light. They have some
7:05
Speaker 1: clever ways, some telephone that communicates instantly from galaxy to
7:09
Speaker 1: galaxy or even inside the galaxy's so that they can
7:12
Speaker 1: talk to their subjects and their political connections and a
7:15
Speaker 1: reasonable time, right, so that each page of the science
7:18
Speaker 1: fiction story, it doesn't go two hundred years later or
7:22
Speaker 1: it's like three next thing, Bob's great grant. If you
7:26
Speaker 1: answered the phone, it says, what who's Who's this phone?
7:33
Speaker 1: It wouldnt be a fun thing to get in the
7:34
Speaker 1: wheel from your grandpa, Like, hey, I put a call
7:37
Speaker 1: into some aliens. If you they call back. This is
7:40
Speaker 1: what I wanted to know. Here's the conversation tree I started. Yeah, exactly,
7:46
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's a big problem with the idea
7:49
Speaker 1: of a connected universe. I think, right, like you can
7:51
Speaker 1: imagine a galactic empire or you know, just getting to
7:56
Speaker 1: know our neighbors. It would be a problem. It would
7:58
Speaker 1: be a problem. And in a lot of these science
8:00
Speaker 1: fiction novels and they try to solve this problem by
8:03
Speaker 1: sort of painting over it with a magic phrase and said, well,
8:06
Speaker 1: you know, maybe scientists in the future have figured out
8:09
Speaker 1: where to use. Here, I'm doing air quotes quantum entanglement,
8:13
Speaker 1: and that just sort of solves the problem. That's a
8:15
Speaker 1: popular solution in science fiction to this problem. Yes, exactly,
8:19
Speaker 1: quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement sort of solves the problem of
8:23
Speaker 1: faster and light communication. All right, So then today we're
8:26
Speaker 1: going to answer the question can we use quantum entanglement
8:35
Speaker 1: to send messages faster than light? Because I would love
8:38
Speaker 1: to talk to the aliens more rapidly. I would love
8:40
Speaker 1: to download their physics library and not have to take
8:43
Speaker 1: a billion years. And so I want this to be true.
8:46
Speaker 1: I want us to be able to send messages fast
8:49
Speaker 1: and like using quantum entanglement or anything. Well, I think,
8:52
Speaker 1: like any any phrase in science fiction, just put the
8:54
Speaker 1: word quantum in it, and it sounds both magical and plausible.
8:58
Speaker 1: Do you think that's going to be true for ever? Like,
9:00
Speaker 1: won't that trope get tired? Won't people to be like yawn? Quantum?
9:04
Speaker 1: The new thing is I don't know what is the
9:05
Speaker 1: new thing? Dark matter, dark quantum, nous dark matter. Oh
9:09
Speaker 1: my gosh, you're right, and there is even that novel.
9:12
Speaker 1: Have you read that novel called dark Matter by Blake Crouch? No,
9:15
Speaker 1: I haven't, very popular. I think was the best seller.
9:18
Speaker 1: It's actually about quantum mechanics. But the title of it
9:21
Speaker 1: is dark Matter, which is very confusing and has nothing
9:23
Speaker 1: to do with dark matter except I think that dark
9:25
Speaker 1: matter is a sexy, buzz worded physics that they were
9:29
Speaker 1: there him or his agent or his publishing house we're
9:31
Speaker 1: trying to latch onto. Well there you go. That should
9:33
Speaker 1: be the title of our next book, dark Quantum, Dark Quantum, Yeah, exactly.
9:38
Speaker 1: Maybe we can use dark matter for faster than light
9:40
Speaker 1: communication Quantum after hours cinemas dark Matterez. Well, anyways, um, Yeah,
9:50
Speaker 1: the idea is like in science fiction, can we actually
9:53
Speaker 1: use quantum, this idea of quantum entanglement to send messages
9:57
Speaker 1: faster than light? And so, as usual, we were wondering
10:01
Speaker 1: if anyone had even heard of flantum entanglement or how
10:04
Speaker 1: to pronounce it, or whether it could it could even
10:08
Speaker 1: be used to send messages faster than light. So, as usual,
10:11
Speaker 1: I walked around the campus have you see Irvine? And
10:14
Speaker 1: I was grateful as always that they were willing to
10:16
Speaker 1: answer a random question about a random topic. And so,
10:20
Speaker 1: before you hear these answers, think to yourself, do you
10:23
Speaker 1: think quantum entanglement can be used to send messages across
10:26
Speaker 1: the universe faster than the speed of light? Here's what
10:29
Speaker 1: people had to say. I don't know enough to answer
10:31
Speaker 1: that question. I don't know now, I have not I
10:35
Speaker 1: don't know, but I hope he can. I'm not sorry, No,
10:39
Speaker 1: I'm not I do know what that is to do. Yeah,
10:41
Speaker 1: do you think it can be used to send messages
10:43
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light? That is correct? Do
10:45
Speaker 1: you think you can? So what do you think of
10:47
Speaker 1: those answers? Jorge? All right, Well, I think they're probably
10:50
Speaker 1: pretty common answers. And I don't think up until a
10:53
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I would have known what quantum
10:55
Speaker 1: entanglement was. Yeah, a lot of people have never heard
10:58
Speaker 1: of it. Um though, why guy was like, Oh, yeah,
11:02
Speaker 1: that's in this guy's company. This Wow? What does he
11:08
Speaker 1: know that we don't know? I don't know. I didn't
11:12
Speaker 1: spend it time to dig into it with him. Was
11:14
Speaker 1: he an alien? Possibly? Probably? Oh my gosh, I met
11:18
Speaker 1: an alien. I didn't even realize it. After rewind back
11:20
Speaker 1: in time, remember what that person looked like if you
11:25
Speaker 1: can rewind back in time, Daniel, that's what do you know?
11:30
Speaker 1: I just used my quantum tango particles, right, that's everbody
11:32
Speaker 1: science fiction problems, dark quantum phone, quantum foam perfect. I
11:38
Speaker 1: think that is the perfect blend of buzzwords right there.
