Entanglement and Quantum Mechanics

A discussion over at http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/covers the concept of entangled quantum states. The effect is that if one photon of a pair of matched photons has a particular state (+ in our case), then the other half of the matched pair would also be a +. Now if they are separated by a great distance and the first one changes it's state to a - (minus sign) the other also changes to a - sign instantaneously. In other words they seem to communicate their state in spite of being separated at such long distances as to be invisible to each other. We're talking about astronomical distances out to the very edge of the universe. So then the idea comes up that because they know their state, and change together while being separated, they could be used to send coherent information. Now, because there is probability concerns involved, only the sender and receiver of the message would know by prearrangement how to read the message. See, you start out by sending the + and - states of the photons in a digital string. But to someone intercepting the message, they'd have to know what basic coding string was being used to decode the message. At this point the explanation of coded messaging goes off into another whole area of encryption theory and really doesn't have anything to do with the entanglement concept except that entanglement could be used to send encrypted messages. A message "in the clear" could also be sent without having to use any tricky encryption.

One idea that comes to mind for entangled messaging is to use it in computers. If you build a computer with entangled photons or any entangled pair of subatomic parts and change one of the pair, you change the other one. This would cut down on the time it takes to compute. One of the things slowing computers down is the physical length electrons have to travel to send computed + and - (1 or 0) in a digital string. Designers try to get around this by packing more and more CPU elements together in smaller pieces. There is a limit on manufactures' abilities to make things smaller. And we seem to be at about the limit with present ingredients and manufacturing techniques. So developing entangled states would speed things up and allow a tighter packing of computing circuits.

I have to stop now because things are not making much sense to me and I know it ain't making any sense to you either. So, I leave it at that.

The Day...

Spent the day at my daughter and son-in-law's house child-sitting. The two little girls are out of school now and both parents work so grandma and I go over and hang out until the adults come home. The girls are easy to sit with, they are quiet, play video games, watch TV or swim in the backyard pool. Can't let them stay in the pool too long as they would turn into swiveled, sun-burned prunes.

So, I was away from the computer all day. Oh, I could have taken my laptop and gone on-line through their wifi, but I took a book instead. Reading "Empire from Ashes" by David Weber. It's classic SciFi. Lot's of action, technology, human interest, good guys against bad guys...
All that you could ask for in a SciFi story. And Not one bit of Fantasy. Fantasy is a humbug.

Anyway, because of the child-sitting, I'll be away from the computer a lot during the days - maybe three or four week days a week - so blogging will have to wait until the evening. Since this shows up on the site, it must be evening. Yep! C U later.

Sunday Afternoon Blog

I've been watching earthquakes around the world for some time. I go to a web site (http://www.iris.edu/seismon/) which shows events in near real time. Since the original quake in China back on May 12th, there has been large aftershocks measuring at least 4.0 every day in the immediate area of the original shock. The people in the area must be in a continual state of fear that another large shock will hit and undo all the recovery going on.

I've also noticed that the government seems to be responding to the needs on the people in building temporary housing, and very quickly, if news stories are to be believed. It may not be fair to compare them to our FEMA, but their response seems to be at least as quick and possibly better organized than FEMA. The advantage they have over us is there is only one government to provide the aid. We on the other hand, have several layers of government to wade through to get the aid to the people. If government agencies from local to state to federal are not in line politically, slowdown is inevitable. In China any local resistance is overcome by the central government with threats of severe, individual action against the resister. Here, we have to play patty-cake with everyone to get things done. Even within the Fed there is bickering and back-biting for favorable position. While we may have a slower to respond government, I much prefer it to the oppressive central, single government in China.

Still, ya gotta feel of the people in the devastated area, and wonder when the aftershocks will stop. Brings an interesting question to mind. How long after an original quake are additional shocks considered aftershocks and not a new "original" quake. The answer is probably out there on the net, and I may look it up later. We'll see...

