Spooky Action at Non-Existance.

[Gravitron5000]

Physicists have managed to create a quantum link between photons that don't exist at the same time.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html?ref=hp

Are scientists trying to brake my brain on purpose, or is it just a happy side effect?

[mistformsquirrl]

*whoosh* That sound you hear is this concept going right over my head. <o.<> I'm fairly intelligent but sometimes yeah, I think scientists are just screwing with us lol

(Not really, but it's definitely the kind of thing that's beyond your typical layperson's understanding that for me it gets a big "WTH" and that's about it.)

[Grinner]

I don't think they are screwing with us so much as they (or the reporters) are simplifying information to point where it ceases to make sense. Or maybe they're actually screwing with us...

[Eldonauran]

I remain skeptical.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I can't even comprehend...

[Amidus Drexel]

Physicists have managed to create a quantum link between photons that don't exist at the same time.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html?ref=hp

Are scientists trying to brake my brain on purpose, or is it just a happy side effect?

I can't read the article through this link... :/

From what you've said, though, it sounds like another odd quirk of quantum mechanics... I'm not sure how you'd get two particles that don't exist at the same time to directly affect each other, though.

[Eldan]

I understand it this way.

You entangle particle one with particle two. Then entangle particle two with particle three. Particle one and three are now entagled without necessarily existing at the same time.

I may be totally wrong.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

With four particles, from how I understand, you entangle particles 1 and 2 and particles 3 and 4.

Then you do something with particles 2 and 3, not quite entangling, but something that equates them. Even though particle 1 and 4 never existed at the same time, particles 1 and 4 are now entangled, because each is entangled with particles that are equated.

Probably not how it actually works, but it makes sense. You can't do it with just 3, because entangling means that they're OPPOSING.

So if you entangle particle 1 with particle 2, that means that when particle 1 collapses vertically, particle 2 collapses horizontally. If you then entangle particle 2 with particle 3, when particle 2 collapses horizontally particle 3 collapses vertically. Particles 1 and 3 aren't entangled though, because they collapse in the SAME DIRECTION depending on how particle 2 is collapsed. Particle 4 which is entangled with particle 3 however, would be, because it collapses in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of particle 1.

So you need an even number of particles to create a chain of particles being entangled?
Or am I just confusing myself...

[Ravens_cry]

It does not help that our brains are literally not wired to think like this. The human brain was made for the African savannah, not tearing reality apart at its fundamental level. Yet, yet we do it. Even though it can feel like trying to squeeze a whole block of Jello down a straw, we do do it.
I think that is pretty awesome.

[SiuiS]

I can't read the article through this link... :/

From what you've said, though, it sounds like another odd quirk of quantum mechanics... I'm not sure how you'd get two particles that don't exist at the same time to directly affect each other, though.

Time as a nonlinear thing solves that right up.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Unless conservation was repealed then presumably everything still exists at all times in some form.

And this is merely saying you can have quantum entanglement across time ergo "time travel"

Which already made sense.

[Avilan the Grey]

So quantum entanglement communication went from "theoretically possible" to "Not possible" to "Theoretically possible" within a few years.

Only not at FTL speeds.

[Eldan]

There's no communication, the article actually says that. You can't manipulate what state the quantum falls in, just measure it so that it falls into one of two states.

Think of a computer. You can look at a bit to see if its a 0 or 1. But you can't tell the bit to be either 1 or 0, so there's no coherent message to be sent.

[Avilan the Grey]

There's no communication, the article actually says that. You can't manipulate what state the quantum falls in, just measure it so that it falls into one of two states.

Think of a computer. You can look at a bit to see if its a 0 or 1. But you can't tell the bit to be either 1 or 0, so there's no coherent message to be sent.

"So what's the advance good for? Physicists hope to create quantum networks in which protocols like entanglement swapping are used to create quantum links among distant users and transmit uncrackable (but slower than light) secret communications. The new result suggests that when sharing entangled pairs of photons on such a network, a user wouldn't have to wait to see what happens to the photons sent down the line before manipulating the ones kept behind, Eisenberg says. Zeilinger says the result might have other unexpected uses: "This sort of thing opens up people's minds and suddenly somebody has an idea to use it in quantum computing or something.""

The point is that Science do not consider the idea impossible anymore. They "just" have to figure out how.

[shawnhcorey]

Are scientists trying to brake my brain on purpose, or is it just a happy side effect?

