Physicists Create New Form of Light

Megalith

Megalith

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MIT and Harvard University researchers have figured out a way to make photons interact with one another, resulting in “a completely new kind of photonic matter.” Normally, photons just pass each other by, but they can apparently bind together under certain conditions. This could be a potential step toward quantum computation.

“Photons can travel very fast over long distances, and people have been using light to transmit information, such as in optical fibers,” Vuletic says. “If photons can influence one another, then if you can entangle these photons, and we’ve done that, you can use them to distribute quantum information in an interesting and useful way.”
 
So much of the cool shit we discover requires cryogenic temperatures., which sucks because it will forever keep the tech out of reach for the consumer. That's why we'll never have desktop quantum computers.
 
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Smashing Young Man said:
So much of the cool shit we discover requires cryogenic temperatures., which sucks because it will forever keep the tech out of reach for the consumer. That's why we'll never have desktop quantum computers.
Click to expand...

It's not going to change anything for a desktop soon.
“If photons can influence one another, then if you can entangle these photons, and we’ve done that, you can use them to distribute quantum information in an interesting and useful way.”

It will lead to FTL communication.
Quantum entanglement would mean if we have someone on Mars, we could talk to them instantaneously with no lag.
It could also lead to a lag free, limitless internet speed globally.

But yeah that kinda kills any joy for desktop users for the foreseeable future unless your house is around 2.7 Kelvin.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Closer and closer to getting my holodeck setup with girls to bang!
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Indeed. This is what we all want in the end. I've thought about civilization being a product of sexual selection, that men compete for access to women, and that drives a great deal of creativity and productivity. In the end we are animals, we want nice food and sex.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
So much of the cool shit we discover requires cryogenic temperatures., which sucks because it will forever keep the tech out of reach for the consumer. That's why we'll never have desktop quantum computers.
Click to expand...
This is why we need to be trying to make metallic hydrogen. Room temperature superconductors FTW.
 
And don't forget it will make DEATH RAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Seems like every new scientific finding just has to have a mention of quantum this or that in it, otherwise they're worried it might not count, jeez.
 
griff30 said:
It's not going to change anything for a desktop soon.
“If photons can influence one another, then if you can entangle these photons, and we’ve done that, you can use them to distribute quantum information in an interesting and useful way.”

It will lead to FTL communication.
Quantum entanglement would mean if we have someone on Mars, we could talk to them instantaneously with no lag.
It could also lead to a lag free, limitless internet speed globally.

But yeah that kinda kills any joy for desktop users for the foreseeable future unless your house is around 2.7 Kelvin.
Click to expand...

From the MIT article:

While photons normally have no mass and travel at 300,000 kilometers per second (the speed of light), the researchers found that the bound photons actually acquired a fraction of an electron’s mass. These newly weighed-down light particles were also relatively sluggish, traveling about 100,000 times slower than normal noninteracting photons.
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I think actually has the opposite effect according to their information.
 
Stuff like this always makes a good example of "science still doesn't know shit".

When I think of stuff like FTL travel, alien tech, or things like time travel and alllllllll the scientists and physicists and quantum know-it-all's that scream "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" we then find stuff like this that could, potentially, change the entire way things can be done.

I don't know...I just think it's funny how with all that we DON'T know there's still so many people that are CERTAIN that this or that is impossible and can't be done when, we don't even know what's possible yet ourselves.

Sure, based on what we know to exist and how things work these things might be impossible (probably...who really knows?) but that says nothing of the elements WE could create or what happens to certain elements under certain conditions that only WE can manufacture.
 
bman212121 said:
From the MIT article:



I think actually has the opposite effect according to their information.
Click to expand...
No they talked specifically that it is true "quantum entanglement"
Do you even quantum?
Quantum entanglement was Einstein's "spooky" action at a distance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance#Einstein

"According to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, instantaneous action at a distance was seen to violate the relativistic upper limit on speed of propagation of information. If one of the interacting objects were to suddenly be displaced from its position, the other object would feel its influence instantaneously, meaning information had been transmitted faster than the speed of light."
 
griff30 said:
No they talked specifically that it is true "quantum entanglement"
Do you even quantum?
Quantum entanglement was Einstein's "spooky" action at a distance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance#Einstein

"According to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, instantaneous action at a distance was seen to violate the relativistic upper limit on speed of propagation of information. If one of the interacting objects were to suddenly be displaced from its position, the other object would feel its influence instantaneously, meaning information had been transmitted faster than the speed of light."
Click to expand...
"Information" maybe be transmitted FTL, but that "information" is simply randomized states and hence really not information, and hence nothing is being transmitted FTL.

One thing many don't understand, you can't force a particle to a particular state and keep it entangled with another particle, it simply does not work that way. When you make a measurement of a particle it will be seen in either of 2 states yes, but you don't get to choose which state that is, there is a random chance it can be spin up or down (or whatever quantum number/polarization you're looking at), and yes the other particle will mimic the opposite of that state, but again it'll be randomized because the first is randomized. Now you might be thinking "well I don't need to know what state it's in just do like Morris code and the fact that the state changes shows information!" but that won't work either because you can't just observe the particle and see it changing states, that act of observation is the measurement and that will force a state, and you can only do that once because the observation isn't physically doing anything to the particle except seeing which state it is in, and hence it's "twin" at some other location.

IMO, the easiest way to think about it is less about the quantum "random"/"every state possible" idea, and more about fixed states, if you make a pair of particles one will be +1 the other has to be -1, and that is fixed, you can use the quantum interpretion or a standard "sane" interpretation of what happens. Now just for shits and giggles lets pretend these particles are in a box, so you don't actually know what state they're in, now we can introduce the idea of a quantum view, then you peek at one, and whammo the other is the exact opposite. Now it's not the opposite because you peeked, i.e. the quantum view, it's opposite because it HAS TO BE THE OPPOSITE. There simply was some unknown value of it. The "meta-physics math" (tongue in cheek) about every state possible until you observe it idea just serves to complicate things, and make you think that some information is in fact being sent over distances, when the reality is the particle had some fixed value that we thought was in fact a randomized value all because we didn't know which box had which photon so that 50/50 chance translated to "both states at once"
 
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