Quantum Teleportation Quantum entanglement is an accepted part of quantum physics.

When two particles are created together as a pair or when particles interact with each other in an appropriate way they form a connection between each other. This is not a connect ion mediated by known force particles. Somehow when the properties of one of the two particles is changed, the other particle is affected instantaneously no mat ter how far they are from each other. Please note, entanglement requires the par ticles to have a pre-existing relationship, it is not possible to simply use any particles that you happen to have lying around. Also, if an entangled particle has interactions with additional particles so that it is entangled with not one but a number of other particles, the effects from the various entangled particle s can make it impossible to make sense of information one tries to sent from A t o B. At face value, it would seem this would allow instantaneous communications and a form of teleportation. (It is important to be clear this is not a method that c auses particles to disappear from one place and reappear in another place. Rathe r a change to a particle here can cause a change to a different particle over th ere. This might be used to convey data about assembling a duplicate of an object at the other location.) However, according to current understanding, other quan tum effects prevent meaningful information from being conveyed if one only uses the two entangled particles. In order to circumvent these issues, physicists hav e had to devise a more complicated method. The person wanting to send informatio n (for messages or describe an object to be duplicated) must have an additional non-entangled particle, do a test that doesn't tell the properties of a specific particle but only the difference between the entangled and non-entangled partic le, and then send that information to the other person by some means other than quantum entanglement. The other person can then use the properties of the entang led particle plus the data on the difference between the entangled and non-entan gled particles to derive useful information. Because the information is being sent by two separate means, one of which is not quantum entanglement, the entire transaction presumably is not instantaneous. B ased on current scientific understanding, it is reasonable to expect the other m eans of communication will be no faster than the speed of light. As a result, qu antum teleportation is not expected to be a means of instantaneous or FTL telepo rtation. However, the quantum entangled part of the information cannot be interc so it might epted (except maybe by someone with particles entangled with yours) have use in providing secrecy. The quantum entanglement part of the communicatio n presumably would also have the advantage of not being subject to signal loss r esulting from energy or materials between the sending and receiving stations alt hough the other half of the communication would be. Speed Suppose for the sake of argument, scientists find a way to use quantum entanglem ent to send useful data without needing any addition non-entanglement communicat ions. Certainly, the seemingly instantaneous communication between the entangled particles could eliminate the travel time between distant locations (especially interstellar distances). Are there any speed limitations in the process of gett ing the data to leave Point A (as opposed to the travel time between A and B)? T o the best of my understanding, a particle can't change it's characteristics (to be conveyed to the entangled partner) an infinite number of times per second. I think that is limited to certain changes within each Planck time unit. Granted, there are so manyPlanck time units in a second, that's not a big limitation. Wh ether it's practical to induce a particle to change each and every Planck time u nit is another question. Once one finds out how many times per second one is tru ly able to make a change (convey a unit of data) one could increase that by havi ng multiple pairs of entangled particles and try to simultaneously send parts of

the data via separate "channels". Still, there's more to consider. We would need to determine what data needed to be sent for a successful teleportation and then take action to alter our local p article in the entangled pair - in a specific way which designates a particular piece of information. This would need to be done using non-entanglement forms of physics. Presumably, we would be using one (or more) of the forces of nature to convey what changes we wanted the local particle to experience. Unless the nucl ear forces can act faster than the speed of light and unless we can use the nucl ear forces without also using the electromagnetic force, we seem to be limited b y the speed of light in telling the local particle what to do. While the speed o f light can convey a lot of data in a second, as we've seen in other articles in this section, "a lot" isn't sufficient to convey the data representing the 1028 atoms in an adult human body in what we would usually consider a modest length of time. The entire process (both telling Particle A what to do and the data rea ching Particle B) may take less time than a relativistic spaceship to another st ar, it would be far from instantaneous. A Thought on Getting the Entangled Particle to Another Star As noted before, it's necessary to start with particles which we know have previ ously established an entanglement relationship. So, to use entanglement between Earth and another star system, we would have to have a pair of already entangled particles, leave one on Earth, and transport the other to the other star using a slower-than-light spaceship. To accomplish this as quickly as possible, one wo uld use a spaceship which could travel at relativistic speeds. That raises a question. It's been argued that transporting one mouth of a wormho le at relativistic speeds would result in time dilation connecting the two wormh ole mouths at different points in time (making time travel possible within certa in limits). If this were true, would relativist travel by one of the particles i n an entangled pair affect what points in time the particles were connected? How would it affect data being sent from the "non-relativistic" particle to the "re lativistic" particle, and how would it affect sending from the "relativistic" to the "non-relativistic"?