Sanity is like virginity: life is a lot more fun after you lose it. :smallbiggrin:


I understand it this way.

You entangle particle one with particle two. Then entangle particle two with particle three. Particle one and three are now entagled without necessarily existing at the same time.

I may be totally wrong.

You're close. First they create a pair of entangle photons, #1 and #2. They measure #1 and destroy it. Next, they create two more entangled photons, #3 and #4. They then entangled #2 and #3. The result is #4 is entangled with #1 (which no longer exists), that is, measuring #4 gives the same results as if it were entangled with #1.

No time travel was involved. The entanglement moved from the pair #1 and #2 to the pair #2 and #3 and then to the pair #3 and #4, like passing a baton in a relay race. Nothing went back in time to change #1, so no time travel.

[Grinner]

So long story short, quantum entanglement has a transitive property?

[Sholos]

Time as a nonlinear thing solves that right up.

You mean as a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff?

[TuggyNE]

Warning: I'm not much good with quantum mechanics, but I do know a fair bit about information theory.


There's no communication, the article actually says that. You can't manipulate what state the quantum falls in, just measure it so that it falls into one of two states.

Think of a computer. You can look at a bit to see if its a 0 or 1. But you can't tell the bit to be either 1 or 0, so there's no coherent message to be sent.

That's the part I don't get, because it doesn't matter what state it ends up in. The only relevant thing is that it ended up one way or another: that's the signal right there! And if it is experimentally possible to discern this (which it quite blatantly is), it's at least theoretically possible to use this for practical purposes.

For example, consider maintaining some sort of pool of entangled particles. Even if checking to see whether a particle (or a statistically significant subset of particles, as the case may be) from the pool has been collapsed (and therefore that its corresponding bucket has been triggered to signal) destroys the particle, you can just keep some more around for later checking.

Of course, that might not be useful, since I have no idea how long you can keep those around or how compactly you can save them or whatever, or even how long it takes to verify this. But those are all, essentially, problems of engineering, not problems of theory. In theory, I don't get why you can't actually transmit information by the clunky means of triggering collapses.

Maybe all the explanations I've heard have just been lousy. Still, the fact that they got data out of the experiment means that you can get data out of this in practice, basically. Might be very slow, might be very expensive, might be very difficult, but you can do it if you really want to.

[Eldan]

Thing is, the only way you can tell that it has ended up in one of the two states is that you measure it. And if you measure it, it collapses into one of two states whether it was entangled or not. Every measurement collapses the particle. So, you can't just check to see whether they were collapsed. Doing so collapses them.

[TSGames]

Physicists have managed to create a quantum link between photons that don't exist at the same time.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-b.html?ref=hp

Are scientists trying to brake my brain on purpose, or is it just a happy side effect?

The whole thing is much less impressive than it sounds. They are simply describing what happened using an outdated model* of the photon. If they use a more up to date model, suddenly the results are no longer spooky or non existant.

*Think of a model like the indivisible atomic model of the universe that we held on to for so long, where the universe was basically a giant game of billiards with atoms bouncing into and off of each other over and over again. Then we discovered that there are actually particles inside the atoms called 'electrons', 'neutrons', and 'protons' and we updated our model and everything was neat for a while. The we discovered that those particles were actually made of more particles, an entire plethora of particles and we have to update our models again, and so on and so on, until we arrive at our current and very complicated models.

[warty goblin]

Thing is, the only way you can tell that it has ended up in one of the two states is that you measure it. And if you measure it, it collapses into one of two states whether it was entangled or not. Every measurement collapses the particle. So, you can't just check to see whether they were collapsed. Doing so collapses them.

And unless you can compare results with the other particle, you don't know if your particle was in a particular state because of a measurement done to the first, or because you measured it. Which is why you can't use entangled particles to move information around, because you have to already have the information to correctly interpret the state of your particle.

Or at least that's how it was explained to me.

[Anarion]

So long story short, quantum entanglement has a transitive property?

In the grand scheme of incorrect statements about quantum physics, I think this statement is less incorrect than many of the others. :smallwink:


And unless you can compare results with the other particle, you don't know if your particle was in a particular state because of a measurement done to the first, or because you measured it. Which is why you can't use entangled particles to move information around, because you have to already have the information to correctly interpret the state of your particle.

Or at least that's how it was explained to me.

