Comment on Light-Speed Spaceships Would Have Trouble Phoning Home
INeedMana@lemmy.world 11 months agoSo it’s not like: when I affect the hue (some attribute) of my half, the other half will change too? That has always been my understanding of it
SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
No, measuring one particle collapses the entanglement and they no longer affect each other. It is a one time thing. You can’t modify them after they have been observed.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 11 months ago
So at best it can be used for unpredictable coordination between vastly-spaced armies.
SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Nope. Because you don’t know when it will collapse,. Imagine you have 2 balls, a red and a blue. They are both put in boxes and each ship takes 1 box. After you travel a long distance you open your box. You have just collapsed the “superposition” of what color the balls were. You now know what color both balls are, but you don’t know if the other person has looked in their box yet.
I think a lot of people get confused by the term “observe” when talking about collapsing quantum uncertainty. Observing requires a photon to interact with the particle which is what caused it to “choose” what state it is in.