Quantum Space Drive? What the Frell???

[swestrup]

Here's an article I just read about a proposal to build a quantum space drive. This is based on the fact that for the first time a group of scientists have managed to teleport the quantum state of a trillion-atom chunk of cesium into another chunk. The author proposes to entangle two large amounts of cesium and store one of the chunks on a ship. The other chunk will be put into a reactor on Earth, which will ionize particles and teleport the ionization to the corresponding chunk on the ship. That ship would suddenly find its fuel sponateously ionizing, and could use this for propulsion.

To put it simply, I don't buy it. Even if one ignores the technological hurdles (and they are HUGE), I don't think quantum teleportation works that way. Then again, I could easily be wrong, since I don't have a very good idea yet of how quantum teleportation works.

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Huh. In the bizarre event that this idea worked, would it not imply action at a distance for pretty much arbitrary thermodynamics? No more power cables, your cordless tools would work with telebatteries. You'd keep the other half of your shorts in a climate controlled room and never fear for your nads again. I'm not even sure why you'd drive your spacecraft with terrestrial reactors; you'd just drop the 'hot' end into the sun and send the 'cold' end outbound to pluto and zip to the stars on the arbitrage.

So, I mean, that would be cool. As if....

Your website

[(Anonymous)]

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 18:14:00 EDT (-0400)

So what other subdirs are on your website at http://sti.pooq.com
other than "Images"? I liked the pictures of you shopping for
Halloween in 2002. I also noticed that you seemed to have a bit
of a clone in your old MAST club (see near the opposite side of
the group in the picture)

Don't worry about not having a website. Your
future-money-producing work is more important. Having a picture
and a greeting is all anyone can ask for.

-Jim

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, since entanglement information is itself conveyed (either by laser or radio waves) at the speed of light

Wait a minute - how is that teleportation? I thought the whole reason quantum entanglement is "spooky" is that there's no conventional communication between the entangled particles.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Aha, Wikipedia explains:

Entanglement obeys the letter if not the spirit of relativity. Although two entangled systems can interact across large spatial separations, no useful information can be transmitted in this way, so causality cannot be violated through entanglement. This occurs for two subtle reasons: (i) quantum mechanical measurements yield probabilistic results, and (ii) the no cloning theorem forbids the statistical inspection of entangled quantum states.

Although no information can be transmitted through entanglement alone, it is possible to transmit information using a set of entangled states used in conjunction with a classical information channel. This process is known as quantum teleportation. Despite its name, quantum teleportation can not be used to transmit information faster than light, because a classical information channel is involved.

Re: Your website

[swestrup]

The only other public directory is Resume, and its contents are as boring as you suppose.

[kallypup.livejournal.com]

It's all about the quantum vacuum ramjet.