Wikipedia has a pretty good thought experiment example, though it's inaccurate as are all physical comparisons to these phenomena.

Imagine that you had a coin, and you sliced it down the middle so that one half is heads and the other half is tails. You then seal each half in an envelope that nobody can see through, mix them up, and spread them really far apart. So far apart that light takes a while to get between them. Since they're mixed up, nobody knows which coin they have. Now, I open my envelope. Suddenly I know not only my own coin, but also what coin is present really far away, and I know it faster than light can get there.

This thing involves 4 particles in 4 distinct relationships (1 and 2 entangled, 3 and 4 entangled, 2 and 3 entangled later, 1 and 4 entangled via swap), but it's still fundamentally the same idea done with greater complexity.

[shawnhcorey]

Imagine that you had a coin, and you sliced it down the middle so that one half is heads and the other half is tails. You then seal each half in an envelope that nobody can see through, mix them up, and spread them really far apart. So far apart that light takes a while to get between them. Since they're mixed up, nobody knows which coin they have. Now, I open my envelope. Suddenly I know not only my own coin, but also what coin is present really far away, and I know it faster than light can get there.

That's the best description of entanglement I read. Unfortunately, you can't split a quantum in half. :smallfrown:

[Anarion]

That's the best description of entanglement I read. Unfortunately, you can't split a quantum in half. :smallfrown:

You kind of can, actually. Not really split in half, but one way they can entangle particles is by decaying them from the same bigger particle, so they're sort of like* pieces of a bigger thing that split into parts.


*They're not actually like this at all, explaining quantum mechanics without math is an ongoing effort in inaccurate language.

[shawnhcorey]

You kind of can, actually. Not really split in half, but one way they can entangle particles is by decaying them from the same bigger particle, so they're sort of like* pieces of a bigger thing that split into parts.

*They're not actually like this at all, explaining quantum mechanics without math is an ongoing effort in inaccurate language.

If you're talking about decay, then the sum of the energies¹ of the resulting quanta must equal the energy of the quantum you started with. If you're talk about collisions, then the sum of the results must equal the sum of those quanta you started with.

¹ For quantum with mass, their energy is calculated with E = mc²

[TuggyNE]

Thing is, the only way you can tell that it has ended up in one of the two states is that you measure it. And if you measure it, it collapses into one of two states whether it was entangled or not. Every measurement collapses the particle. So, you can't just check to see whether they were collapsed. Doing so collapses them.

Yeah, I figured that. However, that's clearly not insoluble, since the experiment solved it in order to actually report any results! So no, that's not an explanation, just a deferral.


And unless you can compare results with the other particle, you don't know if your particle was in a particular state because of a measurement done to the first, or because you measured it. Which is why you can't use entangled particles to move information around, because you have to already have the information to correctly interpret the state of your particle.

Hmm, now that does make more sense. Presumably it's impossible* to set up groups of particles such that you can make many/most/all of one half of them collapse in a particular way; if you could do that, the problem would be solved by simply determining that many/most/all of the other half were collapsed the other way.

*Or believed to be impossible, as the case may be.

[warty goblin]

Yeah, I figured that. However, that's clearly not insoluble, since the experiment solved it in order to actually report any results! So no, that's not an explanation, just a deferral.

In the experiment, they had all the particles. There's really nothing to solve in that case.




Hmm, now that does make more sense. Presumably it's impossible* to set up groups of particles such that you can make many/most/all of one half of them collapse in a particular way; if you could do that, the problem would be solved by simply determining that many/most/all of the other half were collapsed the other way.

*Or believed to be impossible, as the case may be.
It is genuinely impossible. I recall going through the probabilities for this a while back, and there's no actual information being transferred. Seems like there should be, but the probabilistic transfer of information is always a strange and tricky subject where intuition is your worst enemy.

Here's my probably wrong understanding. Suppose you and your buddy wanted to place an interstellar phonecall using entangled particles. Let's be optimistic and suppose you shipped out to Alpha Centauri with a big box of entangled particles, some of which will, when observed, spin up 90% of the time, and down 10%*. The other half have the opposite distribution. Using these, it should be trivial to tell your buddy back home about that gorgeous double sunrise. Just look at a bunch of your likely up bits to send a probabilistic 1, and a bunch of the down to send a probabilistic 0, and you've got a message that will in probability be fairly accurate, right?