11:41
Speaker 1: That solves any problem. There you go. I'm gonna suggest
11:44
Speaker 1: that to my students next time, the every research problem.
11:46
Speaker 1: Have you tried dark quantum foam. Many people haven't even
11:48
Speaker 1: heard of quantum entanglement, much less the idea of using
11:51
Speaker 1: it to talk over long distances. It's a topic that's
11:54
Speaker 1: actually decades old, but I think only recently has it
11:56
Speaker 1: entered any sort of the edges of the cultural ZiT guy, well,
12:00
Speaker 1: I think I remember a couple of a year or
12:02
Speaker 1: two ago there was a big news item saying that
12:05
Speaker 1: um scientists had finally teleported something and they use quantum
12:09
Speaker 1: entanglement it. Yeah, there was some very misleading science headlines
12:13
Speaker 1: about how scientists teleported something into space. But yeah, they
12:17
Speaker 1: hadn't actually leading headlines misleading science headlines. No, that was
12:22
Speaker 1: I wanted you to click on it. That's sweet. Yeah,
12:25
Speaker 1: they had used quantum entanglement. And we did a whole
12:27
Speaker 1: episode actually about teleportation whether it's possible. And there is
12:31
Speaker 1: one aspect of teleportation which is possible, which is teleporting
12:35
Speaker 1: a quantum state. That is saying, here, we have some
12:38
Speaker 1: particles and a quantum arrangement over here. Can we make
12:41
Speaker 1: other particles not the same particles, other particles had the
12:45
Speaker 1: same state over there. It's sort of like, uh, you know,
12:48
Speaker 1: um copying something. It's like emailing something to somebody else,
12:52
Speaker 1: but doing emailing a quantum state, and to do that
12:55
Speaker 1: you do need to have quantum entanglement. Yes, quantum factsing.
13:00
Speaker 1: That is not a phrase anybody has ever said out
13:01
Speaker 1: loud before. I think right, and I lay my stake
13:05
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, Yeah, they didn't actually move anything to space.
13:08
Speaker 1: People think when they hear teleportation that you have disappeared
13:12
Speaker 1: some that or somewhere and reappeared it somewhere else. That's
13:15
Speaker 1: the common understanding of teleportation, which is why the headlines
13:18
Speaker 1: for that article were so misleading. Um. But they did
13:21
Speaker 1: use quantum entanglement in that experiment. Quantum entanglement is a
13:24
Speaker 1: real thing. It can be used to do some interesting science. Right,
13:28
Speaker 1: it can be used to quantum facts things, for example,
13:32
Speaker 1: which is fascinating and useful, but not faster than the
13:35
Speaker 1: speed of light in that case. But yeah, I think
13:37
Speaker 1: I think that would be a more better name for it,
13:39
Speaker 1: quantum faccing, because it's not really teleporting. It's more like faccing. Yes, exactly,
13:43
Speaker 1: that is quantum facting, and it's it's it's sort of
13:45
Speaker 1: related to this idea of using it to communicate faster
13:48
Speaker 1: than light. Or is that totally different than quantum teleportation? No,
13:51
Speaker 1: it's different. I mean the idea of quantum entanglement is
13:55
Speaker 1: to have two things that are far apart, but they
13:58
Speaker 1: have some connection to each other, and can you use
14:02
Speaker 1: that to send some information? And you can use it
14:04
Speaker 1: to send some information, but the question is can you
14:07
Speaker 1: use to send information faster than the speed of light?
14:09
Speaker 1: But maybe before we dig into that, we should talk
14:11
Speaker 1: about what quantum entanglement is, so everybody has a clear
14:14
Speaker 1: sense for what that means. Yeah, let's talk about quantum entanglement. Um,
14:17
Speaker 1: So what what is quantum entanglement? I feel like I
14:20
Speaker 1: know the word quantum sort of which means magic, and
14:24
Speaker 1: entanglement means that two things are kind of like intertwined
14:27
Speaker 1: or um, you know, kind of like one of them
14:30
Speaker 1: depends on the other. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
14:33
Speaker 1: Entanglement means that this sort of a constraint on the pair.
14:36
Speaker 1: So I think it's simplest if you think about just
14:38
Speaker 1: two particles. Now it can apply to other things, and
14:41
Speaker 1: just particles that can apply to quantum fields of quantum systems.
14:44
Speaker 1: Just to have a visual thing to hang our our
14:46
Speaker 1: mental hats on, let's talk about, for example, two electrons.
14:50
Speaker 1: And electrons we know have these weird quantum states, like
14:52
Speaker 1: they can be spin up or they can be spinned down.
14:55
Speaker 1: And for an individual electron, before you've looked at it,
14:58
Speaker 1: it could be either spin up or down, and sort
15:00
Speaker 1: of like the Shorteninger's cat in the box, until you
15:03
Speaker 1: ask the electron, are you spin up or down? It's
15:06
Speaker 1: sort of both. It's not determined it's fifty fifty one
15:08
Speaker 1: or the other until you like poke it right, until
15:11
Speaker 1: you ask the electron whether it's spinning over the right.
15:14
Speaker 1: And we did a whole episode on quantum spin. How
15:17
Speaker 1: you can measure an electron spin. You pass it through
15:19
Speaker 1: a magnet and either goes left or goes right and
15:21
Speaker 1: that's how you're measuring it. You require it to make
15:24
Speaker 1: a decision about whether it's up or down so that
15:26
Speaker 1: it can interact with an experiment you've built in a
15:28
Speaker 1: certain way. And that's useful for thinking about individual electron.
15:31
Speaker 1: A quantum entanglement is about pairs of electrons because sometimes
15:35
Speaker 1: you can arrange these electrons in a special way so
15:38
Speaker 1: that they're not independent. They have a constraint on them,
15:40
Speaker 1: like they have their spins have to be opposite. For example,
15:43
Speaker 1: if one is up, the other one has to be down.
