They're launching an entangled particle experiment. I don't know the mission, but I'll look it up. Basically, the entangled particle's "mate" on Earth would reverse its spin and detectors monitoring the one on the satellite experiment would see if the other one (on the satellite) reverses its spin as well, as expected. If so, in theory, it may be possible to use entangled particles to instantly send digital data (the change in spin could translate into bits).
There's still some debate as to whether or not information can be transmitted via entangled particles, but my guess is that if information can be transmitted over a large distance, the information would be so scrambled as to be incoherent.It MAY be possible to creat such a system that works AT light speed, but so far as we can tell, not faster than light.
There is no "message" being sent between the two particles, only correlation of measurements made on them. To make an analogy, imagine that you had a pair of gloves and two identical boxes. Let's say that I put one glove in each box, and randomly select one and give it to you before you go on an interstellar trip. For both me and you, opening the box will reveal a right hand or a left handed glove randomly. Furthermore, you'll know instantly whether I have a right handed or left handed glove. But it would be ridiculous to suggest that this implies that a FTL message is actually sent between the two gloves when you open the box. {snip}
What you are saying is that I cannot force Gi to be a left hand glove.
Quote from: JasonAW3 on 07/10/2014 07:42 pmThere's still some debate as to whether or not information can be transmitted via entangled particles, but my guess is that if information can be transmitted over a large distance, the information would be so scrambled as to be incoherent.It MAY be possible to creat such a system that works AT light speed, but so far as we can tell, not faster than light.There's only "debate" about it in the sense that there's debate right here in this forum among amateurs.There's no debate among people who actually understand Quantum Theory....
No one really understands Quantum theory.