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entanglement and FTL communication

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joe.altepeter joe.altepeter's picture
entanglement and FTL communication

Just got my copy of Eclipse Phase at gencon. Looks fantastic. One suggestion for future editions/supplements:

FTL communication is based on quantum entanglement in the game. Unfortunately, this is one of the myths we quantum physicists keep trying to debunk (entanglement is very cool, but doesn't work for FTL signals).

Obviously FTL communication seems impossible with our current knowledge of physics, so you've got to make *something* up. My suggestion is to add another two sentences that make it clear some future scifi breakthrough needs to be combined with entanglement to make FTL comm possible.

Something like: "An FTL comm device generates infinitesimally small and short-lived Pandora gates, each of which can transfer only a single bit of information. These gateways can only be created between entangled qubits, and the creation of the gateway destroys the two entangled particles. For this reason you must have the same number of qubits in your entanglement reservoir as the number of bits of information you wish to transmit."

Great work on the game!

-Joe

RobBoyle RobBoyle's picture
Thanks for the feedback. We

Thanks for the feedback. We knew that QE comms were not possible/likely as things are currently understood and that we were diverging from hard sci-fi a bit with that one, but we felt it was intriguing and useful enough in the setting to include it anyway.

Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios