Physicists describe method to observe timelike entanglement

Some researchers have proposed a multidimensional time (as 'hidden variables') model to explain the behavior of entangled particles. In that context, 'time-like' would be qualified as that aspect of time we perceive as duration.

A: I've read a different article about this experiment. Both have extremely poor descriptions as to how this experiment was carried out.

B: The timing factor as explained in the article, having an exact equal amount of time between detector 1 to t=0 and from t=0 to detector 2, that sounds like a "wave" like effect is happening with the particle.

Can anyone direct me to an article on this subject that has a more thorough explanation that is still meant for the lay person?

They should do the experiment, instead of just theorizing.

Is this article implying faster-than-time somewhat analogous to faster-than-light theories?

Is this article implying faster-than-time somewhat analogous to faster-than-light theories?

It's implying exactly what it says; "teleportation in time."

The teleportation in Star Trek, for example, is the sending of information. You copy info of the state, position, type, etc of every particle in a person's body, send that info somewhere else, and the distant end constructs a new body with that info while the source end destroys the original body (so there is no cloning).

This article describes the same concept, except instead of teleportation like in Star Trek, the particle (or many particles i.e. person) is sent forward in time.

This article describes a method of creating a time machine, except you aren't moving matter, just information.

Awesome!

A: I've read a different article about this experiment. Both have extremely poor descriptions as to how this experiment was carried out.

B: The timing factor as explained in the article, having an exact equal amount of time between detector 1 to t=0 and from t=0 to detector 2, that sounds like a "wave" like effect is happening with the particle.

Can anyone direct me to an article on this subject that has a more thorough explanation that is still meant for the lay person?

No, these entanglement articles are written to confuse. They are mostly double talk with almost no subsense in them.

To everyone out there,

This article is WAY over laymen's heads.

Go look at the paper. Zenmaster, good on you mate, but for most of us, ???

There is a reason the articles have "extremely poor descriptions". Spatial entanglement is tricky enough. This "teleportation in time" is nuts.

Measure a vacuum... wait... measure it again, entangled nothingness? Sorry, don't waste your breath unless you understand what "the
Minkowski vacuum of massless quantum fields" are.

Ultimately these researchers have postulated an "easier" test of entanglement to provide an observation to support a flavor of quantum field theory.

...which makes me think of the metaphysical questions of consciousness. If teleportation were possible (probably the most unlikely tech in sci-fi, if done classically), does your consciousness get copied? Could there be a way to make it continuous? Is it murder? If not, and the source body is not destroyed, do you experience both bodies' sensory input simultaneously?

Skultch: What application does sending information into the future have? Sounds limited to encryption technology, but maybe my mind isn't creative enough.

Question: don't be cynical. Entanglement is confusing and largely counterintuitive. It is all but impossible to make sense or subsense out of it. :)

Skultch: What application does sending information into the future have?

Sending info = teleportation of anything as long as you know how to and have enough energy to create "anything" from bulk, raw "matter." Yeah, pretty close to impossible.

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun and proposing something more than what this article implies. I'm a layperson, also. It's still fun to think about, though. :)

Entanglement is confusing and largely counterintuitive. It is all but impossible to make sense or subsense out of it. :)

I just watched a youtube video about QM that said, among other things, "entanglement = measurement." Or probably more like "measurement = entanglement."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

It got over my head about half way through, but it was still informative for me. The math was too much.

Skultch:

If not, and the source body is not destroyed, do you experience both bodies' sensory input simultaneously?

The source body is necessarily destroyed due to the 'no cloning' theorem.

Why not do this in reverse, sending information BACK in time to a point after the apparatus was created, but before the present.

If the entanglement is through time, would it not be possible to send a coded message to yourself hours or days earlier, warning of an impending terrorist attack?

Like "Seven Days", only you won't send back matter or a person, just "information".

Great Scott.

Skultch: What application does sending information into the future have? Sounds limited to encryption technology, but maybe my mind isn't creative enough.

I always liked the idea of using something like this to propagate ourselves into the far future. Like the Universe is expanding and we will die, but if the Universe is cyclical, perhaps we could project some quantum information into the future Universe, and thereby escape the destruction of our present Universe. Sure it's far off, but if humans, or our descendants, survive far enough into the future, the impending heat death of the universe will become of great concern, and they probably will try pretty desperately to find a way to survive it...

Space coordinates are not clearly defined. Absolute space coordinates? coordinates on the surface of the earth? Coordinates in the solar system? Is there a field effect that is involved? Is the space/time frame related to the space/time curvature of gravity? Is entanglement a basic time function where the entangled particles are connected at a single point in time (their common creation time) and what happens to one reverberates off the common time point in the past and affects the other particle (seemingly instatnaneously)?

Many questions few answers.

QC:
How about building the machine and then waiting for yourself or your descendants to send back instructions for a fusion power plant or other far off scientific discoveries. This cant possibly work... If it does then it will be the most important discovery in the history or quite possibly future of humanity.
Again, that can't be how it would work...
From what I understood entanglement couldn't be used to transfer information..

Setting up a verifiable spacial orientation is bound to be difficult. The detectors are either located on the Earth (which is constantly moving) that is changing its location uniquely each second and will never being in exactly the same location ever again: or they are in empty space which not only has not fixed markers but is also expanding in an accelerating fashion creating new points of existence that hadn't existed the nanosecond before.

As a lay person, I think I got laid way too many times to understand this stuff:)

Here is an old link that I think does a good job
of describing entanglement.

Search for colossal storage and click on the

entangled particle encrypted communication button

@Skultch:

Quote: This article describes a method of creating a time machine, except you aren't moving matter, just information.

Answer: Information can be converted to energy. Particles and waves are made of pure energy.

@Pyle:

Quote: This teleportation in time is nuts.

Answer: Not if time or light is teleported in and out of other dimensions.

@Skultch:

Quote: If teleportation were possible, does your consciousness get copied? Could there be a way to make it continuous? Is it murder? Do you experience both bodies' sensory input simultaneously?

Answer: That is a surefire way to become immortal. Store the information in memory banks for future use. If one destroys the old copy but it is replaced with a new copy then it is not murder. The bodies would be entangled and could possibly share sensory inputs.

The source body is necessarily destroyed due to the 'no cloning' theorem.

I am going to have to read up on the theorem, but I thought it applies to identical clones being created in the same location as the original. Two identical particles cannot occupy the same place in space at the same time.

If the entanglement is through time, would it not be possible to send a coded message to yourself hours or days earlier, warning of an impending terrorist attack?

I thought the Grandfather Paradox theorem would prevent that from ever being possible?

I thought the Grandfather Paradox theorem would prevent that from ever being possible?

I don't believe that's a "theorem", just a popular example of a paradox. There /are/ theoretical solutions to time travel paradoxes, such as Hawking's "time censor"... no matter how hard you try to change the past, you'll always fail. If you try to shoot your grandfather, your gun may jam, or you'll miss the bus to get there, or you accidentally die before you get there, or you just choose not to. Other solutions involve parallel universes, where you don't really go back in time, you jump sideways to an exact duplicate of the universe you left, but it's a little younger. There, you could do anything you want, including killing the duplicate of your grandfather. The version of you in the future of that universe would not be born, but that's not really "you" nor did you really go back in time, so not really a paradox.

I am going to have to read up on the theorem, but I thought it applies to identical clones being created in the same location as the original. Two identical particles cannot occupy the same place in space at the same time.

It essentially means that you can't copy ("clone") the quantum state of one particle to another. Any attempt that successfully moves the quantum state to another particle will always end up destroying the quantum state of the original.

Two identical particles cannot occupy the same place in space at the same time.

That's a quote from the movie "Time Cop"... The time travel movie with the WORST logic ever! :)

I agree with winthrom' questions. If theory is true, however, it implies some answers. E.g. some field effect must be involved. This should preserve persistence of space coordinates during 15 minutes in both time directions. Gravity looks to me too weak for that role.
Besides, I don't think it has anything to do with classical teleportation of matter. Like it is clearly stated in the article, quantum state is moved to the future. So, it rather refers to the information.
I also can't see any reason why it couldn't be moved backward - to the past. There certainly should be one. Otherwise, it could really be the most important discovery in the history, like sirachman says.

Two identical particles cannot occupy the same place in space at the same time.

They're not the same particle(s). Only for the first instant are they identical in charge, spin, momentum, etc, but NOT space.

I don't know what theorem kristian is talking about. It seems this article describes something that MUST also include transport in space, but time being the more significant, or new, part of the theory.

It essentially means that you can't copy (clone) the quantum state of one particle to another. Any attempt that successfully moves the quantum state to another particle will always end up destroying the quantum state of the original.

You provided the answer to that question in your previous blog. The way to do it is to use another dimension (parallel universe) to copy the quantum states. That technique will not interfere with the other dimension. It is another surefire way to become immortal. Long live Robert De Niro.

That's a quote from the movie "Time Cop"... The time travel movie with the WORST logic ever! :)

If there is a will, then there is a way, except for time travel into the past to change the future of real time of the same dimension.

