BMU #438 Juby, Kahn & CrystalWizard

Hi, welcome to episode 438 of Beam Me Up.  This week, something
slightly different.  I had several pieces of stories that by all rights should have played this month. But things being a being as they may, I am catching up on them all.

First off, we have the latest episode in Michael Juby's Squeek Squeek
series which takes up multi - generational star ships, but with a twist.

Then, from the blog we have an excellent article on quantum spin, this one will spin your brain sideways!

Next up is Jason Kahn's In Plain View episode 32.  I don't know about
you but I am treasuring each of these episodes. 

I review Elfin Lied anime series.

I am forever looking for the short films on YouTube.  This episode is no exception.  I found simply enough a short called Portal.  it is short but very entertaining.

I close with pt3 of Mimsy Were The Borogroves.

This and more.  Enjoy!


podcast audio is available Here
  Entire Beam Me Up podcast can be had at beammeuppodcast.com

Quantum Entanglement - an easy and quick explanation

Einstein called Quantum Mechanics "spooky action at a distance".  Pretty evident that he did not care for the process one bit.  Well no matter what your opinion is on the subject, here is a simplified demonstration of Quantum Entanglement.

Schrödinger's cat and quantum mechanics

Here is one of the TED-ED (at the risk of becoming

redundant) educational pieces. Here we are exposed to quantum entanglement. Plaaaaaaay it, you'll liiiiiiiiiiike it! Or don't play it and your exact copy, at the other end of the universe will have to....but if you have already hit play then you know the lazy sob, somewhere over there, just isn't going to bother.......

Oh and here is the wikipedia on quantum entanglement HERE

Quantum Communications @ FTL Speeds?!!

For the first time, physicists at the Institute for Quantum Computing  at the University of Waterloo have demonstrated what could be described as possible faster than light communication with  three entangled photons at three different locations and several hundreds of feet apart.

This shows quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled photons.  Whaaaaaaaa?  Well possible FTL comm  with more that just two nodes!!!  

You know this stuff is what Einstein called  "spooky action at a distance,". 

For those of you on a slippery slide as to what Nonlocality is really all about....check this out from the Science Daily blog article HERE

• Nonlocality describes the ability of particles to instantaneously know about each other's state, even when separated by large distances. In the quantum world, this means it might be possible to transfer information instantaneously -- faster than the speed of light. This contravenes what Einstein called the "principle of local action," the rule that distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another, and that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings.

Oh you have GOT to check out this article people!  It is brilliant!

SD Nonlocality

Quantum Entanglement At the Macroscopic Level?

Boing Boing has an article that will roast a few brain cells. Macroscopic Quantum Entanglement. That's right Macroscopic - big enough to be seen by the naked eye. Quantum always meant sub-atomic particle physics to me but here we are, demonstrable entanglement of something you can hold in your hands.

This effect was demonstrated on a pair of diamond crystals, large enough to be seen by the naked eye! In this case, the crystals were 3 millimeters wide and were placed 15 centimeters apart. From the article:

• A vibration in the crystals could not be meaningfully assigned to one or other of them: both crystals were simultaneously vibrating and not vibrating.
• 
  
• Einstein called this phenomenon "spooky action at a distance," and scientists still don't understand how it's possible.

This effect is usually only observed in quantum particles and only at ultra cold conditions, never with objects large enough to be seen. Plus it it not a universally accepted phenomenon either.

Complete Boing Boing article here

Time Teleportation? Possible?!

Wow, want to read something that will twist your head sideways? Check out this Technology Review online article that looks deeper into quantum entanglement to suggest that time travel or more precisely "Time Teleportation" is a real possibility.

I got a heads up from an article in Gizmodo written by Jesus Diaz

that pointed out that Physicists at the University of Queensland in Australia had discovered that the very same quantum entanglement that made teleportation in space could be expanded to the same type of entanglement between quantum particles to make time teleportation to the future possible. Now before we get into an argument about we are all traveling into the future, remember we have to exist in all point in time between now and then. Or when if you will. With these new discoveries, the two separated particles do NOT have to exist in every point in time, just two. Now and the future when.

The behavior of the particles in time are exactly the same as that of the quantum particle in space. You change the state of one and the other, no matter how far away changes in an equal but opposite amount. The "Spooky Action at a Distance" phenomena. Now we know that it no only hold true in space but also in time.

This is certainly an interesting thought experiment if nothing else. Could something like this make it out of the quantum world into the macro-world, for real world applications?

Check out the Technology Review article

And the Gizmodo article here

Could Quantum Computers Break Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal?

Here is an article, from IO9, that is bound to fry a couple of neurons. Have you heard of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal? Simply put, it is possible to chart a particle's position or speed but never both. Have you ever wondered "why is that"? Well believe me, person's with more degrees in one place than I have ever seen, wrestle with it daily. Here is part of the problem.

Physicist Paul Diracone describes the problem thus: One of the very, very few ways to measure a particle's position is to hit it with a photon and then chart where the photon lands on a detector. That gives you the particle's position, yes, but it's also fundamentally changed its velocity, and the only way to learn that would consequently alter its position.

Has that weeeeeee little pain started just behind your eyes yet?

The thing is that Heisenberg really meant to say that you can not measure both "with any degree of accuracy" and this is where quantum computers might shine. At least that is what
five physicists from Germany, Switzerland, and Canada hope.

Prepare to fry synapses! From the article:

• Key to quantum computers are qubits, the individual units of quantum memory. A particle would need to be entangled with a quantum memory large enough to hold all its possible states and degrees of freedom. Then, the particle would be separated and one of its features measured. If, say, its position was measured, then the researcher would tell the keeper of the quantum memory to measure its velocity.

Can you just hear Hugo Farnsworth going yeuuuuuuuuuuhwhaaaaaaaaaaaa?

This is what they hope for:

• Because the uncertainty principle wouldn't extend from the particle to the memory, it wouldn't prevent the keeper from measuring this second figure, allowing for exact.....
• ...would fundamentally alter our understanding of quantum mechanics and particle physics.

complete IO9 article

Quantum Entanglement Photographs or Ghost Pics!

You gota love IO9, they can find the stories that have science fiction written all over them. Here is one that will make your goose-bumps have goose-bumps. Quantum Entanglement Photography. Oh yeah! Say what?! Quantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart — even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. got that? give ya a hint, Ansibles. What Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." You take 2 matched quarks, seperate them by distance X, change the state of quark a say down and quark b goes positive at the same time. What about X you say? I said SAME TIME. Ok, got that peice of weirdness eating away at the gray areas? You can use this like peice of crazy making to take photograhs of stuff that ain't there....yet. When you stop gibbering I will explain... ok now? As IO9 puts it "Within a few years, we'll be able to take clear pictures of objects through clouds, smoke, or fog. "

No, not radar or infrared or mass-spec - oh something oh so much weirder: Imagine you are trying to photograph a boat behind a bank of fog. You'll use two light-sensitive devices: aim one at a light source that's illuminating your fog-shrouded boat (such as the sun, or a searchlight); then aim the other where you think the boat is likely to be. Then you use a computer program to combine the patterns of photons you've received from the object and the light. Once the two patterns have been compared, you get a kind of black-and-white silhouette of the object you want to photograph. Scientists call this a "ghost photograph."

Did you get that kiddies? No where did it say point those light sensitive things at any boat - but a light source and another where you think its going to be - ummm your free to fumble and mumble for a bit.

<Here is the wiki on Quantum Entanglement>

<complete IO9 article>