The LHC

Right now, 23:00 CDT, Saturday night, Discovery / Science Channel is showing a program on the LHC and giving lots of background info on how and why the things learned from the LHC will be important. It's speaking of the macroverse and the microverse. We will learn about the observable edge of the universe, at something like 13 billion light years. So far back that the early galaxies don't look as they do now. They're ill formed blobs rather than neat spirals and ellipticals. Later in the program we learn the LHC may help us see even further back toward the singular event, or the "Big Bang." How? The LHC will smash protons together at near-light speed velocities and with greater energy than has ever been produced before. Energies approaching what may have existed at the bang, or billionths of a second after the expansion began. It may be that we are one side of a multiverse that snaps back and forth We will go from a low, nearly zero entropy state at the start of the universe to a high, nearly smooth entropy state when the universe burns out and all the energy is evenly distributed across the entire space/time. Just guessing here, but then it may snap to the other side of an imaginary membrane and produce another singularity.

When you read this, if you know anything about this, you may think I know what I'm talking about. Nope, not even. But, I read a lot and watch Discovery/Science Channel a lot and I have a small understanding of what is going on in the research of these questions of origin. Pardon me now, but I'm gonna concentrate on the program.

The Afternoon...

Well, got two coats of paint on the front door and had rain showers all around, but not on the house - yet. Tomorrow, I'll go with one more coat of paint. The new paint is supposed to cover any color in two coats, but I guess my door was more powerful. The sunflower orange color I had on it shined right through on first coat and is still giving a tint to the new paint. So, one more coat in the morning. And, I didn't get paint all over me or the surrounding structure. Well, not too much.

So in awhile I shower and maybe take Grandma (wife) out for a drink. Sonic has good, flavor-added drinks, or maybe to Barnes & Nobles with the attached Starbucks. A cold, chocolate-ty, coffee drink would go down. Maybe more later...

Painting

Saturday morning and time to paint the front door. Weather forecast keeps trying to put rain - much needed rain - in the offing. If I sit on my arse and do not paint, it will not rain. If I paint, it will help bring rain. I'm torn between the two options. I need to paint the door as I mentioned in an earlier blog. And we certainly need the rain. We are now in the 6th worse drought in this part of Texas as counted from the start of '08. We had little rain in the fall season of '07 so the drought is compounded. On the other hand, if I paint and it rains, the yard will get much needed refreshment and the grass will grow. The lawn will green up and look nice and the wife will quit going on about watering the lawn. I just can't see wasting water on the lawn when we will be going into water rationing if the drought doesn't break. Plus, if the grass grows, it will need cutting. Guess who cuts the grass? OK, so the yard isn't very large. I can cut it in about 20 minutes, including edging and sweeping grass clippings off the sidewalk. The point here is my having to cut the grass. Waaaaaay back when I was a kid we had an old roter-bladed, push mower - the kind where the blades spin as a direct result of pushing the mower forward. Human power was what made it go and cut. I was the designated beast of burden to cut grass as a kid. As a result, I have a long abiding loathing of grass cutting. Oh, to be filthy rich and have yard people come in to tend that chore. I'd just as soon not have it rain so the grass will not grow. Wife thinks that's a horrible reason to extend a drought. Maybe so...

Well, it's coming up on 10AM, so I gues it's time to get up. Have to wash the door first. While that's drying, I'll find the paint pan and roller. I think I know where I left it. Hope everyone is happy with the new paint when it's finished. Catch ya later.

Digging Dirt

The Phoenix has a scoop-full of dirt and who knows what else ready to go into the oven. Hope they discover everything they think may be there, especially water. Salt may be involved in the dig too. Salt should be a common mineral found widely across the Universe. The trick is finding it in high concentrations like in dried up lake/ocean beds. That kind of find would argue strongly for liquid water in the surface at some time in the near to very distant past. It also might be an indicator of life not dissimilar to life in our oceans.

It would be neat to find gases cooking out of the dirt that only could come from life processes. Asking for to much maybe not, dreamers are good at dreaming. I'm one of the dreamers.

While all this robot exploration is good, if we had people on the surface they might find something overlooked by a machine. They would have considerable higher degree of independent action and ability to take advantage of serendipity. Imagine that the scoop on the Phoenix makes a few scrapes on the ground, uncovers a large rock and can scoop no more. Now imagine the human doing the same thing. What is the most likely action of the human. Scratch the rock loose to see what's under it. Maybe a fossil. Machine wouldn't know squat about that, but a human would. We need humans involved as quickly as possible in exploration anywhere we go. Machines are fine for first dig, so to speak, but humans have the brains and discretion to "go with the flow."