Wrong. How does your friend know which particles to look at? He can't just look at them all, because he'll see the ups being 90% up, 10% down and the downs reading the other way whether you've collapsed yours or not. Even if he knows when to look - e.g. you will call August 12th at 11:00 AM Greenwich time, he still can't know which of the particles will read the way they read because you looked at them and collapsed their waveform, and which read whatever way they read because he looked at them and collapsed their waveform.





*I have no idea if this is a possible set of probabilities. I'm a statistician, not a quantum physicist.

[Yora]

I don't see why this would be a big deal?

First they create 1 = 2.
Second, they define 1 and destroy it.
Then they create 3 = 4.
Then they create 2 = 3.

Of course 4 would be the same as 1, even if 1 no longer exists. Because 1 = 2 and 2 still exists. What's strange about that?

[TuggyNE]

In the experiment, they had all the particles. There's really nothing to solve in that case.

More to the point, they could determine, after the fact, which way a given particle was collapsed into.


Here's my probably wrong understanding. Suppose you and your buddy wanted to place an interstellar phonecall using entangled particles. Let's be optimistic and suppose you shipped out to Alpha Centauri with a big box of entangled particles, some of which will, when observed, spin up 90% of the time, and down 10%*. The other half have the opposite distribution. Using these, it should be trivial to tell your buddy back home about that gorgeous double sunrise. Just look at a bunch of your likely up bits to send a probabilistic 1, and a bunch of the down to send a probabilistic 0, and you've got a message that will in probability be fairly accurate, right?

Wrong. How does your friend know which particles to look at? He can't just look at them all, because he'll see the ups being 90% up, 10% down and the downs reading the other way whether you've collapsed yours or not. Even if he knows when to look - e.g. you will call August 12th at 11:00 AM Greenwich time, he still can't know which of the particles will read the way they read because you looked at them and collapsed their waveform, and which read whatever way they read because he looked at them and collapsed their waveform.

Well, yeah, obviously. But, not knowing a lot about the fine details about quantum mechanics*, I was figuring the way you'd want to try this would be to take undifferentiated particles (i.e., without any particular likelihood of spinning up or down, or whatever) and then force them into the desired "mostly up" state (which would then indicate to your friend, by means of seeing a lot of down spins instead of up spins or no particular distribution, that you were actually sending a message). Of course, that's probably also impossible, which is where the problem comes in.


* I have a very patchy layman's understanding. :smallsigh:

[Eldan]

It is impossible. Because your friend would have to know when the message comes in. Otherwise, the first time he checks to see whether his box of quanta are entangled now, he destroyed any chance of receiving the message.

Which makes the entire thing pointless. The only message you could send with such a box as you describe would be "Now they are entangled". Which you would have to know before starting out.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I don't see why this would be a big deal?

First they create 1 = 2.
Second, they define 1 and destroy it.
Then they create 3 = 4.
Then they create 2 = 3.

Of course 4 would be the same as 1, even if 1 no longer exists. Because 1 = 2 and 2 still exists. What's strange about that?

Because it means that whatever they observe 4 being, THEY KNOW WHAT 1 WOULD HAVE BEEN even if it doesn't exist anymore. Caps for emphasis and excitement, not yelling. Sure, once you know it happens and how it happens, it seems obvious, but it's really not.

[shawnhcorey]

Because it means that whatever they observe 4 being, THEY KNOW WHAT 1 WOULD HAVE BEEN even if it doesn't exist anymore. Caps for emphasis and excitement, not yelling. Sure, once you know it happens and how it happens, it seems obvious, but it's really not.

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
-- Sherlock Holmes.

[Yora]

I have an object called A.
I make a copy of A called B.
I destroy A.
I make a copy of B called C.

There is nothing miraculous now that C is a copy of A, even though A stopped exiting before C was created.

And I fail to see how the described situations with photon polarization is anything differernt from that.

[shawnhcorey]

I have an object called A.
I make a copy of A called B.
I destroy A.
I make a copy of B called C.

There is nothing miraculous now that C is a copy of A, even though A stopped exiting before C was created.

And I fail to see how the described situations with photon polarization is anything differernt from that.

Because when they entangle the second photon with the third, the third takes on the polarization of the first. There is a 50-50 chance the polarization of the third would be the same as one. One would expect that when trying to entangle the second and the third, that it would fail half the time because the polarization of the third would be the opposite to what is needed. This isn't the case; the third always entangles with the second.

