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Quantum Entanglement and Communication

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There has been a fair amount of speculation about how the phenomenon of quantum entanglement could produce faster-than-light communication. This means, within the context of the physics of relativity, that a message recipient an appropriate distance away (say, on earth's moon base) could learn of events on earth before they happen.

One common example of quantum entanglement involves socks. A physicist named Reinhold Bertlmann (who retired in 2010) was notorious among his colleagues at the University of Vienna for always wearing different colored socks. So if you observed only his left ankle, you could say something with certainty about the sock on the right ankle. If the left sock was pink, the right sock was NOT pink.

In 1981, J.S. Bell actually wrote an article for a serious peer-reviewed journal of physics with that phenomenon in the title, "Bertlmann's Socks and the Nature of Reality."

If we imagine that the pair of socks becomes separated, and the right sock ends up at the moon base, then a moon base occupant will be able to observe that the right sock is pink, and conclude that the left sock (still on earth) is NOT pink.

What is spooky is that for the entangled particles, we're told that this relationship can hold for a NOW (a present moment) that both particles share. So if we can imagine the pink sock changing color, the not-pink sock turns pink. If our moon based observer can change the color of the sock that has reached his base, an observer back on earth can see the corresponding change in the stay-at-home entangled sock. The two people might have decided that the change means something -- "We found that golf ball!" or whatever. Since the change of an entangled particle can be taken as a signal, the phenomenon makes possible faster-than-light communication. QED. Right?

Well ... not so fast. Three years ago a physicist writing for Forbes expressed skepticism. Chad Orzel, associate professor in the physics department at Union College, Schenectady, New York, has this to say:

How it would (or wouldn't) work:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/05/04/the-real-reasons-quantum-entanglement-doesnt-allow-faster-than-light-communication/#fc465613a1eb
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