Michio Kaku: Why Einstein Gets the Last Laugh | Big Think

Michio Kaku: Why Einstein Gets the Last Laugh
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The physicist scoffed at the idea of quantum entanglement, calling it "spooky action at a distance. And while it has in fact been proven to exist, this entanglement can’t be used to transmit any usable information.
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Michio Kaku:

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as New York University (NYU).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Could quantum entanglement be used to transmit information instantaneously between interplanetary spaceships? (Submitted by Matthew Del Favero)

Michio Kaku: Matthew, the answer is yes and no. First of all, Albert Einstein hated quantum entanglement. He called it "spooky action at a distance." He couldn’t get his head around it, but hey, Einstein was wrong. We do this every day in the laboratory and here is how it works: Let’s say we take two electrons very close together and they vibrate in unison. Everything vibrates. Two particles together vibrate in unison. Now separate them. As you separate these two coherent particles an umbilical cord, an invisible umbilical cord starts to develop between these two particles such that if you wiggle one particle then the other particle is aware of the fact that its partner is being wiggled.

So far so good, right? But now separate these particles by the distance of a galaxy itself, so here at one end of the galaxy we wiggle an electron and on the other side of the galaxy, a hundred thousand light years distance, instantly, faster than the speed of light the other particle is aware of the fact that its twin is wiggling. Now Einstein said: "This is ridiculous because nothing can go faster than the speed of light." But this affect has been measured. However, you raise an interesting question. Can you send a message this way? And the answer is probably no. You see, the information traveling from one electron to the other electron faster than the speed of light on the other side of the galaxy is random information. It’s not Morse code. You can’t send a love letter from one part of the universe to another part of the universe faster than the speed of light because a love letter has net information, so in some sense maybe Einstein has the last laugh. It does mean that we have to revise the famous statement "Nothing can go faster than the speed of light." Now what we have to say is "No useable information can travel faster than the speed of light." So in some sense Einstein still has the last laugh.
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[Cloudy-eshs]

In my life I always found that love letters were unusable, hence I can send letters faster than speed of light.

[BC]

I love how physics slowly attracts more and more people. I'm just an IT guy but I have always be fascinated by physics. Actually I understand the theories pretty well but I just hate equations, that's the only thing that kept me from going into physics.

[blaccsheep]

Einstein be laughing on heaven while watching this.
Stop it Einstein.

[spacecat]

go ahead and refine it further and say "no usable information can travel faster than the speed of light....until we figure out that it actually can"

[ColinJonesPonder]

Simplistic description, but what you'd be measuring is spin (or polarisation in light).
The problem is that any measurement resolves the spin of both particles, so you couldn't pre-empt which particle was measured/resolved first.

Probably not explained very well, but I hope I've got the gist out.

[jackpearson]

I disagree that no meaningful information can be sent.  Say you had multiple pairs of entangled particles, particle A1 entangled to particle A2, particle B1 entangled to particle B2, particle C1 entangled to particle C2, and so on.  If you then kept particles A1, B1, and C1 on Earth and sent particles A2, B2, and C2 with the space ship, keeping track of which particle was A, which was B, and which was C, you could then send a message using binary.

    So, people on Earth decide to send the message "101" to the space ship.  They would wiggle particle A1 (sending "1" in binary), not wiggle B1 (sending "0" in binary), then wiggle C1 (again sending "1" in binary).  The people on the space ship, 100 light years away, would observe A2 wiggling, B2 remaining static, and C2 wiggling.  This would then be interpreted as 101.  And so, a meaningful message would have been sent.

    This could be applied on a larger scale, with hundreds or thousands of particles, making it possible to sent basic text across space instantly through binary.  The particles, however, would need to be kept at somewhat near absolute zero temperatures though, so that the wiggles could be detected.

    Finally, a disclaimer: I am no particle physicist, just an avidly curious teenager.  If someone finds a flaw in my logic, or knows some law of physics that prevents this from being technically possible, I would love to hear the issue.

