At 7:56 PM -0800 1/27/98, Steve Schear wrote:
I wonder how far off use of this technique for interplanetary rovers might be (10 years, 20 years)? Remote (Earth) rover manipulation is tedious at best due to several minutes (or an hour or more to the outer planets) of propagation delay. Autonomous rovers need enough smarts built-in to handle unexpected situations, a non-trivial problem. An alternative is to establish a link using entangled photons. If a simple approach to saving these entangled states during signal transit, in both directions, were found instantaneous communication and simplified remote control would be a reality.
Nothing in quantum teleportation has been shown to propagate signals faster than light. (If you don't believe me, look into it. Start by reading the FTL discussions about Bell's Theorem.) I personally doubt that any flat spacetime topology (e.g., wormholes excepted) will admit any FTL signals. A lot of things would dramatically change if FTL communication existed...not the practical "communication" issues, which are human social minutiae, but issues about synchronization of reference frames and causality violations.
Of course one needn't stop there. If entangled states could be stored for several years, instantaneous communication with neighbooring stars is a real possibility. Coupled with advances in mind-machine science it might someday be possible to explore, first-hand, our local portion of the galaxy without leaving earth, or upload/download one's consciouness to vessels in remote locations.
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