Think of it as the coin analogue. Take coin, split it in half and put each face in different envelopes. Throw one away. Take another coin and split it in half and put the halves in two more envelops. Take one of these envelopes and the other envelope from the first part and open them. The thing is that one of them is always and head and the other a tail. You never get two heads or two tails. That's the spooky part.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I have an object called A.
I make a copy of A called B.
I destroy A.
I make a copy of B called C.

There is nothing miraculous now that C is a copy of A, even though A stopped exiting before C was created.

And I fail to see how the described situations with photon polarization is anything differernt from that.

The difference is... I dunno, think of it as voodoo. By doing something to A you also do something to B very far away. They're discovering that you can also do voodoo to something that doesn't exist. Entanglement is not only a passive property like being a copy of something is.

[warty goblin]

Well, yeah, obviously. But, not knowing a lot about the fine details about quantum mechanics*, I was figuring the way you'd want to try this would be to take undifferentiated particles (i.e., without any particular likelihood of spinning up or down, or whatever) and then force them into the desired "mostly up" state (which would then indicate to your friend, by means of seeing a lot of down spins instead of up spins or no particular distribution, that you were actually sending a message). Of course, that's probably also impossible, which is where the problem comes in.


* I have a very patchy layman's understanding. :smallsigh:
If they have no particular probability of being up or down (so .5 probability of either state) you don't get to force them to be all one way or the other. Rather by construction they have .5 probability of being spin up, so about half of them will be spin up. That's like saying I've got a bunch of coins that have .5 probability of being heads. When I flip them I will *magically* force them to be all heads.


It is impossible. Because your friend would have to know when the message comes in. Otherwise, the first time he checks to see whether his box of quanta are entangled now, he destroyed any chance of receiving the message.

Which makes the entire thing pointless. The only message you could send with such a box as you describe would be "Now they are entangled". Which you would have to know before starting out.
The when problem is completely solvable. You just have to know ahead of time when to look; it's no more difficult than saying you'll call your buddy at 3:00 to see if they can make it to the movie.

The problem is that looking at the particles doesn't tell you anything. The probability of observing any particular configuration of particles is the same, regardless of whether your friend observed his first or not. When you look you can expect to see exactly the same distribution of states if your friend has sent you a message or not.

[BaronOfHell]

It's usually thought that FTL information has to be avoided in any sound theory, yet many examples of Relativity opens up this possibility, so I don't think it's absurd for other theories to have these possibilities as well.
E.g. Space itself is not thought to be limited by any speed limit, likewise it's thought that there exists masses heavy enough that it's possible to bend space to make FTL information possible. Likewise there's been theoretical sound suggestions for a warp drive, which will bend space appropriately to make a space ship travel to its destination faster than a particle travelling at light speed outside of this bend space, effectively making FTL information possible without violating Relativity. Finally Relativity does not in any way prevent particles to be faster than light speed, it only prevents non FTL particles to accelerate to the speed of light, just as well as it prevents FTL particles to deaccelerate to the speed of light.

I find the idea of the collapse itself as the way to send information to be a very cool thought. Thanks for sharing this great idea.


That's the best description of entanglement I read. Unfortunately, you can't split a quantum in half. :smallfrown:


I don't see why this would be a big deal?

First they create 1 = 2.
Second, they define 1 and destroy it.
Then they create 3 = 4.
Then they create 2 = 3.

Of course 4 would be the same as 1, even if 1 no longer exists. Because 1 = 2 and 2 still exists. What's strange about that?

The problem with the wiki example as well as the idea in the quote is that it, to me, assumes the state was an inbuilt property, always existing before any measurement.

This was long an interesting aspect of QM, was the state of the particle determined as the particle was created (like with the sliced coin example), or was the state first determined as the particle was measured?

Through clever use of the statistical difference between these two outcomes, it was possible to determine that the state was first generated at the point of measurements. In other words, when two particles are entangled, the properties does indeed settle instantaneous upon measuring.

[TuggyNE]

If they have no particular probability of being up or down (so .5 probability of either state) you don't get to force them to be all one way or the other. Rather by construction they have .5 probability of being spin up, so about half of them will be spin up. That's like saying I've got a bunch of coins that have .5 probability of being heads. When I flip them I will *magically* force them to be all heads.

