Starlight Could Really Be a Vast Alien Quantum Internet, Physicist Proposes (vice.com) 76
Terry Rudolph, a professor of quantum physics at Imperial College London, suggests that interstellar light could actually be harnessed by space faring aliens to form an encrypted quantum internet. Motherboard reports: This may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but Rudolph says it was actually a natural extension of what he does as co-founder of PsiQuantum, a Silicon Valley-based company on a mission to build a scalable photonic quantum computer. He laid out his idea in a paper recently published on the arXiv preprint server. Rudolph said the idea for the paper on aliens communicating with quantum starlight flowed from his work on quantum computers. Unlike the quantum computers being pursued by the likes of Google or Intel that use superconducting circuits or trapped ions at incredibly cold temperatures to create qubits (the quantum equivalent of a computer bit), photonic computers use light to accomplish the same thing. While Rudolph says this kind of quantum design is unconventional, it does also have advantages over its rival -- including being able to operate at room temperature and easy integration into existing fiber optic infrastructure.
The primary way the aliens would create this kind of quantum internet is through a quantum mechanics principle called entanglement, explains Rudolph. In a nutshell, entanglement is a phenomena in which the quantum states of particles (like photons) are linked together. This is what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" and means that disturbing one particle will automatically affect its partner, even if they're miles apart. This entanglement would allow aliens -- or even humans -- to send encrypted signals between entangled partners, or nodes. Now, scale that single computer system up to a network potentially spanning the entire cosmos.
Aliens aside, Rudolph says that his paper demonstrates that building a photon-based quantum internet here on Earth might be "much easier than we expected." As for the aliens, even if they were using this kind of technology to transform waves of light into their own personal chat rooms, we'd have no way of knowing, says Rudolph. And even if we could pick out these light patterns in the sky, we still wouldn't be able to listen in. This is due to the incredibly shy nature of quantum particles -- any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying.
The primary way the aliens would create this kind of quantum internet is through a quantum mechanics principle called entanglement, explains Rudolph. In a nutshell, entanglement is a phenomena in which the quantum states of particles (like photons) are linked together. This is what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" and means that disturbing one particle will automatically affect its partner, even if they're miles apart. This entanglement would allow aliens -- or even humans -- to send encrypted signals between entangled partners, or nodes. Now, scale that single computer system up to a network potentially spanning the entire cosmos.
Aliens aside, Rudolph says that his paper demonstrates that building a photon-based quantum internet here on Earth might be "much easier than we expected." As for the aliens, even if they were using this kind of technology to transform waves of light into their own personal chat rooms, we'd have no way of knowing, says Rudolph. And even if we could pick out these light patterns in the sky, we still wouldn't be able to listen in. This is due to the incredibly shy nature of quantum particles -- any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying.
yeah, nah (Score:4, Informative)
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Are you a quantum physics professor?
Go back to Reddit soyfriend
Re:yeah, nah (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. People have this habit of taking something Einstein has said, and making it an endorsement of some theory.
But!! What Einstein was doing was calling out the theory as being total BS. "Spooky action at a distance" is not something Einstein would support.
The same goes for Schroedinger's cat. These metaphors were created to prove that the theory, or at least its interpretation, is wrong. Often the maths of the theory is correct, but the description or interpretation is wrong. Maths is easy to disprove, interpretation can be tricky to prove wrong, so these myths persist.
Einstein also said "God does not play dice", and this was taken as him not believing in Quantum Mechanics at all, but actually he was annoyed by the metaphors it uses and the interpretations of the maths.
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Metaphors don't prove or disprove anything...
Re: yeah, nah (Score:2)
You are right, I used the wrong word. Thought experiment is what they are. But because the interpretations are often not falsifiable, you could call them metaphors and your comment would be even more useful.
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I do agree with what you wrote, but just because an interpretation gives something that seems "intuitively wrong" (i.e. to do with what many people feel should happen) does not mean that that the interpretation is wrong (i.e. to do with what happens). Sometimes, it is something inherent in what we think of as "intuitively wrong". Like, many of Zeno's paradoxes are in essence about sums of infinitely many positive (real) terms that can be finite. Even nowadays, to many people this (i.e. that sums of infinite
Re: yeah, nah (Score:2)
Re: yeah, nah (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's math not maths [blogspot.com]. "Maths" is based on faulty grammar and only came into use around 1911. Sorry British people, you're wrong.
Re:yeah, nah (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's being suggested that FTL comms is happening - but the hypothesis is untestable anyway because good encryption is indistinguishable from random noise, so there's no way to tell whether any of those photons are just random noise or communication signals we couldn't decrypt anyway.