15:46
Speaker 1: Like you put a rule that um says that they
15:49
Speaker 1: they're not totally independent. Yeah, Like if you sort of
15:52
Speaker 1: two dies, they can be whatever they want to be
15:55
Speaker 1: each one, But if you put a constraint on them,
15:57
Speaker 1: saying they both have to add up to seven, then
15:59
Speaker 1: that that's a constraint between two things exactly. Because quantum
16:03
Speaker 1: mechanics has a lot of weirdness and a lot of fuzziness,
16:05
Speaker 1: but there are some rules even quantum mechanics can't break,
16:08
Speaker 1: like conservation of momentum, and spin is a kind of momentum.
16:12
Speaker 1: And so if these electrons, for example, came from another particle,
16:16
Speaker 1: say a photon generated an electron and opositron. That's that
16:20
Speaker 1: photon has an overall spin zero for example, then the electron,
16:24
Speaker 1: if one of them has spin up, the other one
16:26
Speaker 1: has to be spinned down in order to conserve overall momentum.
16:29
Speaker 1: There's spins have to add up to zero, which is
16:32
Speaker 1: the same original amount of spin that the photon had.
16:34
Speaker 1: So that's how you do it physically. That's how you
16:37
Speaker 1: apply a constraint to two electrons to say, you can't
16:40
Speaker 1: both be up and you can't both be down. If
16:42
Speaker 1: one of you is up, the other one has to
16:43
Speaker 1: be down. So you maintain your compliance with this other
16:46
Speaker 1: law of physics, right, and you can set that rule
16:49
Speaker 1: to whatever you want to be. Like, you could also
16:50
Speaker 1: say they both have to be up, or they both
16:52
Speaker 1: have to be down, or they can't both be the
16:54
Speaker 1: same thing. It's just kind of like like a rule. Right. Yeah,
16:57
Speaker 1: if your photon has spin one in a certain direction,
17:00
Speaker 1: then you know that both electrons have to be spin up.
17:02
Speaker 1: And if it has been um minus one, which is
17:05
Speaker 1: the same it's been one of the other direction, then yeah,
17:07
Speaker 1: the same thing applies. But it's most interesting when this
17:10
Speaker 1: constraint adds up to zero, because then each electron can
17:12
Speaker 1: be up or down, and it's the combination of the
17:16
Speaker 1: two that has the constraint, not the individual one. So
17:18
Speaker 1: each one is free to be up or down. But
17:20
Speaker 1: if as soon as you know that one is up,
17:21
Speaker 1: the other one has to be down. Okay. So that's
17:23
Speaker 1: the basic idea of entanglement. It's like two particles that
17:26
Speaker 1: have some kind of they're both quantum, so they're both
17:29
Speaker 1: weird and fuzzy, but there's some sort of constraint between them,
17:33
Speaker 1: some sort of rule that says that that when you
17:38
Speaker 1: open those two electrons, they need to follow certain rules.
17:41
Speaker 1: That's right, and the magic there is what happens if
17:43
Speaker 1: you open just one electron, so electron A and electron B.
17:46
Speaker 1: So you open the box electron A, you interact with it,
17:49
Speaker 1: you measure it's been it's been up. Now you know
17:51
Speaker 1: something about electron B. Right, you've measured something about electron
17:54
Speaker 1: A and learn something about electron B. That constraint allows
17:58
Speaker 1: you to extrappolate your knowledge of the first electron onto
18:01
Speaker 1: the second one. That's the magic, because the two have
18:04
Speaker 1: this constraint, and that happens sort of instantaneously. As soon
18:08
Speaker 1: as you measure it on one, you know something about
18:11
Speaker 1: the other one, even if in the meantime you've taken
18:14
Speaker 1: that other electron and moved it a light year away.
18:18
Speaker 1: So that's where the communication part comes in, Right, that's
18:20
Speaker 1: where the sort of magic faster than light tempting thing
18:23
Speaker 1: comes in. You take these two electrons, they're quantum entangled,
18:26
Speaker 1: you move them really far apart without breaking the entanglement somehow,
18:30
Speaker 1: and then when you measure something about one electron, you
18:33
Speaker 1: learn something about something really really far away, and you've
18:36
Speaker 1: learned something faster than light can travel. All right, well,
18:39
Speaker 1: let's get into the details here a little bit more,
18:42
Speaker 1: and how this was actually one of Einstein's ideas, right,
18:46
Speaker 1: it was sort of Einstein's big backfire. So let's get
18:49
Speaker 1: into it. But first let's take a quick break. All right,
19:04
Speaker 1: we're talking about quantum entanglement and how we could use
19:06
Speaker 1: that to talk to aliens right faster than like that's right.
19:11
Speaker 1: We're hoping their aliens, and we're hoping we could develop
19:14
Speaker 1: this technology based on quantum entanglement to send the messages
19:17
Speaker 1: that aren't accidental toilet butt dials, right, using my quantum facts,
19:21
Speaker 1: which I just invented ten minutes ago. Okay, so let
19:25
Speaker 1: me see if I got this straight. Didea between quantum
19:27
Speaker 1: entanglement is that you take two electrons or two particles
19:31
Speaker 1: that are quantum, and you you you mix them up
19:34
Speaker 1: so that there's some kind of rule between them, so
19:37
Speaker 1: that then if you separate them and you open one
19:39
Speaker 1: of them, you know something about the other, even if
19:43
Speaker 1: it's really far away. Precisely, you've learned something about something
19:47
Speaker 1: far away faster than light could get there, right you.
19:50
Speaker 1: If you if you want to know what is the
19:52
Speaker 1: state of electron B, rather than going there and measuring
19:54
Speaker 1: it coming back, you can do it instantaneously by measuring
19:58
Speaker 1: electron A, and that tells you something a about what's
20:00
Speaker 1: happening far away. And normally in this universe, to learn
20:03
Speaker 1: something about an object that's really far away takes time.