They're not the same particle(s). Only for the first instant are they identical in charge, spin, momentum, etc, but NOT space. I don't know what theorem kristian is talking about.

It was not Kristian who said it, it was me. I heard it somewhere. Maybe in WikiPedia. The statement was not to mean very much.

"physicists S. Jay Olson and Timothy C. Ralph from the University of Queensland have shown that it's possible to create entanglement between regions of spacetime that are separated in time but not in space."

How can they not be separated in space? If you are on the surface of the earth, there is not such thing as occupying the same space continuously, right? Even if you were in outer space, how could you know really whether you are ever occupying the same space continuously? Not to mention the inherent expansion of space, if you happen to believe in that.

@TM:
Just cause I've the time, you took my quote out of the intended context. My statement "'teleportation in time' is nuts" was meant to say it was very difficult to understand. Regarding its feasibility...

I have the same basic feeling on this entanglement as on spatial. If you make the same "carefully selected measurement" on two entangled particles that have been separated spatially you get the same result. I am not convinced this means there is communication rather than the two particles being "the same". The theory states the measurement of one changes the state of the other, but...

So with the time separation, I am of the same unsure opinion that there is a sameness we are witnessing that might not be the "teleportation in time" of the measurement information.

Measurement of the theorized resultant thermalization will do much to silence my doubts.

What are the implications of this? It isn't clear to me what this means for causality, basic physics principles, etc.

@Pyle:

I think we all are throwing mud at the wall to see if it sticks. This article is a difficult subject we all are trying to understand, otherwise we would not be here talking about it.

Physicists S. Jay Olson and Timothy C. Ralph from the University of Queensland have shown that it's possible to create entanglement between regions of spacetime that are separated in time but not in space. How can they not be separated in space? If you are on the surface of the earth, there is not such thing as occupying the same space continuously, right? Even if you were in outer space, how could you know really whether you are ever occupying the same space continuously?

The first thing that comes to mind are different dimensions (parallel universes).

How can they not be separated in space? If you are on the surface of the earth, there is not such thing as occupying the same space continuously, right? Even if you were in outer space, how could you know really whether you are ever occupying the same space continuously? Not to mention the inherent expansion of space, if you happen to believe in that.

Both in Netownian physics and Einstein's physics, for any one object, it is possible to construct a reference frame in which that particular object can be considered at rest.

Einstein proposes that there is no "absolute" rest, but there is "relative" rest with respect to some reference frame, except possibly when dealing with something really exotic like a black hole.

one of the most basic postulates of Relativity is that every observer has an equal right to consider themself at rest in their own reference frame.

Quantum Conundrum: If you read the article carefully, particularly this bit-

The physicists emphasized that there is an important symmetric time correlation that must be followed in order for the procedure to work. If the qubit is teleported at t=0, then the first detector must have operated the same amount of time before t=0 as the second detector operated after t=0. For example, if t=0 is 12:00, and the first detector operated at 11:45, then the second detector must wait to operate at exactly 12:15

Then I think you can see what is wrong with your scheme. The time teleportation requires action at a time T=0 exactly halfway between the past and the future to which you are teleporting the information. Presumably the same would be required to teleport information from the future time back to the past, meaning that you would have to do the copying earlier in time (between the current time and the past time). So to accomplish your scheme you would need to time travel anyway

Physicists S. Jay Olson and Timothy C. Ralph from the University of Queensland have shown that it's possible to create entanglement between regions of spacetime that are separated in time but not in space. How can they not be separated in space? If you are on the surface of the earth, there is not such thing as occupying the same space continuously, right? Even if you were in outer space, how could you know really whether you are ever occupying the same space continuously?

The first thing that comes to mind are different dimensions (parallel universes).

Maybe they use CM frame. Then you can talk about something being in the same place, the two regions keep a fixed distance between their center of mass or between them. I'm pretty sure they are not refering to other systems of coordinates, as there is no such thing as an universal/absolute coordinate system.

As with 'normal' entanglement, you cannot use this to send information. This is why even the researchers don't know how this might be used in a practical way.

Something doesn't make sense for me here.
Space position is relative, lets assume sensor of the past is an X,Y,Z = 0,0,0 in an axis created in your room.
Sensor of the future is moved to the same position, well, it is in the same Relative position, but wait!, earth has rotated, made translation, solar system moved, milky way too, the whole universe is expanding, so how can you put the 2 sensors at the very same position? and in relation to what?

This is without taking into account the entanglement yet.