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Since the hypothesis is not testable, it's as scientifically useful as string theory, or the theory that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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Since the hypothesis is not testable, it's as scientifically useful as string theory, or the theory that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It is dangerous to mock His Noodly Appendage.
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So all this adds up to a giant nothingburger.
Why is this even a headline?
Re: yeah, nah (Score:2)
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It's a little more complicated than that. As I understand it, you can entangle photon streams A and B, and send them to equidistant stars StarA and StarB. 5 years later, comm centers on StarA can manipulate photon A so that photon B behaves in a certain way at the same time, instantly "communicating" the change across the vast intervening distance.
*However*, at StarB, the stream of manipulated photon states still looks like random noise, unless you also have a secondary "classical" communication channel f
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why not just say any encryption on radio waves then or whatever.
wouldn't this be sending and catching specific photons? like good luck with that.
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Encryption can be broken. Using optimally tuned entangled photons from an equidistant source, the message can be transmitted instantly between endpoints, without ever crossing the intervening space.
You still need to send a "decoder ring" of non-FTL classical information before the message can be read, and that "decoder ring" can be intercepted, but the "decoder ring" can be true random noise with no information content. Useless without the point-to-point entangled message received years earlier.
Re:yeah, nah (Score:5, Funny)
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You can't use entangled particles for ftl communication. Next.
Was my first thought too. This guy is proposing that Quantum Theory is fundamentally wrong and he does so with idle speculation. Good for getting a talk with the press, not very professional otherwise.
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No, he's not. He makes no suggestion of FTL communication.
The viability of sending instantaneous point-to-point "quantum messages" is well established in the lab, the catch is that they look identical to random noise until combined with a "decoder ring signal" that has to be sent via conventional non-FTL channels.
Importantly though, that conventional signal is itself just a recording of true random noise, with zero information content. And since the message never crosses the intervening space, you've got
Re:yeah, nah (Score:4, Informative)
Re: yeah, nah (Score:5, Funny)
;Hey this is Bob, from maintenance, Seti Epsilon Six, third shift. To whom it may concern; this letter is to inform you that your great great great great great grandmother passed away 427 years ago. Sorry for your loss. So have you guys discovered freezer pops yet? They rockâ.
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Sure, assuming FTL is impossible, doing anything across interstellar distances is slow. But even without any nearby aliens, there's a good chance that any mature spacefaring civilization will at least settle the nearest stars (we've got 11 stars within 10 light years, and 133 within 50). A few years of communication lag is inevitable, but valuable cultural and technological information could still be exchanged, and there may well be factional alliances that want to maintain secrecy from each other.
Bring i
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You can.
You only have to move one part of the entangled pairs by ordinary means to the point of the receiver.
Next?
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I'm sorry, who brought up FTL? Because it seems like it was you. This seems to be about sending messages at light speed, using photons. Most photons send messages at light speed! Arguably all of them!
Whatever he is smoking/snorting must be expensive (Score:3, Insightful)
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yeah and (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh you are from Terserus? I though you were all extinct.
There's a Dr Who episode about your planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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They're gonna be disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
When they unentangle the communications and discover it's:
1) Interstellar Keno numbers
2) Alien porn
3) Sports News
4) Interstellar QVC
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Likely just regular exchanges of information.
We have various levels of social evolution, so would they. So home life, local community life, greater community life, and becoming less as it goes further.
Rather than our current unreality social media a toxic mix of lies and psychological abuse and psychopathic capitalism. Likely electronics drifts to being more in the background, not the foreground, the foreground more for social interactions supported by electronics at a social distance.
Communications of la
Re: They're gonna be disappointed (Score:2)
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I'm the Prince of the Nigeria Nebula. I need to transfer funds...
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2) We've already got that
3) Would be interesting only for a bit and we have sports already
4) Useful only if they deliver.
Isn't this just a detailed variant ... (Score:2)
... of the Bolzzman Brain Thought Experiment [wikipedia.org]? Sort of?
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Brains popping into existence due to quantum fluctuations, remember for every well-formed one, uncounted malformed ones writhing in agony will form, to say nothing of screaming nerve pain inputs.
It never occurred to me the entire observable universe of matter and energy could itself be an unheard of statistical anomaly of quantum fluctuations. Not just the occasional particle but 10^^80 of 'em.
But hey, a googleplex to the googleplex to the googleplex years is a long time amd a universe in heat death has pl
N00b questions here (Score:2)
"any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying"
Wait, doesn't that include the intended receiver? Isn't the receiver (by quantum rules) an outside party as well? I thought that altering their state was necessary (collapsing the waveform) in order to get the information from the entangled particles. The key is that if you ARE the intended receiver and see that the waveform has been collapsed, you'll know that someone is intercepting (
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Actually, the whole idea only makes sense if this is FTL. Otherwise it will be so slow that no "encryption" is necessary. At least not against us.
