The Coming Thing

[LDAHL]

I have a very prescient friend. In 2015, he said Trump would be a major force, and I laughed in his face. He predicted the outcome of the 2016 World Series, which was the last time I ever bet against him.

Recently, I asked him to tell me what the next big development would be. Steam engine big. Microcircuit big. He said two words: “quantum entanglement”. Lately, I’m starting to hear about it in podcasts and articles.

It sounds like the applications will produce marvels and horrors that I’m not entirely sure I want to live to see.

[frugal-one]

Not sure what this entails????


quantum entanglement definition
noun Physics
the phenomenon whereby a pair of particles are generated in such a way that the individual quantum states of each are indefinite until measured, and the act of measuring one determines the result of measuring the other, even when at a distance from each other.

[Rogar]

I'd probably need some examples or explanation to understand the utility of things beyond theory, which I only very vaguely comprehend.

Maybe UFO's exist in an alternate universe or dimension and exist in our earth atmosphere at the same time, an easy technological feat for an advanced civilization millennia beyond ours. Or could possibly explain how Trump won and lost an election at the very same time?

[jp1]

I’m reminded of the fact that my grandfather (born in 1903 and only 4th grade educated. Died in 1989.) simply refused to believe that a space ship had taken people to the moon. I can’t blame him. Tech that existed when we were born seems perfectly normal. Tech that is created after we have become adults, not so much. Soon enough the world will be entirely populated by people who think that smart phones and all that they offer are the way it always was, much the way that I take electric outlets and indoor plumbing as a given. I suppose the babies of 5-10 years from now will accept quantum entanglement as just part of the way the world is.

[LDAHL]

My grandfather fought the Imperial German Army in the Meuse Argonne in 1918 with a bolt action rifle and a big knife. Airplanes overhead were fifteen years away from Kitty Hawk. My first assignment after getting commissioned was with an organization figuring out how to launch a missile from an F15E to “negate” Soviet space assets coming over the horizon. That was about 70 years after Kitty Hawk.

I could well imagine that weapons systems I can’t presently imagine will be deployed in astonishing ways 70 years from now. But human aggression will pretty much be a constant. I don’t need my friend the oracle to make that prediction.

[JaneV2.0]

Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance"--which is pretty much all i remember about it, so I found this explanation:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/spooky-action-distance/

I vaguely remember experiments wherein acting on one atom affected another "entangled" atom I'm not sure how this translates into anything practical.

ETA, from the article:

"Nevertheless, these results, coming from both theoretical and experimental considerations, strongly support the conclusion that the universe admits interconnections that are not local. Something that happens over here can be entwined with something that happens over there even if nothing travels from here to there—and even if there isn't enough time for anything, even light, to travel between the events.

This means that space cannot be thought of as it once was: Intervening space, regardless of how much there is, does not ensure that two objects are separate, since quantum mechanics allows an entanglement, a kind of connection, to exist between them. A particle, like one of the countless number that make up you or me, can run but it can't hide."