Could this also be viewed as following the same procedure to obtain the same results with two different detectors? How can it be said that the qubit observed after running the first detector for 15 minutes is entangled with the one viewed in detector 2 after it is running for 15 minutes? Or have I missed the proven relationship between the two?

What happens if the second detector is run for 15 minutes the next day, is it possible to view the same qubit? or is this just an effect of the experiment?

As with 'normal' entanglement, you cannot use this to send information. This is why even the researchers don't know how this might be used in a practical way.

You are far too uninformed about this subject to be posting any sort of comment like you did. The essence of entanglement is that INFORMATION is transferred through space without regard to time. Although reading information about one particle inherently changes the other, the fact remains that there is information being conveyed through the unaffected particle. Learn what you speak before posting...

You are far too uninformed about this subject to be posting any sort of comment like you did.

Is that so, professor?

The essence of entanglement is that INFORMATION is transferred through space without regard to time.

Wrong. You can't send send information through entanglement, only correlations. This confusion likely arises because there are communications protocols which use entanglement, but not as an information channel.

Learn what you speak before posting...

Thanks professor, back at ya.

Like the Universe is expanding and we will die, but if the Universe is cyclical, perhaps we could project some quantum information into the future Universe, and thereby escape the destruction of our present Universe.

The more interesting question is how many times has this already happened? Plus, if beings from a prior universe were able to do something like this, potentially they could have also put some kind of pattern in the CMB radiation. That's testable, baby.

Like the Universe is expanding and we will die, but if the Universe is cyclical, perhaps we could project some quantum information into the future Universe, and thereby escape the destruction of our present Universe.

It would be better to project our quantum information into another universe as a way of avoiding the singularity issue.

The whole concept of time is riddled with contradictions. A number of physicists have proposed time is an illusion, that it really does not exist at all. To my way of thinking, if time can be entangled, maybe time "is" entangled and consequently there is no need to consider the "present" as real. After all, Plank's time suggests all information is transported with symmetric duration.

The whole concept of time is riddled with contradictions. A number of physicists have proposed time is an illusion, that it really does not exist at all. To my way of thinking, if time can be entangled, maybe time "is" entangled and consequently there is no need to consider the "present" as real. After all, Plank's time suggests all information is transported with symmetric duration.

one problem people have to remember is that no theory is perfect.

Any theory is merely an approximate mathematical description, rule, or explaination for what is observed. Even if you had a "perfect" theory, it cannot give perfect predictions because that would require perfect input parameters, which is not possible to obtain by a long shot.

You'd need a detector for every particle or wave in the universe, and even then uncertainty principle would make it impossible to get perfect data. Less than perfect input data gives less than perfect output data, even in a perfect model...

Whittaker's hidden variable theory

I thought that one of the bedrocks of QM is that you can't predict the exact future state of the thing being measured based on what you already know about it? But isn't that what they are doing in this experiment? Or do they get a free hall pass because of some trickery of not learning anything until they get the past and present/future detectors together in the present/future? I fear I am ill equipped for this trip down the rabbit hole.

I have posted about the possibility of the multidimensionality of time. This property of the universe would provide easy access to time travel and information exchange simply by the usage of multiple detectors, etc.; one for each 'logical state' inasmuch as we already perceive the time separation of logical ascii characters one from another. So sending ascii code, for example simply uses detector/entanglers in 8 bit nhybbles of 16 bit bytes. The Pauli principle of no two quantum objects in quantum chromodymanic spacetime can share the same set of coordinates is preserved; just the new coordinate system contains more coordinates, and that the exclusion now includes a temporal/spatial trajectory, a skew line in space/time or the universe containing our past to our present departure. Thomas Wolfe is right! We cannot go 'home again', but we DO have to admit to the infinity of mirrors of our quantum presents.

@Wulfgar:
What you described is exactly entanglement.

You can't predict the exact future state of a thing being measured, except in this theorized instance of entanglement.

Just as normally you can't know the current state of a particle unless you measure it, but you do know that the measurement of the other particle at a different location will match your own measurement of a different particle, if the particles are entangled.

Mathematicians stop at: can not prove or disprove.
Physicists stop at: nothing.

A compliment? Only time will tell. :)

According to the formalism X4 = ict space is 4D and time is numerical order of material change i.e motion in a 4D space.
4D space is a direct information medium by EPR experiment and energy transfers at the Planck scale.

Mathematicians comfort Physicists all the time:

Onward! All long as you are consistent you are immune to our shortcomings! :)

Sending information into the future? I've obviously completely missed the point but I thought I did that with pen & paper on a daily basis no entanglement required. I assume information travelling in the opposite direction remains unlikely? In that case forgive me for yawning and dosing off again.

