RobH wrote:
Scientists teleport two different objects
POSTED: 4:36 p.m. EDT, October 4, 2006

[fun with quantum entanglement]

Am I correct in thinking that this technology is FTL, and not subject
to any kind of range restriction or interference/ signal blockage?

Can we therefore imagine that some future interplanetary mission might
take with it a lump of entangled particles (having left the entangled
'mates' of those particles back on Earth), allowing the spacecraft and
mission control to exchange data instantaneously, no matter how far
away the craft travels?

What would the bandwidth be like? Presumably it would be 1 bit per
entangled particle pair, but is there any restriction on the rate at
which these bits can be sent other than the speed at which the the
computers involved can 'read' and 'write' the particles? However, I
suppose there would be a finite amount of data that could be
transmitted in this way, defined by the amount of entagled particles
available to the ship. What would we call that, 'banddepth'? Given that
these particles are at an atomic scale though, I imagine a just a few
grams of material would be enough for many billions of bits of data.

The advantages of eliminating comm-lag for manned space travel are
obvious, but I could see that even on unmanned missions this would do
away with a lot of hassles associated with traditional radio
transmissions.

Or have I misunderstood completely? The only future applications the
articles I've read seem to be interested in are secure data
communication (very exciting for gov, mil and biz I'm sure but...
well.... *yawn* ) and "beam me up scotty" style teleportation (which,
let's face it, ain't gonna happen).

I find it hard to believe that such a potentially revolutionary
technology (a) really is as useful as I understand it to be and (b)
isn't generating more of a buzz.

Someone please correct my misconceptions (if I have expressed any).