Have you heard of Quantum Entanglement? Don’t freak out. It is something really cool that we all need to know about. Because it means some really amazing fantasy sci-fi stuff could actually come true. It also means people will be writing a lot about it; sci-fi, romance, adventure, mystery, and more.
In simple terms, the basic idea of Quantum Entanglement is that you take two photons and “entangle” them. Meaning, that they are now identical; like identical twins. Another way to say it is that it’s now impossible to see any difference between them. But the difference between normal identical twins and these is that if you change the hair color of one of the twins, the other’s hair color becomes instantly changed to the same color. And this happens no matter how far away they are from each other. Poke one hard with a sharp pin, and the other says “Ouch!” and bleeds too.
Pretty cool, huh? But why does that matter. Well, let’s reminded ourselves that computers simply communicate in binary language; ones and zeros, on or off, bit up or bit down. So, let’s send one of our "photon twins" to Pluto and keep the other one on Earth. If we now change the one on Earth, at that instant the one on Pluto is instantly changed; faster than the speed of light. Despite the fact that light from Earth takes over five hours to get to Pluto, the two photons are instantly identical. Please understand, in reality, the “change” takes place instantly, which by definition is far faster than the speed of light.
If we turn the photon on Earth “on” and the twin photon on Pluto turns instantly “on,” and then turn the photon on Earth “off” and the photon on Pluto turns instantly off,” we now have binary language traveling light hours away… instantly; far faster than the speed of light, radio frequencies, or microwaves emanating from Earth. Any light speed signal coming from Earth would arrive over five hours after our twin photon we placed there will have had “received” its change.
Now, before we start to say, "No way! Is this even possible?" Let's take a look at the recent news from China. In Scientific American (source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-shatters-ldquo-spooky-action-at-a-distance-rdquo-record-preps-for-quantum-internet/), on June 15, 2017, Lee Billings wrote about how China had broken the "distance record" for this. Meaning, it already works. Now, most people are looking at this as a great method of securing communications, because if the "change" is captured or intercepted in any way, the twin does not change in exactly the same way. Meaning, the connection has been "hacked." Okay, so we can have more secure communications. Yes. and...
... we have a means of communicating faster than the speed of light!
So? What does that mean to us?
Well, here’s a scenario that is just like the weird and wonderful stuff of Sci-Fi; some real “Majority Report” $h*!.
Think of all the cameras in and around the major cities in the United States; the airports, bus stations, street corners, parking lots, buildings, businesses, subways, parks, etc. Now, instead of hooking the video feed off of each and every one of these to servers with enough hard drive space able to save the hours and hours of videos taken from each and every video camera, let’s beam their signals out into space at the normal speed of light (radio frequency, lasers, whatever). Each video feed with a different identification number to differentiate them one from another.
Now, let’s place six stationary (relative to Earth) Quantum Entanglement communications satellites, or QEC Sats, out near the following planetary orbits.
• Mars (4.3 light minutes away)
• Jupiter (34.9 light minutes away)
• Saturn (71 light minutes away)
• Uranus (151.3 light minutes away)
• Neptune (483.7 light minutes away)
• Pluto (651.7 light minutes)
(source: https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/q89.html, June, 27, 2017)
Here is the interesting stuff. Let’s say that a suicide bomber blows themselves up at a traffic stop near the drop off terminals at LAX at 6:18 PM. Instantly, a security system there hits an emergency condition that sends a quantum communication to all the QES Sats to begin sending back to Earth, via the same quantum communications, all the video feeds arriving to them from the cameras coming from the LA area.
The camera feeds would in effect be a window back in time. You see, the video signal happening right now won’t arrive at the QEC Sat near Mars’ orbit until 4.3 minutes from now. Yet, we can tell it right now, to send the video feed from 4.3 minutes ago to us now. And we can tell the QEC Sat near Pluto’s orbit to do the same, enabling us to watch the video feed from five and a half hours ago right now.
Immediately, officials on the ground will have access to the video feeds from about 4.3 minutes ago, 34.9 minutes ago, 71 minutes ago, etc… on up to 651.7 minutes. And, they will be able to narrow down the number of video feeds they need to capture as they follow the bomber back in time. In short order, they could know much more information, far faster than ever before, minutes after the event. This would enable officials to know what, who, how, why, and when things were done, even enabling them to determine if a greater threat is eminent.
Technically, if we can create working quantum communication satellites, this is a real scenario. And why stop at Pluto, let’s keep sending QEC Sats farther and farther out into space, light hours and light days, or even light years away. In fact, if these QEC Sats were simply designed to keep on traveling and never stop. Every day, we would have a better ability to solve crimes, or view historical events, in more and more places, farther and farther back in time.
Think about it. If we had QEC Sats in place when Kennedy was shot, we could have had the video feeds from Dealey Plaza the moment Kennedy was shot, and have answers to whether and which conspiracy theories were true. Not that someone doesn’t already know, or that we would be told. But at least we would know when the signals from the video cameras will reach the satellites we have light minutes, hours and days away.
While I'm personally not sure how to write a romance with this, I'm sure someone will figure out how to write about how an intelligent alien fish-person can fall in love with a Earth-bound dolphin at Sea World in California, and then arrive here after traveling light years, at light speed, only to discover the love of their life years later, long after the dolphin has been released into the wild blue Pacific ocean.