This article describes a method of creating a time machine, except you aren't moving matter, just information.

Not really. Even normal entanglement does not move information (you cannot use spatial entanglement to transmit useful information form A to B)

Neither does temporal entanglement allow for teleportation (of stuff or energy) as it requires that the two places of measurement be identical. That last part is tricky as everything in the universe is moving at a fair clip relative to most anything else. Finding the 'same place' at a future time could prove to be very hard.

Even if it would be useful for transmitting information: There's nothing new about it. Writing a book is 'transmitting information into the future'. Temporal entanglement would be the same.

What would be weird would be transmitting information into the past. But, as noted above, entanglement does not allow for the transmission of useful information.

In theory, does that mean that quantum computers can thus do calculations at an even faster rate if one atom is doing several calculations at once already, but now can travel in time to do more calculations that didn't even exist at the time it was calculating?

correlations. This confusion likely arises because there are communications protocols which use entanglement, but not as an information channel.

Thanks professor, back at ya.

Yes, perhaps I do not have the answers or knowledge encompassing the subject. It occurs to me that I should not have posted in the way that I did ... It still goes to reason that a lack of knowledge on the subject cannot be directed as having full knowledge of the subject. I am a computer scientist, and don't claim to have a godlike understanding of quantum mechanics.

...Olson said. When another detector then captures information on the state of the field in the future at the same spatial location...

And this "same spatial location" would be the same desktop at the lab, half an hour later? No wonder the guy isn't at the MIT.

@StandingBear:

To simplify your remarks in sci-fi language, multidimensional technology will enable the following:

Teleporters, replicators, immortality and bringing the dead back to life.

What concerns me about this is the following:

If the only way to observe quantum teleportation "through time" is to in fact observe it as quantum teleportation in space, then it becomes difficult to show proof that there was any tunneling in time.

[quote]The source body is necessarily destroyed due to the 'no cloning' theorem.[/quote]

Not sure of this theorum but I don't know if I buy it. See open individualism. This model fits well to me, makes me think of the first living cell (on our planet at least). It cloned itself and over time, mutated and now we are here.

Anyway, I believe there was a movie or show in which time travel came at the cost of the subject being dead on arrival and needing brought back to life. IMO this would make sense if it is at all possible, I personally believe the body would not contain life with no chance of it being jumped back to life unless we figured out a means to do so in the future.

"between regions of spacetime that are separated in time but not in space" is an oxymoron.

Time is a measurement of Space. Hence, the Speed of Light. This so-called separation of timelike and spacelike anything is to ignore measurement. And remember: Time waits for no one. To coordinate transfer of particles would entail unknown ability to pinpoint the receiver. What thought experiment "sent" the particle?

What would be weird would be transmitting information into the past. But, as noted above, entanglement does not allow for the transmission of useful information.

What about changing a measurement in the past by entanglement without transmitting information? A random change but a real change.

In theory, does that mean that quantum computers can thus do calculations at an even faster rate if one atom is doing several calculations at once already, but now can travel in time to do more calculations that didn't even exist at the time it was calculating?

If you had time travel, computers could theoretically be infinitely powerful.

Simply do calculations and send the results into the past over and over again until the problem is solved. Net elapsed time: zero.

I mentioned some time ago, I don't think you can actually send a signal into the past using the method as described. Let me reiterate:

The physicists emphasized that there is an important symmetric time correlation that must be followed in order for the procedure to work. If the qubit is teleported at t=0, then the first detector must have operated the same amount of time before t=0 as the second detector operated after t=0. For example, if t=0 is 12:00, and the first detector operated at 11:45, then the second detector must wait to operate at exactly 12:15

The time teleportation requires action at a time T=0 exactly halfway between the past and the future to which you are teleporting the information. Presumably the same would be required to teleport information from the future time back to the past, meaning that you would have to do the copying earlier in time (between the current time and the past time). So to accomplish this scheme you would need to time travel anyway.

This would be a great way to track our exact movements through space. Just compare location A to location B and thats how far we have moved in the given time frame. Thats not to include, however, anything that would affect time such as magnetic fields or unforseen time fluctuations (if they exist (if they do it could be alternate dimension collisions or something similar)).

The question is whether the space-time frame of reference is absolute for the observer in time and space or for the entire universe as a complete unit. Possibly it lies somewhere between. Location is relative. The motion of a point is dependent on the start and end positions within a frame of reference. My car goes 60 mph on the ground (earth's surface), much faster around it's axis, even faster around the sun, and even faster around the galaxy. Go figure.