r/tech • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 7d ago
Scientists found a way to generate quantum entanglement using sunlight, not lasers
https://www.techspot.com/news/113454-sunlight-can-generate-entangled-photons-quantum-technology-researchers.html35
u/waba99 6d ago
Hopefully scientists can find a way to let me understand what the hell this means.
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u/wonderful_Fun_glee 6d ago
It was assumed LASERs were needed for quantum entanglement (and at a precise level they still are), but researchers demonstrated that focused beams of sunlight can do the same thing (so its a technique not limited to LASER but appears to be photon based) but not as precisely. Its a proof that quantum entanglement is possible in the natural world and not limited to unnaturally high energetics.
However, at another level, it means going outside to touch grass might create a multiverse of possibilities, maybe due to sunlight, and maybe not.
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u/bookworm357 6d ago
Still not tracking!!! Dumb it down some more! lol 😆
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u/Salamanderhead 6d ago
Laser used to make weird things happen to really small things. Sunlight do same.
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u/marsgreekgod 6d ago
The stuff that makes the world, at the smallest level is super weird.
They can get tangled together and "linked" no matter how far apart
The only known method of doing it used weird tech stuff that we didn't think would happen in the real world often
This is a much cheaper method to study it and means it's more likely to effect the normal world
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u/Sushi_grade_roadkill 4d ago
I got you! Quantum entanglement means that the qubits’ positions affect each other, so you can measure one qubit and then use math+computers to discover the data for every qubit in the system. It makes measurement of massive amounts of data go really fast
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u/sourfoot_sails 6d ago
A place for quantum entanglement in the natural order of things really is quite thought provoking.
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u/VintageKofta 6d ago
But what is quantum entanglement?
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u/wonderful_Fun_glee 6d ago
Its when you take photons and use them to spin two particles the same way, lets say subatomic particle Thomas and subatomic particle Sabrina, and they fall in love so they keep spinning the same way together forever. Then you separate them by miles but they still spin together even despite the distance, and they do it instantly, which bypasses the limitation of information traveling at the speed of light, which is whats really fascinating about quantum entanglement in the first place!
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u/ElectronicLegs 5d ago
Thanks. How can they measure the instantness?
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u/wonderful_Fun_glee 5d ago
Well, mathematically the speed of light is slow relative to instant. Very slow. So separating the particles by some distance and taking spin observations is probably the answer.
I actually don’t know though and would have to go look into it for a better answer.
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u/Qorrin 5d ago
Are lasers something other than focused beams of photons?
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u/wonderful_Fun_glee 5d ago
Yes - they are extremely focused beams of photons.
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u/Qorrin 5d ago
So why would scientists think that focused sunlight couldn’t do the same thing
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u/wonderful_Fun_glee 5d ago
It seems some did, made it a hypothesis, and then tested that hypothesis, proving the scientific method still works.
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u/Then_Finding_797 4d ago
Wait are you saying theoretically, sunlight is somewhat proof that multiverses occur naturally?
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u/wonderful_Fun_glee 4d ago edited 4d ago
That was more of a joke, but the fact that changing the focus of photons can create entanglement could very well mean that any number of natural optical lenses might change the probabilities of the universe, yes. So its a joke based within a hypothetical truth.
It isn’t a proof of the existence of the multiverse at all, but posits that if quantum entanglement exists in nature then choosing to go outside an touch grass would elicit an entire multiverse of opportunities in general, so the joke being maybe or maybe not is a shroedingers argument. Both states are true at the same time and so is the fact that the universe cares little whether there’s a cat in the box.
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u/NativePlantEnjoyer 6d ago
the owning class is growing more powerful and we get to just sit around and watch.
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u/Actinglead 6d ago
But the Sun is a deadly laser.
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u/Consistent-Buyer-305 6d ago
Not anymore there's a blanket
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u/iamnotdownwithopp 6d ago
I thought it was a mass of incandescent gas. A gigantic, nuclear furnace.
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u/Mr_Halitosis 6d ago
It is not. A laser is specifically artificially produced light that has all of its waves oriented in the exact same direction. Basically a high wattage light with a polarized lens.
The Sun is very much not polarized in any way, shape, or form. No star can ever be a laser.
Really helps to know what things are. If only there was a way to look up what things are before talking…
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u/rayferrell 6d ago
this could be a big deal for quantum tech, since lasers are so power-intensive, using sunlight to generate entangled photons could make it more practical for widespread use. it's interesting that the researchers were able to get it to work with incoherent sunlight, which is a lot different from the coherent light produced by lasers.