20:07
Speaker 1: If you want to know what's happening in the star
20:09
Speaker 1: a light year away, you need to wait a year
20:11
Speaker 1: for that light to get here. So this seems like
20:13
Speaker 1: a tempting way to learn things, to about things that
20:16
Speaker 1: are far away, and maybe even to send information. That's
20:19
Speaker 1: sort of the idea. It's made the picture a little
20:21
Speaker 1: bit maybe, Like so I take two electrons and let's
20:23
Speaker 1: say I make the rule that when I make the
20:25
Speaker 1: electrons and make the rule that they both had to
20:27
Speaker 1: be the same spin. Like, that's a possible rule, right,
20:32
Speaker 1: that is a possible rule. Yes, if your photon has
20:34
Speaker 1: spin one, then the electrons, which have spin half each
20:37
Speaker 1: could be both having a point in the same direction
20:40
Speaker 1: to make that original spin one. Yes, So I kind
20:42
Speaker 1: of I entangle these two electrons and then I send
20:44
Speaker 1: one of them to another star proxim Centauri. Yeah, And
20:48
Speaker 1: I wait a while for it to get there. It
20:50
Speaker 1: gets there, And now I opened my electron, the one
20:53
Speaker 1: I kept, and I see that it's pointing up. You're saying, instantaneously,
20:58
Speaker 1: without having to wait to check on the other electron,
21:01
Speaker 1: I know that the other electron out there is also
21:04
Speaker 1: pointing up. Precisely, you now officially understand quantum entanglement. This
21:08
Speaker 1: is the day forever after which you are an expert
21:11
Speaker 1: in quant entanglement. Congratulations, right, But I guess what I
21:14
Speaker 1: don't know is how how you can use that for communication.
21:17
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like I just sent you a
21:18
Speaker 1: package that I kind of already knew what was in it,
21:21
Speaker 1: and before you open it, I know what's already in it.
21:23
Speaker 1: But I'm the one who sent it, so I'm not
21:25
Speaker 1: sure how that helps us communicate. That is the rub right,
21:29
Speaker 1: that's exactly the issue, And but you don't exactly know
21:32
Speaker 1: what's in it, right. I think in the case where
21:34
Speaker 1: the photon has spin zero and so the electrons have
21:36
Speaker 1: to be opposite, you don't know until you open it
21:39
Speaker 1: which electron do you have. Do you have the one
21:40
Speaker 1: that's beIN up or do you have the one that's
21:42
Speaker 1: beIN down? And so you have learned something about something
21:45
Speaker 1: that's really far away. Before you measure your close by electron,
21:50
Speaker 1: it could be up or down, and the far away
21:53
Speaker 1: electron could also be up or down. It's not determined yet.
21:56
Speaker 1: There's still some randomness. But when you measure the spin
21:59
Speaker 1: of the close by electron, then you instantly know the
22:03
Speaker 1: spin of the far away electron instantly. The other way
22:06
Speaker 1: to get that information is to let the people who
22:09
Speaker 1: have the far away electron measure it's spin and then
22:11
Speaker 1: tell you, But that would take time for them to
22:14
Speaker 1: send you that information. So this is like a way
22:17
Speaker 1: to instantly no information that is far away. Now, that's
22:22
Speaker 1: not the same as communication, which requires controlling information. And
22:26
Speaker 1: this is the part that science fiction novels never get
22:28
Speaker 1: into how do you use quantum entanglement to send information
22:33
Speaker 1: faster than light? They just sort of dot dot dot
22:35
Speaker 1: from quantum entanglement to instantaneous communication. They never get into it.
22:39
Speaker 1: Nobody actually knows. Nobody has worked it out. Nobody has
22:41
Speaker 1: worked it out. I mean people have thought about it.
22:43
Speaker 1: And you know, this font experiment came from Einstein because,
22:47
Speaker 1: as you said before, Einstein was trying to show the
22:50
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics was ridiculous. Einstein was trying to prove that
22:53
Speaker 1: this new field of quantum mechanics makes no sense. So
22:55
Speaker 1: he actually came up with this thought experiment, like, could
22:58
Speaker 1: you do this in the scenario your proposed in the
23:00
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics universe? If that was real, then you could
23:02
Speaker 1: do this absurd thing like knowing something about something really
23:06
Speaker 1: far away. And so he proposed this in a paper
23:09
Speaker 1: and he said, look at this absurd outcome of your
23:11
Speaker 1: predictions of quantum mechanics. Clearly you must reject this whole idea. Instead,
23:16
Speaker 1: people were like, I could write a science fiction story
23:19
Speaker 1: about that. No. Instead, people were like, that's a cool experiment,
23:22
Speaker 1: let's go do it, and they did it, and it
23:25
Speaker 1: turns out that the quantum mechanics predictions, absurd as they were,
23:29
Speaker 1: were correct. That that's exactly what happens. What did they
23:32
Speaker 1: prove that if you take two electrons, entangle them, and
23:35
Speaker 1: then separate them, they're still entangled. Is that the experiment
23:38
Speaker 1: they're still entangled, and that if you measure the first one,
23:42
Speaker 1: the second one instantly collapses to being the opposite of
23:45
Speaker 1: the first one. It collapses to to you, to to me,
23:48
Speaker 1: but not to the person who's holding it out there. Yeah,
23:51
Speaker 1: if you measure electron A, right, then electron B, which
23:54
Speaker 1: can be really far away, it can be faster, it
23:56
Speaker 1: can be far away than light can travel in the
23:58
Speaker 1: time they can. They measure it, and they measure that
24:01
Speaker 1: electron B also collapses at the same moment that electron
24:04
Speaker 1: A collapses. That if they ask electron air you spin
24:07
Speaker 1: up or spin down, then electron B goes from being
24:10
Speaker 1: spin up to spin down to being either one or
24:13
Speaker 1: the other, being the opposite of electron A. So they've
24:16
Speaker 1: shown that this happens, that making a measurement in one
24:19
Speaker 1: location changes the physics of the universe somewhere far away,
24:23
Speaker 1: and it changes that the physics of the universe faster
24:26
Speaker 1: than you could send information via light. It's not like
24:29
Speaker 1: something is happening in electron A and it secretly sends
24:32
Speaker 1: a message to electron be quick. I'm up, so you
24:34
Speaker 1: have to be down. They've separated these particles far enough away,
24:38
Speaker 1: like kilometers now kilometers and kilometers, so there's no way
24:41
Speaker 1: for light to sneak that information. But what do you
24:44
Speaker 1: mean it collapses on the other end, Like, but they
24:46
Speaker 1: haven't opened it. You're saying inside the box it's in,
24:49
Speaker 1: it's technically collapse. Or are you saying that when they
24:52
Speaker 1: whenever they open that other box out there, they're going
24:55
Speaker 1: to find that it's the It follows the rule. They
24:59
Speaker 1: do open the box, and it follows the rule. Yeah. Like,
25:02
Speaker 1: let's say I put two take two electrons, entangled them.