Devil's advocate here: they actually did force a selection of particles to come up, essentially, as all heads, despite any previous tendency. Of course, they did it by entangling them with other particles that had had a known spin.

So the thing that's confusing is that all the pieces, individually, work: you actually can do everything except (apparently) combine them.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

hmmm, could you hypothetically send a message by entangling a whole bunch of particles, observe them, pick one that has the signal you want, and then entangle other particles with those particles? So you have a whole bunch of 1 and 2s? Or is the collapsing instantaneous, and you can't keep a constant collapsed state over prolonged observation.

My thought is, if you keep a quantum particle under prolonged observation, then can you entangle other particles with it an they'll collapse to a known state WHILE IT'S STILL UNDER OBSERVATION?

Something is telling me "no" because otherwise it would have been done already.

[TuggyNE]

hmmm, could you hypothetically send a message by entangling a whole bunch of particles, observe them, pick one that has the signal you want, and then entangle other particles with those particles? So you have a whole bunch of 1 and 2s? Or is the collapsing instantaneous, and you can't keep a constant collapsed state over prolonged observation.

My thought is, if you keep a quantum particle under prolonged observation, then can you entangle other particles with it an they'll collapse to a known state WHILE IT'S STILL UNDER OBSERVATION?

Something is telling me "no" because otherwise it would have been done already.

Don't take such a defeatist attitude! I can't help but think there might be some weird permutation that would allow for this.

Even though I am also suspicious, because this seems to be the sort of confusing issue that leads to amateur scientists banging their heads on walls for the rest of forever, like perpetual motion or perhaps cold fusion.

[the_druid_droid]

The whole thing is much less impressive than it sounds. They are simply describing what happened using an outdated model* of the photon. If they use a more up to date model, suddenly the results are no longer spooky or non existant.

*Think of a model like the indivisible atomic model of the universe that we held on to for so long, where the universe was basically a giant game of billiards with atoms bouncing into and off of each other over and over again. Then we discovered that there are actually particles inside the atoms called 'electrons', 'neutrons', and 'protons' and we updated our model and everything was neat for a while. The we discovered that those particles were actually made of more particles, an entire plethora of particles and we have to update our models again, and so on and so on, until we arrive at our current and very complicated models.

I am not sure what you're talking about here. In the current and extremely well-validated theory of the electromagnetic interaction (QED), the photon is a fundamental particle, a bosonic force carrier in the theory. It isn't "made" of anything, and neither is the electron. As far as I am aware, this is the theory that all non-crackpot physicists are using to describe their objects.

Protons and neutrons are a different story however, but that isn't really what we're discussing.


Hmm, now that does make more sense. Presumably it's impossible* to set up groups of particles such that you can make many/most/all of one half of them collapse in a particular way; if you could do that, the problem would be solved by simply determining that many/most/all of the other half were collapsed the other way.

*Or believed to be impossible, as the case may be.

Yeah, there's something called the No-Clone theorem that says you can't make a pool like this, if I understand what you're getting at correctly. We can't duplicate entanglement in that kind of way (not to be confused with swapping entanglement, which we obviously can do), and that's encoded at a very deep level.


hmmm, could you hypothetically send a message by entangling a whole bunch of particles, observe them, pick one that has the signal you want, and then entangle other particles with those particles? So you have a whole bunch of 1 and 2s? Or is the collapsing instantaneous, and you can't keep a constant collapsed state over prolonged observation.

My thought is, if you keep a quantum particle under prolonged observation, then can you entangle other particles with it an they'll collapse to a known state WHILE IT'S STILL UNDER OBSERVATION?

Something is telling me "no" because otherwise it would have been done already.

The issue here is that by observation, we don't really mean "while we're watching it", an observation is simply some sort of interaction that forces a collapse of the wave function, and doesn't really have any duration to speak of. The terminology here is actually really bad, because quantum "observations" don't require anything we usually expect to go with it, like consciousness or humans.


Don't take such a defeatist attitude! I can't help but think there might be some weird permutation that would allow for this.

Even though I am also suspicious, because this seems to be the sort of confusing issue that leads to amateur scientists banging their heads on walls for the rest of forever, like perpetual motion or perhaps cold fusion.

Yep, it's in that category. If you really want to do this, you'd be better off trying to come up with an entirely new theory first, or revolutionize our understanding of open quantum systems - it's that level of fundamental.