• CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    8 months ago

    TIL I had misunderstood quantum entanglement. Which begs the question, what is point of it if a particle doesn’t reflect the changes made on another particle? I thought that was what made the whole concept worthwhile… 🤔

    • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      From the applications section of the Wikipedia article on quantum entanglement:

      Entanglement has many applications in quantum information theory. With the aid of entanglement, otherwise impossible tasks may be achieved.

      Among the best-known applications of entanglement are superdense coding and quantum teleportation.[85]

      Most researchers believe that entanglement is necessary to realize quantum computing (although this is disputed by some).[86]

      Entanglement is used in some protocols of quantum cryptography,[87][88] but to prove the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) under standard assumptions does not require entanglement.[89] However, the device independent security of QKD is shown exploiting entanglement between the communication partners.[90]

      A lot of Sci Fi and other popular media likes to misconstrue quantum entanglement as allowing for faster than light communication so that they can have faster than light communication in their story, often for narrative purposes to make their galaxy spanning epic possible on a human time scale. But as far as we know, faster than light communication is impossible. It doesn’t mean quantum entanglement is useless or not an important scientific finding though.