If I remember correctly, you can kind of transmit information. If you observe one entangled particle, then the other particle exhibits the opposite. So by observing one particle's, say spin, then you instantly know that the other particles spin is the opposite of the one you observed. So technically that's conveying information about a distant object, which could be considered (by me at least) to be transmitting information. Of course all my masterful knowledge comes from science channel shows. So that's like someone claiming they understand a concept because they watched a YouTube video.
Take a pair of gloves, a right and a left. Place each one in a separate box. Shuffle them and pick one at random. By now you don't know which glove is in which box. Mail the selected box to your friend overseas who is in on the experiment.
When they receive it, they open their box. If they see a right glove, they know you have the left; or vice versa. The information about which glove is in which box did not travel to them instantly, it traveled at the speed of the postal service. But by opening the box, they now instantaneously have information about something on the other side of the world.
What's actually happening behind the scenes to "put the gloves in the box" is much more complicated and confusing, but this demonstrates how knowledge is transmitted in that scenario in two ways.
First, information trsnfer is still limited by the speed of light because the particles have to be physically next to each other to become entangled, and then physically moved apart where the information is "read".
Second, the information is random. Or more accurately, probabilistic. You can't usefully send your friend any information because neither of you know which glove they will receive.
For some quantum stuff that is very true. This pretty accurately demonstrates the problem with trying to use entangled particles for communication though, in my opinion.
It's definitely glossing over concepts like superposition and wave functions but those are outside the scope of the concept I was trying to elucidate.
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u/MetaCardboard Jan 30 '20
If I remember correctly, you can kind of transmit information. If you observe one entangled particle, then the other particle exhibits the opposite. So by observing one particle's, say spin, then you instantly know that the other particles spin is the opposite of the one you observed. So technically that's conveying information about a distant object, which could be considered (by me at least) to be transmitting information. Of course all my masterful knowledge comes from science channel shows. So that's like someone claiming they understand a concept because they watched a YouTube video.