25:06
Speaker 1: Let's say I make the rule that they both have
25:08
Speaker 1: to be spinning the same direction. I think it's clearest
25:11
Speaker 1: when they have to be spinning the opposite directions. Okay,
25:13
Speaker 1: so let's have been make the rule that they have
25:15
Speaker 1: to be spinning the opposite direction. Okay, I entangled them.
25:20
Speaker 1: I keep one in my box and I sent the
25:23
Speaker 1: other one to you in office Centari in a in
25:26
Speaker 1: A box. I'm an Alpha centari. I have to go
25:29
Speaker 1: to alpha centauri. I get to Alpha. Okay, I thought
25:34
Speaker 1: you already were there. But all right, I'm an alpha
25:37
Speaker 1: centauri with the other box. Okay, yeah, I sent you
25:40
Speaker 1: my the B electron. I kept the A electron. I
25:43
Speaker 1: sent you the B electron, and they're both entangled. And
25:46
Speaker 1: now you're saying, if I opened my A electron and
25:50
Speaker 1: I see that it's pointing up, I know that B
25:53
Speaker 1: is pointing down, but you don't know that B is
25:56
Speaker 1: pointing down to you. That's right. But I measure it
25:58
Speaker 1: and it points down right when you measure it. But
26:01
Speaker 1: up to the point that you measure it, you don't
26:02
Speaker 1: know if it's pointing open down. That's right. But how
26:04
Speaker 1: does how do they talk to each other? How do
26:06
Speaker 1: they know that one can point up and then we
26:09
Speaker 1: can point down. They're separated, all right. Say we make
26:11
Speaker 1: our measurements at the same moment or within a bill
26:14
Speaker 1: of second of each other. Okay, we are separated by
26:17
Speaker 1: a light year. There's no time for for electron A
26:21
Speaker 1: to tell electron B what decision it has made. Oh,
26:24
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. You're saying that my electron
26:27
Speaker 1: my A electron the one I kept could could be
26:29
Speaker 1: either one. It could be either one. Yes, If I
26:31
Speaker 1: do this experiment, a lot sometimes will be up, sometimes
26:34
Speaker 1: they'll be down. But the ones that it's up, then
26:36
Speaker 1: yours will be down, and the ones that it's down,
26:39
Speaker 1: yours will be up. Precisely, and before you measure any
26:42
Speaker 1: of the particles, both could be up or down. They
26:45
Speaker 1: have a fifty percent chance of being up in a
26:48
Speaker 1: fifty percent chance of being down. When you measure electron
26:51
Speaker 1: A to B up, then electron B a light year
26:54
Speaker 1: way has to instantly change from having even odds of
26:57
Speaker 1: being up or down to just being down. It has
27:00
Speaker 1: to because electron A was up. But how does it
27:03
Speaker 1: know that electron A was up. There's no way for
27:06
Speaker 1: that information to get to electron B in time. Electron
27:11
Speaker 1: A could have been down, forcing B to up. Electron
27:14
Speaker 1: A spin could have been down, forcing B to be
27:17
Speaker 1: spin up. Remember that both of them are undetermined until
27:21
Speaker 1: you measure one of them, and then suddenly both are determined.
27:25
Speaker 1: This is like you take two prisoners and you isolate
27:27
Speaker 1: them so they don't get to talk about their story,
27:30
Speaker 1: and you asked one you know who robbed the bank,
27:33
Speaker 1: and you ask the other one who robbed the bank,
27:34
Speaker 1: and their stories always agree, right, even though they could
27:39
Speaker 1: have lied, either of them, either of them could have
27:41
Speaker 1: lied exactly either what could have like either both lie
27:44
Speaker 1: or they both not tell the truth. But some other
27:47
Speaker 1: insane and it's physically impossible for them to communicate because
27:50
Speaker 1: they are too far apart. When they first did these experiments,
27:53
Speaker 1: they try to isolate the things, but they weren't actually
27:56
Speaker 1: really that far apart. It's hard to get two quantumentango
27:58
Speaker 1: particles actually far apart. But now they've done it. They've
28:01
Speaker 1: quantum entangled particles between the surface of the Earth and
28:04
Speaker 1: things on satellites for example. That's what that article was about,
28:08
Speaker 1: what we're talking about earlier. They quantum entangled physics on
28:10
Speaker 1: the Earth and physics in a satellite. Okay, so that's
28:13
Speaker 1: the spooky thing. It's like some of the two prisoners
28:16
Speaker 1: have their stories in sync, you know, the two White
28:19
Speaker 1: House officials are somehow saying the same thing. How about
28:24
Speaker 1: the text messages. But they never talked to each other,
28:27
Speaker 1: and they couldn't possibly have coordinated. It couldn't. It's physically
28:30
Speaker 1: impossible for them to coordinate. Yet somehow when electron A
28:34
Speaker 1: collapses to up, electron B collapses to down, or the
28:37
Speaker 1: other way around. How do I know they didn't coordinate
28:39
Speaker 1: before I separated them. Yes, that is one of the
28:41
Speaker 1: deepest questions about particle physics and quantum mechanics is that
28:45
Speaker 1: is there a hidden variable. Maybe A wasn't actually both
28:48
Speaker 1: up and down. Maybe there's some hidden variable there, something
28:51
Speaker 1: that determines it forces A to be up, and so
28:53
Speaker 1: of course B is down. It's no surprise you know
28:55
Speaker 1: that you have half of the cake the other one.