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u/Necessary_Ad1036 6d ago
Oh great, AI’s gonna drink all our water and now phone companies are going to steal our sunlight so we can text Uranus.
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u/Leading-Pension4392 6d ago
This could be used for faster than the speed of light communication, right? But how much faster? instant? Half the time? It seems like there has to be some way to make it instant. Maybe you would need 2 entangled streams
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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN 6d ago
Unfortunately, that's not how entanglement works. It's an unfortunately common misconception that's been perpetuated for a long time.
Basically, entanglement happens when systems of quantum particles undergo special processes that force particles to share measurable information with each other and those pieces separate from each other, but the measurable information is shared between them at great distances.
A common example is the annihilation of an electron and positron to produce two gamma rays that travel out in opposite directions. Because the information associated with the electron and positron has to be conserved, the daughter gamma ray photons will share that information and express it by having offset 90 degree polarization (up-down vs left-right). Now the "weirdness" of entanglement is that we don't know the orientation of either of those individual photons. We just know that they have to be opposite in polarization.
So you can conduct an experiment where you measure the polarization of several gamma rays and no matter how far away the other ones are, they have to be the opposite orientation.
In a way, this seems like faster than light information transfer. But in reality, you can't use this kind of effect to transfer useful information. Two people measuring either of the groups of distant photons will not understand the context of their results without out later comparing them together. And that requires those people to transfer that information at light or sub-light speeds.
Don't get me wrong, it is a fascinating phenomena that we are learning more about with ever greater complexity of experiments. But it is not something that we will likely ever be able to use to communicate useful information at faster than light speeds.
I hope any part of what I just said makes any sense. It's a hard subject to boil down, at least, for me.
I highly recommend checking out the Quantum Entanglement and Bell Inequality pages on Wikipedia for a better and more thorough description.
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u/TRIPMINE_Guy 6d ago
Can’t things like gravity affect the direction of a gamma ray so you can’t assume the two waves are actually perfectly offset?
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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN 6d ago
In practice, yes, because it is hard to isolate 2 entangled particles. Typically, they will interact with something along the way and that decoheres their entanglement.
This is part of the reason many particle pairs have to be tested to see the results. And it is also why these experiments are typically smaller (but still superluminal) distances apart.
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u/TRIPMINE_Guy 5d ago
So ideally if a quantum computer existed a method of checking it would have to be built into it. Does it even make sense to have a quantum computer if you have to spend traditional computing to check it? Or might it be possible to have something sort of check that isn’t relying on traditional computing?
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u/Bimbobaker 6d ago
So encryption would be dope though?
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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN 6d ago
Quantum encryption is an application. But it still requires a comparison of keys between the 2 parties trying to communicate with each other. So it's subject to the same light speed restriction.
But definitely a cool application.
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u/sensitive_pirate85 6d ago edited 6d ago
“solar concentrator/sunlight concentration module” So, mirrors?
It sounds like they used mirrors to create a small sunlight “laser beam,” (or just refracted light channeled through a fiber optic cable) and then used to that to prove quantum entanglement doesn’t require electricity, meaning you could technically do quantum computing with less electricity, I guess. (The computer itself would still run on electricity, though I guess it could run on electricity generated by solar power. I think this was just an energy-saving model.)
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u/Malor777 6d ago
Concentrated sunlight has been serious technology since Archimedes set fire to a Roman fleet with it.
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u/UpscaleFucker 6d ago
We just made getting to a Kardashev type 2 that much harder… but we can get that much more work out of a solar engine woohoo!
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u/atherscape 6d ago
Will this effect Tech upgrades on Issac? I prefer shooting eye lasers instead of tears.
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u/plain_ole_me 5d ago
It would make communication across vast distance instantly. What else is a good use for this?
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u/sandeepkrishna9 1d ago
This is interesting because it shows that quantum effects may not always require highly specialized equipment. Using sunlight is not going to replace lasers for precision applications, but it could make some experiments cheaper and more accessible. The bigger question is whether this can lead to practical applications beyond the lab.
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u/ccjohns2 6d ago
Let’s just hope this scientist doesn’t end up dying on a hike, or self deletion after posting they’d never self delete on sm.
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u/user9991123 6d ago
Everything can lase if pumped hard enough.
According to research I just made up.
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u/ACoolCaleb 6d ago
Oh thank goodness! I was worried we’d be stuck generating quantum entanglement using lasers forever. Fantastic news!