‘Ghost’ Photos through Quantum Physics
Scientists funded by the Air Force have used quantum entanglement — in which pairs of particles continue to interact even after they are spatially separated — to snap this picture of a tin solider without aiming a camera directly at the object. The technique, called “ghost imaging,” has potential military or space applications, such as using aerial drones to survey of battlefields obscured by clouds, or the smoke that follows airstrikes. Yanhua Shih, who has been experimenting with entangled photons since 1995, says:
“…[T]he image is not formed from light that hits the object and bounces back. The camera collects photons from the light sources that did not hit the object, but are paired through a quantum effect with others that did. An image of the toy begins to appear after approximately a thousand pairs of photons are recorded.”
These are exciting times on the frontiers of physics. Researchers in Copenhagen took a step towards producing a quantum bit. And scientists at Arizona State are trying to figure out how electrons interact. Both are necessary steps towards building superfast quantum computers.
[Image: University of Maryland]
July 1st, 2008 at 4:08 pm
That’s actually absurd. Physics, you say?
[beat]
Burn the witches!
July 1st, 2008 at 9:11 pm
What could have been some interesting science is prostituted into creating some fancy sounding toy for the military, which will no doubt make the consultants very rich, and further the American fantasy of conquering the world, all evidence to the contrary be damned.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:44 pm
What’s this you say? Scientific research being used for military applications!? This is the first I’ve heard of such things. How dare the scientists who are being funded by a branch of the military use their discoveries for the benefit of their backers! I can’t believe they would do such a thing.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Science is great and everything, but they still haven’t answered the question of what floats, other than a witch. I say it’s a really tiny rock.
Seriously though, that is pretty strange. Hooray for quantum physics! Soon we’ll be able to create matter. I’m going to create lots of gold and oxygen
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:13 am
Seriously though, this is bogus. But what the heck, entertaining.
Consider this - the “tin soldier” is seen from a point-of-view. How do you selectively receive only those photons whose entangled mates all pass through this point-of-view? Answer - either you don’t, or you are essentially pointing a lens or sensing device at the “tin soldier” itself. Bogus. And the “battlefield clouds” idea? No. My work here is done.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 am
“website design”,
The internet was originally a toy created for the military. You owe your career to such “prostitution of science”.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:28 am
Entanglement has mind blowing applications. Imagine having data rates at nearly infinite speed in real time. You could achieve that by entangling the information source where you want to get the information from to your receiving client. Distance, cabling, connections, etc. would no longer be an issue. You could practically be on another planet and still receive the information you want as it happens. Bye bye telecom infrastructure, hello entanglment.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:34 am
And only 5 more days until the LHC is activated.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:48 am
Amazing!
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:11 am
I know you mean well, folks, but please don’t feed the troll.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
Anyone remember David Bowie in the ‘Man who Fell to Earth’? He had patented a camera that could take pictures with an alternative point of reference than from where the camera was located. This seems to be similar in the way it’s described.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
Anon, you should check out the source article in the air force times (it’s the first link in the article above). There seems to be a little bit more to it then the above article suggests, but it looks legit to me.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
@5 Anon. I’m glad your young no research mind has all of the answers. I’m sure they never tackled any of these hardships when doing this. Good thing you cleared it up on a comment page in a couple seconds. They can stop their progress now.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 am
@Don Veto: Unfornately, as cool as what you say sounds, there is still no way to transmit useful information faster than light, even with entanglement. See Consequences under the No-Cloning Theorem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
This is the stuff Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” He didn’t like it either. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
As for the military aspect — well, at least it’s not black ops. If you look at it, it continues to exist…
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
This story is bogus. please read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_entanglement . This may be possible in the future but right now we don’t have the technology to actually do this. This story is total bullshit.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:42 am
It’s posted on the AF.MIL website. I doubt if it’s bogus.
July 4th, 2008 at 3:22 am
th nly ghst tht xsts s th hly ghst nd y wll ll ndy s tht h s lrd f lrds nd kng f kngs nd h rgns!:D
<3
July 4th, 2008 at 11:45 am
M nd th Tlk Shw Hst nd brd n th snd, cm Hly Ghst nd jn s s w srch fr th nxt Plt. Scnc nd Mltry r strng bdfllws bt w w ll f r ccmplshmnts thr thn plwng flds t th 2 f thm.
GD s Myth t sbd th Hmns nt thnkng thy r mr thn psnts. Hmns r t d th bddng f th Rch nd Pwrfl lt.
July 6th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Witch! Witch! (well, I should actually say that this is beyond me. My brain is too small to understand this D: how can you take a picture without aiming the camera?)
July 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
fantastic.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:39 am
You mean the article that hasn’t been updated since 2/2008, and has “this article needs additional citations for verification? That article?
Wikipedia is really nice, but I would hardly count it as the end all/be all of current information.
Feel free, however, to read http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/06/airforce_ghost_imagery_062908/ and http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/06/airforce_ghost_imagery_062908/ (both already linked in the article) before you give us your expert opinion again.
BTW, this is outstanding. While the technology may be in its infancy, we’re seeing some incredible applications of quantum physics.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Interesting that this post has inspired so much controversy. At the very least, I would say that if researchers from respected academic institutions, funded by U.S. taxpayers and publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, are making this claim, that in and of itself is newsworthy. If this claim isn’t true, like bogus missile-defense tests, then I want my money back.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Quantum Teleportation was my Degree Seminar Topic. I had studied a lot about Quantum Entanglement then.
But, upto my knowledge, this is unbelievable.
The theory is that, there is a pair of electrons which are entangled together at creation. Both particles share properties, even if they are at a distance. The camera captures each of the photons of the pair. One photon hits the object and the other photon in the pair having similar properties hits the camera. It is Quantum Physics
_ATOzTOA
http://atoztoa.blogspot.com
July 13th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Jeffrey Bub, of Stanford, wrote: “Formally, the amount of classical information we gain, on average, when we learn the value of a random variable (or, equivalently, the amount of uncertainty in the value of a random variable before we learn its value) is represented by a quantity called the Shannon entropy, measured in bits (Shannon and Weaver, 1949). A random variable is defined by a probability distribution over a set of values. In the case of a binary random variable, with equal probability for each of the two possibilities, the Shannon entropy is 1 bit, representing maximal uncertainty. For all other probabilities — intuitively, representing some information about which alternative is more likely — the Shannon entropy is less than 1. For the case of maximal knowledge or zero uncertainty about the alternatives, where the probabilities are 0 and 1, the Shannon entropy is zero. (Note that the term ‘bit’ is used to refer to the basic unit of classical information in terms of Shannon entropy, and to an elementary two-state classical system considered as representing the possible outputs of an elementary classical information source.)”