28:57
Speaker 1: It's the other half of the cake, because it's been
28:59
Speaker 1: those halves the entire time. When while they were traveling
29:02
Speaker 1: to be farther away, that's a really like they decided like, hey,
29:06
Speaker 1: i'll be down, Okay, that means you have to be up,
29:08
Speaker 1: and then they separated. You're saying, that's not that's not
29:11
Speaker 1: what's happening. We know that's not what's happening. The explanation
29:14
Speaker 1: for that, And I know people out there who are
29:15
Speaker 1: desperately curious about quantum mechanics and skeptical of this. I
29:18
Speaker 1: wanted to precisely the answer to that question because when
29:21
Speaker 1: I was learning quantum mechanics, that's the thing I was
29:23
Speaker 1: wondering about, how do you know there isn't some like
29:25
Speaker 1: hidden variable, something we just haven't measured, some property the
29:28
Speaker 1: electron which determines or forces want to be up in
29:31
Speaker 1: the other one to be down. Now, the answer is
29:33
Speaker 1: a bit frustrating. The answer is not a smoking gun.
29:36
Speaker 1: It's a much more subtle experiment. It's called an It's
29:39
Speaker 1: invented by a guy named Bell, and it's about measuring
29:42
Speaker 1: the correlation between A and B. You can't prove that
29:45
Speaker 1: there's no hidden variable for one experiment, but if you
29:47
Speaker 1: do this over and over again and you sort of
29:49
Speaker 1: rotate the spin of the electrons, you can prove that
29:52
Speaker 1: there is no local hidden variable. It's really one of
29:56
Speaker 1: the most beautiful and subtle pieces of physics I've ever learned.
29:59
Speaker 1: So to show that there's no way for the two
30:02
Speaker 1: electrons to have been determined in advance which one would
30:05
Speaker 1: be up and which one would be down, that's what
30:07
Speaker 1: we technically called the no local hidden variable. What Bell
30:11
Speaker 1: did was used a second weird aspect of quantum mechanics
30:14
Speaker 1: to help pin down this first weird aspect. On the
30:18
Speaker 1: episode about spin, remember we talked about how you can't
30:20
Speaker 1: know the spin in two directions at the same time.
30:23
Speaker 1: It's just like how you can't know a particle's momentum
30:26
Speaker 1: in position at the same time because of the uncertainty principle.
30:29
Speaker 1: In the same way, measuring the spin in one direction
30:31
Speaker 1: like X will re randomize the spin in the other
30:34
Speaker 1: directions like why. So Bell used this to his advantage
30:38
Speaker 1: to show that the spin really is randomized before it's measured.
30:42
Speaker 1: His experiment says, you should separate the particles, but then
30:46
Speaker 1: measure the spin in other directions, not the one that
30:48
Speaker 1: you have this quantum mechanical entanglement constraint on. And he
30:52
Speaker 1: showed that if there is a local hidden variable, it
30:55
Speaker 1: will affect not just the constraint direction, but also the
30:58
Speaker 1: spins you measure in other directions. If there isn't a
31:02
Speaker 1: local hidden variable, if the electrons really are undetermined until
31:07
Speaker 1: you measure them, then you will not affect the randomness
31:10
Speaker 1: in the other directions. So he was able to come
31:12
Speaker 1: up with an experiment that gives different predictions if there's
31:15
Speaker 1: randomness and if there's local hidden variables. And then they
31:19
Speaker 1: did the experiment and boom, it showed that there really
31:22
Speaker 1: is randomness, but we should dig into it further on
31:24
Speaker 1: a whole separate podcast episode, because it's really fascinating. They
31:27
Speaker 1: have proven that there is no local bit of information
31:31
Speaker 1: that could be hiding inside those boxes to determine that
31:34
Speaker 1: one electron actually is up and the other one actually
31:37
Speaker 1: is down. We know that the that there really is
31:40
Speaker 1: uncertainty there, that the electron could really be up or
31:42
Speaker 1: down when you've entangled them and when when you've separated them,
31:45
Speaker 1: and that that collapses the moment you measure one of them,
31:48
Speaker 1: even if they're really far apart. Yeah, it's kind of
31:50
Speaker 1: like if you do the experiment a bunch of times
31:52
Speaker 1: and you you sort of know for sure that the
31:55
Speaker 1: two prisoners couldn't have possibly God in their story straight
31:59
Speaker 1: ahead of time. There's something weird going on. There is
32:02
Speaker 1: something weird going on. Even just doing a lot of
32:05
Speaker 1: times doesn't satisfactory resolve that question, because there could be
32:08
Speaker 1: a hidden variable in each case, and so doing it
32:10
Speaker 1: many many times just reinforces that. It has to do
32:13
Speaker 1: with having with measuring these spins along different axes and
32:16
Speaker 1: then rotating that access and you can show that as
32:20
Speaker 1: a function of that rotation, things would act differently if
32:22
Speaker 1: there is a hidden variable, then if there isn't a
32:24
Speaker 1: hidden variable. But again it's a bit too subtle to
32:27
Speaker 1: get into. I think on today's podcast it involves spinning prisoners,
32:31
Speaker 1: which we can't get into. It's right. We tried to
32:34
Speaker 1: file for research allow us to do that, and they said, no,
32:37
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's not that's the violent human rights in
32:41
Speaker 1: humane exactly. And then I tried to say, but it's
32:43
Speaker 1: for black matter, quantum foam telephone, and we're doing it
32:47
Speaker 1: in a Stanford basement. It's all right, at least, no,
32:51
Speaker 1: it wasn't approved, all right. So so that's where this
32:54
Speaker 1: idea that you could use this for faster than light
32:57
Speaker 1: communication is that there's something something's going on faster than light,
33:00
Speaker 1: and so could we use that to communicate faster than light? Right,
33:04
Speaker 1: that's where the idea came from. Yes, something here is
33:06
Speaker 1: happening faster than light, and so people thought, oh, maybe
33:10
Speaker 1: we could communicate faster than light. That's the genesis of
33:12
Speaker 1: the idea. All right, let's get into whether it is
33:15
Speaker 1: possible to use this for faster than light communication. But
33:18
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right. So we
33:34
Speaker 1: talked about quantum entanglement and how there is something going
33:37
Speaker 1: on with it that's faster than light. But the question
33:40
Speaker 1: is can we use that to talk to aliens faster
33:43
Speaker 1: than light or to you know, Daniel, who's an alpha
33:46
Speaker 1: centry faster than light? And so what's the answer here, Daniel?
