[frankinstien]

The traditional concept of space exploration is basically Star Trek. The idea of exploring interstellar space with such large vehicles where the speed of light is not the speed limit for these ships but their ability to withstand a micro-collision with dust particles in space when moving at extraordinary speeds that will result in reactions as powerful as a nuclear bomb! There have proposals of building nano-space probes but they too would be limited to similar issues with space dust.

What if a spaceship or space probe wasn't made of rest-mass but a beam of light or virtual particles. So you might ask how can you turn a Laser beam into a space probe. Well there is something called particle entanglement and its what Eisenstein hated about quantum mechanics. But the idea is to use entanglement to detect chemical reactions and even induce them. So now the speed limit to cross interstellar space with this kind of space probe is the speed of light!

The idea is that if we can detect certain chemistry's on some exoplanet we could then try to induce a chemical reaction by forcing a state on the Laser's photons hitting the planet's surface. This quantum modulation induces chemistry where one could encode some DNA like sequence or even detect extraterrestrial DNA and hi-jack it for our purposes. The interaction between the entangled photons on earth with those on the distant planet is instantaneous, FTL! Of course the laser beam has to be very powerful and needs to be set up so its focus is right on the surface of the planet, while at the same time store one of paired photons here on earth.

Here's a paper on using chemical reactions to classify quantum entanglement.

Here's another paper on detecting chemical reactions with quantum entanglement.

[infurl]

Quantum entanglement is not going to give us a way to communicate faster than light or do anything else faster than light. The "spooky action at a distance" is still limited to the speed of light; that it is instantaneous is a common misconception and wishful thinking.

https://briankoberlein.com/blog/quantum-entanglement/

Nevertheless, quantum entanglement does offer the possibility of perfectly secure communication which would be valuable enough in itself.

Incredibly, scientists recently figured out how to obtain images of quantum entanglement taking place.

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-the-first-ever-photo-of-quantum-entanglement

Given that we still have no idea what 95 percent of the universe is made of and there is a vast and ever increasing amount left to discover, I hope that one day our descendants will find a way around the speed of light limitation; for now, I'm content with the thought that our descendants will be artificial intelligences and they won't care if it takes a thousand of our years to travel to the next star.

[frankinstien]

Quantum entanglement is not going to give us a way to communicate faster than light or do anything else faster than light. The "spooky action at a distance" is still limited to the speed of light; that it is instantaneous is a common misconception and wishful thinking.
https://briankoberlein.com/blog/quantum-entanglement/

The fact that the two particles instantly collapse in a coordinated state is FTL, as even the article you cite states, that it couldn't be used to communicate is wrong! There is a phenomenon known as quantum ghost imaging. By placing a mask over one beam from a beam splitter of entangled photons the beam that never interacts with the mask can produce an image that looks like a shadow of the beam that interacted with the mask!  This makes sense that if you have a mask that is of a particular polarization, photons that statistically end up as the mask's polarization will produce photons of the other beam with the opposite polarization. Now one need only figure out how to modulate a polarization mask and you can now communicate FTL.

[frankinstien]

Just wanted to add that there are two types of ghost imaging. One that uses quantum entanglement and another uses classical means to produce the ghost image.

[infurl]

You'll be able to power them from your perpetual motion machine! 

[frankinstien]

You'll be able to power them from your perpetual motion machine! 

I bet you were of the crowed that believed that soft landing chemical rocket boosters were impractical and having them crash land in the sea or burn up in the atmosphere was the most practical form of airlifting into earth orbit without some kind of nuclear propulsion. 

In the end EPR has two particles that synchronize their wave collapse, and in fact if you were to place different popularization masks along the path of the one beam, the particles can collapse to different synchronized polarizations as the one beam interacts with each mask! So...that is an FTL form of communications and it drove Einsitein mad...

[frankinstien]

Here's an excellent layman's documentary of quantum entanglement:

[frankinstien]

A virtual particle space probe just got closer to being reality than I imagined. This article is literally describing a means to entangle other types of particles from entangled photons, which is what could be used to detect types of materials or chemistry on a distant planet!

[frankinstien]

I've been wanting to do a quantum entanglement project for some time now. Here's a pretty good description of the workings of a entanglement setup that is a demonstrator kit that uses a class 3B Laser.  There are Class4 lasers out there that pack more power and probably would make for a better test than a 3B laser. But from the description developing a DIY rig seems reasonable. The non-linear crystal for the parametric down-conversion, which is what produces the photon pairs, can run about $50 to over $1000.  It's still within the hobbyists' budget to do.

And, yes, I'd try to see if I could turn it into an FTL communications device, or as Infurl calls it, a perpetual motion machine. 

[silent one]

Did someone say perpetual motion? =)

[frankinstien]

It sure looks like perpetual motion.    But the spring and its weight are what's keeping it going. The system has very little losses in the form of friction and air drag. You'll notice that the spring bends from the weight before the wheel is placed in motion, now realize that the bend in the spring is potential energy from gravity where the spring stores that energy. Now, that energy stored in the spring is very tinny but its enough to compensate for the extremely small friction and air drag losses. Eventually, however, that initial energy stored in the spring will exhaust itself and the wheel will come to a stop. 

[frankinstien]

Actually that setup could work without the weight! By spinning the wheel some of the energy will be stored by the spring as it rolls past it, the wheel will actually slow down a tad pit as the spring absorbs a small amount of the energy from the spinning wheel. Now the spring will release that stored energy to make up the losses from friction and air drag until it's exhausted. 

[HS]

Wouldn’t it be even better without the spring? It’s not like a watch spring mechanism that slowly releases stored energy. This thing is continually charging and discharging, there are contact friction losses and internal friction losses when the kinetic energy from the flywheel is being converted to potential energy in the spring, and back again.

It could have just remained as kinetic energy, where it only dissipates through air drag and bearing friction. The spring just introduces another way to dissipate energy, right? Because bearing friction and air drag are still operating the same amount in a full rotation, just half of it is slower than average, and half of it is faster than average.

[frankinstien]

The system appears to reach a state of equilibrium, it's a steady rpm. If the spring weren't there it would steadily lower its RPM. I have seen this type of engine with those cheap pendulum clocks that don't use a battery to power the pendulum but have two magnets facing each other with the same polarity. The energy storage, however, is in a magnetic field. With the magnets, the pendulum reaches a state of equilibrium and swings for days! If the magnets are not there it stops within minutes...