Hotlanta and Entanglement

[unixronin]

We got into Atlanta (well, Marietta) last night only about two hours behind schedule, after leaving Greenville about three hours later than originally planned.  My interview at GaTech is set for 0900 tomorrow.  Looks like GaTech should be trivially easy to get to from here.

I had an interesting thought on the way down here -- one of those insights that suddenly go off in your head like a flashbulb.  Cast your mind back a week or two to the outfit that trumpeted they'd successfully teleported an atom, only when you actually read the article, the truth of it was they'd used an entangled pair to transmit the quantum state of an atom to another place.  I pointed out at the time that they hadn't actually teleported a damned thing, and that they did not have the basis of any kind of transporter beam, but actually had something possibly very much more useful -- the foundation of an ansible, an instantaneous communicator.  (My understanding is that transmission of state changes between entangled pairs is currently believed to happen instantaneously, not limited by lightspeed.  The mechanism by which this happens is not yet understood.)

Anyway, somewhere in South Carolina I had one of those flashes of insight about using entangled pairs for quantum communication.  Not only does it offer the posssibility of an ansible that could allow, say, a planetologist at JPL Pasadena to put his hand on a joystick and take real-time control of a rover on one of Jupiter's moons, or on a KBO, or on a planet circling another star, but it's also the ultimate secure channel.  A quantum-entangled link absolutely, positively CANNOT be jammed, it absolutely positively CANNOT be tapped, and the transmission absolutely positively CANNOT be either traced or faked.  The only way to compromise it is to gain physical possession of either the transmitter or the receiver.

There's a lot of applications for that, if it can be turned into more than a laboratory feat.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

If you get a chance (and your foot will stand the trip), wander over to the restaurant underneath the Tech Tower, ask for Tommy (he's the owner) and tell him I sent you. And see if there isn't a copy of Linux Journal up on the wall with my mug on it; I sent him one... :)

I'd love to have an ansible, even if it was limited to just a few characters per second... theoretically, if the data bits were atom-sized, you could put one of these things in your PDA...

Who did you end up staying with?

Leave EARLY. Traffic jams easily on 75 Southbound. If you have a companion, definitely use the HOV lanes; you'll want to get out of them approaching 10th/14th to make the North Avenue exit. (Or after Howell Mill if you're going to 10th Street.)

Break a leg... figuratively, of course...

Which department is this, anyway?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Didn't get the message until after I got back, so the opportunity did not present itself. But if all goes well, maybe I'll have an opportunity in a few weeks. The job is with the College of Computing, and we're staying with James and Julie Cochrane.

Quantum Crypto..

[skellington.livejournal.com]

You've seen the quantum crypto stuff, right?

Re: Quantum Crypto..

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yes, both in fiber and free-space applications. This is a very much different concept altogether. The quantum crypto is based upon the extreme theoretical difficulty of measuring the quantum state of a single particle transmitted by basically normal means down a fiber, or using a freespace laser, without altering its quantum state in the process. This, on the other hand, is about utilizing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement to transmit information.