33:50
Speaker 1: How how could we use could we use quantum entanglement
33:53
Speaker 1: to violate the fundamental speed limit of the universe? Well, first,
33:58
Speaker 1: I want to say that I think this is a
34:00
Speaker 1: totally good idea to investigate because there's often loopholes, you know,
34:03
Speaker 1: we talked about on the warp Drive episode, like yeah,
34:06
Speaker 1: you can't travel faster than light through space, but just
34:09
Speaker 1: change your definition of what you want to do and
34:11
Speaker 1: don't say I want to go through space, so you
34:13
Speaker 1: want to squeeze space so you can get somewhere faster
34:15
Speaker 1: than light would have gotten. So it's a great sort
34:18
Speaker 1: of avenue for exploration to look for loopholes and try
34:21
Speaker 1: to find ways to accomplish what you want to do
34:24
Speaker 1: without breaking the laws of physics. But in this case
34:27
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work. And the reason is to go
34:30
Speaker 1: back to what you were saying before, like say you
34:32
Speaker 1: have these two electrons, let's try to dot the lines
34:34
Speaker 1: to say, say you have these two electrons quantum entangled
34:37
Speaker 1: between here and alpha centauri. How would you actually use
34:40
Speaker 1: that to send information? Why would you build a communication system?
34:44
Speaker 1: Say you want to send me a bit, right, you
34:46
Speaker 1: want to send me a zero or a one. You
34:48
Speaker 1: know you wanna tell me whether or not the apple
34:50
Speaker 1: pie is ready to eat? One? Is apple pie is ready? Zeros? Noops,
34:53
Speaker 1: I burned the apple pie or something. You want to
34:55
Speaker 1: send me some I want to give you a thumbs
34:57
Speaker 1: up or thumbs down. Yeah, how would you do that? Well?
35:00
Speaker 1: In order to do one lamp if the British are coming,
35:02
Speaker 1: two lamps if they're coming by spaceship. In order to
35:09
Speaker 1: do that, you have to sort of control the information
35:13
Speaker 1: you You might be tempted to say, Okay, what I'm
35:15
Speaker 1: gonna do is I'm gonna force my electron to be
35:17
Speaker 1: spin up in one case. I'm gonna force it to
35:20
Speaker 1: be spin down in the other case, because that determines
35:22
Speaker 1: what happens to Daniel's electron. And sort of like twiddle
35:26
Speaker 1: Daniel's electron from really far away by twiddling mine, that's
35:29
Speaker 1: the tempting way to thing to go right, and twangled
35:32
Speaker 1: entanglement connects the two electrons and you're saying, like, if
35:36
Speaker 1: I see the British coming by sea, I'll turn my
35:39
Speaker 1: electron down, which makes your electron turn up, And somehow
35:44
Speaker 1: I talked to you faster than like that's the idea.
35:47
Speaker 1: But that doesn't work, right, That fundamentally doesn't work. And
35:51
Speaker 1: the reason it's pretty simple is that you can ask
35:54
Speaker 1: the electron what state is it, but you can't force
35:57
Speaker 1: it to be in a particular state because if you do,
35:59
Speaker 1: it breaks the tanglement. Right, the rules of the entanglement
36:02
Speaker 1: are that the two have to be in opposite states
36:05
Speaker 1: because you're preserving the Anglar momentum of the system that
36:07
Speaker 1: created them. There's this law of physics that requires them
36:10
Speaker 1: to still tally up in the end to have the
36:12
Speaker 1: same Anglar momentum as the original system. But if you
36:15
Speaker 1: interact with one of them, then you break that because
36:17
Speaker 1: you're adding momentum or adding Anglard momentum to the system.
