this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
484 points (94.5% liked)

Asklemmy

44908 readers
1178 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It can look dumb, but I always had this question as a kid, what physical principles would prevent this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 1 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Nah, I prefer using quantum spookiness for that. Send a steady stream of entangled particles to the other person on the moon first. Any time you do something to the particles on Earth, the ones on the Moon are affected also. The catch is that this disentangles them, so you have only a few limited uses. This is why you want a constant stream of them being entangled.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

You also cannot choose the spins of entangled particles, they collapse randomly in either direction when interacted with, meaning you cannot send messages. If you can figure out how to directly influence the spin of generated subatomic particles then BAM you have FTL communication.

But you would be amazed how many obstacles the universe throws in front of you when you try to break the speed of causality. Faster than light communication isn't possible because it makes no sense when you understand it. It's like "getting answers faster than questions." It's nonsense.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 8 minutes ago

Wouldn't that still be normal light speed communication from earth to two places on the moon, not FTL communication between two places on the moon?

[–] InputZero@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This wouldn't work, entangled particles don't work like that. They would be disentangled the moment you do anything to either particle of the entangled pair. The only time any information can be encoded onto entangled particles is when they're created.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

The only time any information can be encoded onto entangled particles is when they’re created.

If that were the case, then we aren't really doing FTL communication, unless we manage to entangle them at a distance. No?

OIC, it's still useful if we want to make a secret key and send it somewhere. Then both sides can take a reading sometime in the future and they can then use whatever cluster of entangled particles they saw, as the symmetric key.