[goosebumper]

thank you, this is the best reply I've gotten to my question. If you can change the outcome of a particle's motion, through looking at it, in a way that would prevent there being a correlation between it and the movement of the paired particle, then wouldnt that mean that the particles are not in a state of quantum entanglement?

[StOne]

You have contradicted yourself Kaku
You said that it is impossible to send any usable information.
But you also said that the particle is aware of whether or not it's twin is wiggling.
If it is aware of what it's twin is doing, then it is receiving usable information.
So if its wiggling, that is a 1 and if it is not wiggling, then that is a zero.
That is information, just as on or off is information.

[QuackersForMath]

One question was raised in my head when you answered this question which has either two meanings:
1. I have misunderstood you.
2. You can indeed send information through quantum entanglement.
The question is:
If it is indeed true that in a stable system of two entangled particles, if one of the two particles starts to vibrate differently to it's entangled partner, the 'partner' will begin to react to the change, and alter its vibrations relative to the first particle - why could we not produce a digital system of many entangled particles, each system independent of each other, yet send over information through the pattern of alternating vibrations in the total system of the many entangled particles? Like how electronic bit-lines work in any electronic system today, however consisting of entangled particles rather than electrons physically being pushed through the metal wire or bit-line.

[jasonleelawlight]

Here is a question which may seem dumb..
Dr. Kaku said, if we wiggle an electron on this side of galaxy, the other electron on the other side of galaxy also wiggles simultaneously as a response; later on he said the other electron actually acts randomly. I remember the electrons are always moving randomly, so how do you prove that the random action of the other electron is indeed a response to the wiggle of the electron on this side of galaxy?

[oneminutefixed]

If one particle's position is predictive of the other how can it not be a way of communication? Single bit of information just like any modern computer has 2 states, on or off, one or zero, true or false

[TheSpliffKing]

Your humor michio is so magnificent and this made me realize the meaning of life, thank you!

[Idealist]

Don't most people here understand that Kaku is "dumbing this down" for easier practical consumption? If anybody (and hundreds of physicists are constantly trying) had figured-out a way to send information through quantum entanglement it would be something he would know about.

[Crivella]

He is explaining it like that to make people who havent studied quantum mechanics understand how it kind of works. Practically it is much more complicated than that, when u send a state thorugh entanglment on the other particle u can get anyone of the corresponding bell's entagled state(random), to read that information the sender whould actually have to send the information of the state of his initial particle => that is done through normal communication => v < c

[HK]

Im glad my comments actually gave you some insight and as someone from outside the US I hope you and others who wish to do something about your country are successful. Just knowing people like you are still around in America gives me some hope for the future.

[danielxmiller]

Just because physicists haven't thought of a way to send an instantaneous message, doesn't mean that it isn't possible. It isn't possible with our current technology and our current theories, but guess what, before quantum physics came around everything related to it was also thought impossible.

[rsequakes]

Basically, Kaku has just confirmed that human communication could be transmitted faster than the speed of light,
it simply has to meet the standard of non-useful information, which is clearly fulfilled in most Tweets and other forms of social media.
QED.

[AddyRaina]

Though you can't transmit "Morse code", there is some useful information which is entangled. For instance, experiments show that if you measure spin up for one particle, the entangled partner would instantly have opposite spin. Spins are actually being used as binary bits in quantum computing; by assigning one spin to 1 and the other to 0, I don't see how you couldn't transfer information.

[MrWorshipMe]

What you're missing is that you can't influence the result of the measurement without breaking the entanglement.
The entanglement only means there is a correlation between the two particles, but they still behave in a random way and once one of them interacts with the environment this correlation disappears. (This is called decoherence).

[NOTIMEFORNBZ]

I'm not sure, but that morse code thing got me thinking. The information is useless BUT we couldn't we just measure if something did happen, then use it as code, like if something happened one time in a minute it would mean letter A. Would this work, why or why not?