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I think they're wrong. Here's how. Say for example there's Marvin the Martian and he's 100 light years away from us. He transmits the message this time in clear text. The message is "I'm going to destroy earth for a hyperspace highway." Marvin's intended listener is his sister that is 50 light years away. Unknown to him Bugs Bunny also has a receiver that's exactly 50 light years away and also 50 light years away from Marvin's sister. They both receive the message at exactly the same time. It's impossible f
co-founder of ... (Score:2)
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Bit id does make him somebody that wants to appear in the press so he can push his company. Things become clearer...
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QuantumQuantumQuantum (Score:1)
BeauHD's got a Quantum bone to chew... What's the next Quantum topic's going to be?
I have some Quantum HDD's from the olden days, think they may contain alien messages?
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Well, Beau is clearly a professional quantum mechanic.
I wonder what color overalls they wear...
Do the aliens have money? (Score:2)
We could DDoS them for a ransom. They can probably mine bitcoin faster than anyone here.
DDoS and ping overflow (Score:1)
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Before or after she has Captain America's baby?
https://screenrant.com/chris-e... [screenrant.com]
I'm not one to keep up with celebrity gossip, but that one just struck me as funny.
The quantum internet (Score:2)
any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying.
So, basically, triggering 401 or 403 codes DoSes the entire infrastructure.
No wonder we can't find any evidence of alien communications - we keep looking!
Quantum fluff piece (Score:2)
Binspam for PsiQuantum
Nothing new here.
Customer Service Complaints (Score:2)
This is due to the incredibly shy nature of quantum particles -- any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state and destroy the information they were carrying.
I'm guessing the alien's ISP will be getting a lot of complaints about poor service when we try to decode it and destroy the information being carried. At least, if we're lucky, we'll learn about planned road construction in our solar system far enough in advance.
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Wait, so London really was stolen by bats? (Score:2)
Or maybe Terry just has good taste in games?
I [fallenlondon.com] can't fault him for that.
Of course it can be done. It has been done!! (Score:5, Interesting)
A few decades later the Huns attacked the Empire. They used polished metal mirrors to communicate orders to troops on two hill sides to have a coordinated pincer attack on the Wall from two sides of a ridge in the mountain. These polished mirrors shone brightly as if the Sun has broken up and its pieces had fallen on the mountain. And staccato pulses of the Sunlight looked as if the pieces of the Sun were trembling in pain. And the Huns attacked and overwhelmed the walls.
Sun is a star, Sunlight is starlight, it has been used for communications, and to the Chinese, the Huns were the aliens.
Re:Of course it can be done. It has been done!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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"As for the astrologers, its probably fiction." I could tell that because of the grammar error: "thou had built" should be "thou hadst built". Or else the Chinese astrologers didn't speak very good English.
Indeed (Score:1)
I'm sure in the past lots of shamans were trying to decipher the smoke-signals from forest fires.
Just stop. Entanglement is not communication... (Score:2)
that disturbing one particle will automatically affect its partner, even if they're miles apart
This stupid description makes it sound like you can change the state of one and the other will follow.. It doesn't work that way because if it did you would be able to communicate with just these two particles instantly over any distance whenever you wanted. And just use two s
Or not. (Score:2)
Or not. Probably not.
It doesn't matter to me (Score:2)
I live in Seattle and have AT&T service. So either seeing the stars or getting connectivity is purely theoretical.
Or not. (Score:2)
Three body problem has a great story about this (Score:2)
If anyone hasn't read the amazing Three body problem series yet, you should. A great story about using quantum entanglement for action at a distance.
malware (Score:2)
"any attempt to observe them by an outside party would alter their state": Great, a way for us to introduce malware into the aliens' network!
And when the message is decripted (Score:2)
The Starship Zorlax is ordered to rendezvous with the freighter Graglon. There a Monkoliant agent will give you the instructions for your mission.
So if we were to decrypt (and understand) any message from the stars, it would most likely be messages like this as well boring routine stuff. The really exciting fleet comms would be done face to face, not through open space channels.
What I get from this article (Score:2)
Is that ET is modulating star light into a data signal before it passes back out through the apparatus that does the modulation.
Cruder methods like this have been done by humans for centuries, often using reflected sunlight to send morse-type signals across vast distances.
Re: What I get from this article (Score:2)
Think parabolic reflector and shutter, much like the morse lamps used on ocean going vessels.