Along with all his odious personal views, he had to go and steal her nifty word... hack bastard... mumble.

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For example, I have a particle and you have a particle. They are entangled. If either of us measures the spin of our particle, we'll get a result of either up or down, randomly. However, if one of us measures the particle, the other is guaranteed to be of opposite spin - that's what entanglement does.

Now, you measure your particle and get a spin of down. Does this mean I measured mine to send you a message? Or did you just happen to get "down" by random chance? The only way to know is to communicate with me via some other, non-FTL method. Thus, no information has travelled FTL afterall.

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But then, does this mean not so much that the particles "transmit" information between them, so much as at the moment of entanglement they just acquire the same properties, which we can later observe? If this is the case, then it's not really a case of "communication," is it? O_o

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However, there isn't any way to send information using this process (that we know of, I guess).

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I think the point of quantum entanglement isn't that information (energy) travels faster than light, but that the two particles are connected in some sort of fundamental way that we don't yet understand.

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I can't be sure about this, but I thought I read somewhere (Parallel Universes, maybe, by Kaku?) that information is in a category of its own, massless and measureless, and therefore communicable FTL...

Don't quote me.

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And having said that, I think the direction everyone's going with this quantum entanglement is not stating that the two particles are simply exchanging "information" but that they are both part of a single structure, so pushing on one pushes on the other, so to speak. The fact that that structure doesn't seem to be affected by time or distance, according to the article, means that it's taking place in a really funky, funky way that doesn't really seem part of our reality.

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Besides, if they didn't mean "instantaneous", they would have said something else.

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You can quote a definition all you like. But until you actually MEASURE the communication as being faster than light - which the linked story does NOT do contrary to the assertions of the io9 article - then that definition is not being applied accurately to the situation.

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Also your argument that this process cannot be instantaneous because the time it takes the communication of results of the process to happen is not instantaneous is extremely silly. I think if you reread the previous sentence you'll see why it's extremely silly.

@ParryLost: I recall that being the point of General Relativity. That space and time are interchangeable. But take Einstein's original thought experiment - an observer on a moving train Vs. an observer on a platform having different measurements - when both re-enter the same state, they'll have to agree on a standard for measurement to take place. If one has lost more time than the other, they'll have to agree on one or the other frame of reference. Even though space IS relative, measurement still has to happen and thus an event is STILL be defined as instantaneous through agreement.

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And that was my point. The article indicates that the 'communication' is FTL. But, as you admit, no experiment has been done to "determine whether or not that's the case.

"Also your argument that this process cannot be instantaneous because the time it takes the communication of results of the process to happen is not instantaneous is extremely silly."

You are confusing me with someone else. I haven't made any argument for OR against this process being instantaneous. I simply asked someone to identify where the linked article claimed the scientists had measured the communication as FTL. And as you have just indicated, the answer is that it did not. Given that fact, I would say the article requires some correction.

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I don't see how after reading the actual NIST press release you could possibly argue this point any more. Unless you have some understanding of this process deeper than that of the NIST.

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You have made it abundantly clear *all* you are doing is 'guessing' and 'supposing' here. However I was looking for something more than base rationalism. I was looking for some actual *facts* - specifically facts about the experiment as related to the explicit claim of FTL communication. Thank you for making it clear you do *not* possess such facts.

Now, I once again look forward to someone actually providing the facts about the experiment and the supposed measuring of faster than light 'communication' - things like IF and HOW they measured the simultaneity of the occurrence, etc.. For if they did not, then - as previously stated - the article requires correcting.

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So as far as I learned it and as far it makes sense to me, the term relativity means above all, that relative to your decision about the geometry OR about universal forces, the other part of the equation is determined:

G + F = const ( = reality / observed reality)

Thus, the whole point is not that reality itself is relative, but that our description or perception of reality is relative. The reality itself is very much fixed.

So as far as I remember I´d say you are wrong with your assumption about "points in time".

One thing which comes to my mind thinking about that stuff is, that time will go slower when you´re far away from massive objects like the earth. This I never really grasped and I don´t know how this contributes to the discussion. It could be just something we have to deal with, when we abandon universal forces...but I don´t know...

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I might just not be understanding something, though. 6_6

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