36:20
Speaker 1: You've broken that quantum system. You made a new quantum
36:22
Speaker 1: system and that doesn't have to follow the same rules
36:25
Speaker 1: as the original. Oh, I see, so there's communication going on,
36:29
Speaker 1: but there's no So it's like there's communication going on,
36:32
Speaker 1: but there's no talking. Going on. The two electrons somehow
36:35
Speaker 1: are coordinating, right, there's definitely collusion happening there, but you
36:38
Speaker 1: can't force one electron to be in a certain state,
36:41
Speaker 1: which is what you would need to do to send
36:43
Speaker 1: information from one to the other. No, no, Daniel, no
36:46
Speaker 1: collusion which hunt, No elect These electrons really do colue
36:51
Speaker 1: this quantum collusion. See I invented the phrase. Also, all right,
36:56
Speaker 1: quantum collusion good luck. Yeah, but that one you both
37:00
Speaker 1: did it and are somehow not guilty of it at
37:02
Speaker 1: the same time. Anyway. No, the possess the frustrating is
37:06
Speaker 1: the problem is that this quantum entanglement thing really is real,
37:10
Speaker 1: and it really does happen, and there is something weird
37:12
Speaker 1: and fashion light happening, but we can't use it to
37:15
Speaker 1: send information because you touch one of them, you basically
37:18
Speaker 1: break the magic. Right. It's like, we can both learn
37:21
Speaker 1: what each other has faster than light, but I can't
37:24
Speaker 1: tell you about what. I can't tell you anything. We
37:28
Speaker 1: just both learned faster than light. Precisely, we learn, we
37:32
Speaker 1: learn about each other, but what we have, but we
37:35
Speaker 1: can't tell each other something. Yeah, you're like, okay, I
37:38
Speaker 1: did sent Daniel to Alpha Centauri he spent five years
37:41
Speaker 1: of his life getting there, and now I know which
37:42
Speaker 1: electronic has. Okay, what does that do for us? Nothing? Yeah,
37:47
Speaker 1: it's like I opened my I opened my electron. It's like, oh,
37:49
Speaker 1: it's pointing up. That means Daniels is pointing down and
37:52
Speaker 1: that that doesn't help us at all. Talk that doesn't
37:55
Speaker 1: help us at all. And so I spent ten years
37:57
Speaker 1: of my life on an experiment we already knew was
37:59
Speaker 1: doomed about what we've learned, and we just spanned forty
38:03
Speaker 1: minutes on a podcast that's also doing Yeah, and so
38:07
Speaker 1: you know, there are fascinating ideas there. There's amazing quandom,
38:11
Speaker 1: magic seeming stuff happening. It seems like maybe quantum mechanics
38:15
Speaker 1: could evade relativity somehow, but in the end, relativity is
38:19
Speaker 1: hard and fast. There's no way to send information through
38:22
Speaker 1: space faster than light. I mean, if you did, you
38:25
Speaker 1: could break causality. And we're gonna have a whole podcast
38:28
Speaker 1: episode about what it means to have things happening simultaneously
38:31
Speaker 1: and causality and all that fun stuff maybe next week
38:33
Speaker 1: or so. But the short version is that relativity is
38:36
Speaker 1: the law. We're pretty sure cannot be broken. It can
38:39
Speaker 1: be evaded. You can squeeze space instead of moving through it,
38:42
Speaker 1: but you cannot break it. So the only way I
38:44
Speaker 1: think to get messages to Alpha Centauri faster than light
38:46
Speaker 1: would get there would basically be to warp there and
38:49
Speaker 1: warp back. Well, there you go. Can I make a
38:53
Speaker 1: warmhole telephone, like open a wormhole to you that somehow
38:58
Speaker 1: I can, you know, transmit information through it? That is
39:01
Speaker 1: totally theoretically allowed. Yes, so that doesn't require quantum entanglement.
39:06
Speaker 1: It requires negative mass particles, which were not sure actually
39:09
Speaker 1: exist in this universe. But theoretically there's nothing that prevents
39:13
Speaker 1: you from opening a wormhole. It might also require as
39:16
Speaker 1: much energy as is stored in the planet Jupiter, but hey,
39:19
Speaker 1: that's an engineering problem, not physics problem. That's a small
39:24
Speaker 1: price to pay to to tell you if the pie
39:26
Speaker 1: is burned or not. You can just send me a
39:29
Speaker 1: new pie for that price. I can just eat the
39:32
Speaker 1: pie and forget about you. I'm never going to see
39:34
Speaker 1: you again. Danny Dann won't be back for years. He's
39:36
Speaker 1: stuck on Office Centauri and some wild quantum hip I
39:41
Speaker 1: will be running, and only by the timing unless it's
39:45
Speaker 1: a quantum pie. There we go. We're inventing phrases all
39:48
Speaker 1: over the place. All right, Well, it sounds like the
39:50
Speaker 1: answer to the question is not really, you can't use
39:54
Speaker 1: quantum entanglement to talk to aliens faster than light. All
39:58
Speaker 1: those science fiction novels, they're just fiction. They are just fiction,
40:02
Speaker 1: after all. And I want to give props to science
40:04
Speaker 1: fiction authors for trying, for actually thinking how could you
40:08
Speaker 1: do this, and for getting a little bit into the
40:10
Speaker 1: science from not just sort of brushing over like I
40:13
Speaker 1: don't know, we just have some sort of answerable that
40:15
Speaker 1: let's just talk magically across the universe. I like that
40:18
Speaker 1: they dug into a little bit, and uh, you know,
40:20
Speaker 1: so kudos to them. And science fiction often leads the
40:23
Speaker 1: way in research and creates things which then scientists actually build.
40:28
Speaker 1: So we certainly don't mean to criticize science fiction authors,
40:30
Speaker 1: but in this case, that idea, as far as I understand,
40:33
Speaker 1: will not work, which is a bummer. But hey, you know,
40:35
Speaker 1: if you're writing a science fiction novel right now and
40:39
Speaker 1: this episode frustrated to you, just remember that scientists have
40:42
Speaker 1: not technically disproven quantum facting, which is not field yeah,
40:50
Speaker 1: not yet, which you can use for your science fiction novels,
40:54
Speaker 1: So there you go, send me the royalties. That's right.
40:57
Speaker 1: And if you are writting a science fiction novel and
41:00
Speaker 1: struggling a little bit with the science of it, hey
41:02
Speaker 1: send me an email. I am happy to give you
41:04
Speaker 1: consultation on how to devise your science fiction universe. Daniel
41:08
Speaker 1: and Jorge fix your science fit your novel new podcast.
41:12
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, Well, thank you for joining us.
41:14
Speaker 1: We hope you found that interesting and um not didn't
41:18
Speaker 1: get too entangled in your head there, that's right. We
41:20
Speaker 1: hope we didn't entangle your neurons any further than they
41:23
Speaker 1: already were, or that we gave it unnecessary spin to
41:26
Speaker 1: the topic. As usual, Jorge spun it up and I
41:30
Speaker 1: spun it down. Well, thanks for joining us, see you
41:32
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for tuning in. Before you still have
41:42
Speaker 1: a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop
41:46
Speaker 1: us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You
41:48
Speaker 1: can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel
41:51
Speaker 1: and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback
41:55
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and
41:58
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Hey explain the universe is a
42:01
Speaker 1: production of i heart Radio. For more podcast from my
42:05
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
42:08
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah.