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That is amazing. I'm still unclear as to how this entanglement is created, and how long it persists. Could we potentially use it to communicate with distant space craft, like with a Mars rover type vehicle?

> Could we potentially use it to communicate with distant space craft, like with a Mars rover type vehicle?

This comes up every time an article on entanglement is posted, and the answer is always the same: no.

You don't know whether two things were "entangled" until you do the measurements on each and then compare them.

Measuring destroys the entangled state. But if you have one particle and it's the other particle that gets measured, you will not know about it until you do your own measurement and compare.

And actually one measurement isn't enough. The entanglement could have been broken long before the measurement and the answer you got just coincidentally looks like an entangled state. The only way to truly know is to do measurements on a number of these entangled systems and compare the statistics. If the measurements always come back indicating entanglement was present, then you can be sure entanglement is happening.

Not enough is known for you to say no

BUT WHAT IF>>

Hahahaha, I'm sorry, it's just so funny. Even as a physics major I wasn't really sure why it was that poking one qubit wouldn't be enough to "receive" a poke on the other side faster than light. That is until someone explained it for me. There is ALWAYS going to be someone who needs that explanation.

For what it's worth I think you did a great job!

Actually it seems YOU are the one who lacks knowledge.

Remember: "I don't know" is NOT the same as "nobody can possibly know"

It's a hard concept that can't be fully explained without digging into the math. That's the problem with physics in general: The math IS the explanation. Just like how some phrases can't be translated from one language to another perfectly, math can't always be translated into words.

It doesn't help that people throw around "quantum teleportation" knowing full well what people think of when they hear "teleportation".

Amen, sir.

> The math IS the explanationYou're right and that's a great way of putting it, but there should be a way to use appropriate analogies to convey those concepts without using equations. It would be really cool if we then formalized said analogies into a set of domain specific terminology being used when talking about anything in the realm of quantum. For example, imagine how hard it was to communicate to your peers about vector fields before the concept of a vector was invented; having a word to easily encapsulate the mathematical meaning makes it easy for us to have discussions about velocity and magnets without using any actual number or formulas.

Sorry, don't mind my rant, I just feel like there needs to be a better way of teaching and communicating things in this field.

> but there should be a way to use appropriate analogies to convey those concepts without using equations.

You say "should". What makes you think there "should" be a way? That it is even possible?

Mostly my assumption comes from taking a look at how the language of math has evolved over the years. For example, first and second derivatives are easily understood and we use them to speak about rate of change and acceleration. Without the derivative and the concepts behind it, it would be hard to talk about acceleration without using the math. So with the topic of particle entanglement and why it can't be used for faster than light coms, I would work backwards starting from an analogy such as - there are two boxes that each contain a blue marble, opening either box changes the color of both marbles to green - a term or phrase could then be made to represent that particular flow of information.

> Without the derivative and the concepts behind it, it would be hard to talk about acceleration without using the math.

Other way around. We already had the words "acceleration" and "speed". Newton came up with Calculus to put those words into math.

>So with the topic of particle entanglement and why it can't be used for faster than light coms, I would work backwards starting from an analogy such as - there are two boxes that each contain a blue marble, opening either box changes the color of both marbles to green - a term or phrase could then be made to represent that particular flow of information.

Your description isn't accurate in the least, and that's the problem. "Changing color" is already introducing wrong ideas. Nothing is "changing".

You can't even convey the significance of entanglement without first going over wavefunctions and eigenstates.

Funny you should bring up Newtwon, he did his math using quaternions I believe, and through that came the concept of vectors.

Anyways, I'm curious what's wrong with the analogy? It represents a particular flow information, nothing else. The state of entangled particles do change when you observe one of them.

Are you making the statement that collapsing the wave function isn't changing anything? I can see why you might say that, but I don't think that is accurate.

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