Quantum Entangled Engines

[Jak Nazryth]

what sucks most about the Traveller game mechanics of Jump drive? Size of the fuel tanks.
Longer range = less cargo = less cash flow for most commercial vessels.

What if you had quantum entangled engines? The power plant and fuel tanks could be in a warehouse on any planet, theoretically, because quantum entangled particles react with one another no matter what the distance, be it 10 meters or 10 sub-sectors. The control systems would also be entangled so that you could literally have little if any need for the power plant or any of the fuel on board an advanced ship.
The same would apply for communication systems. You would truly have instant communication across the galaxy.
At what TL would this come into play in the Traveller system game mechanics? 18? 20? Higher?

 

[Prime_Evil]

If you could somehow use entangled particles to generate a jump field, does that mean you can only travel to destinations where the partner particles have already been transported at sublight velocities? Are you implying that you would need some of the entangled particles on the ship and the other half at the destination?

Either way, can batches of entangled particles be re-used or does the act of travel nudge them out of superposition and force them to assume a definite quantum state.

(FYI....This is similar to the way that FTL communication is handled in Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross - the entangled particles are 'used up' as they exchange data because the act of reading the data forces them into a single state. You might be able to mine those novels for ideas).

 

[GJD]

Quantum antanglement is a tricky thing. Do to one particle and it seems to do the same to another. You need to entangle the particles first, and it only works on individual photons, not whole atoms or molecules.

Assuming you could broaden the scope of QE to whole atoms and alter physical properties - I still don't think QE will help on cutting down mass requirements, as all it means is that if you need 100T of jump fuel, you'd still have to have 100T in the ship as when the jump fuel was consumed, the fule in the warehouse would be converted to plasma IN THE WAREHOUSE - not on the ship. ALso, it's equivalency, so you have two things with the same properties in two places, so you could maybe have all of the computers and avionics in a warehouse, and just have displays and inputs in the ship, so that the data gets input on the ship (sensors, drive controls, whatever), processed in the warehouse and then diplayed in the ship again. But, honestly, this would be altering what we know about QE to such an extenst that you could call it any kind of super science. If the fuel requirements seem too high, just make the drive more efficent!

It might also be useful for FTL communication in it's purer form, in a simple morse code kind of way. You can't pass information using QE, as it violates the laws of thermodynamics (apparently), so you couldn't manipulate the spin of a particle to send a message itself, but you could use an alteration of a bunch of particles to send a message in the WAY you alter them, like binary or morse.

G


Also, quantum entanglement

 

[Jak Nazryth]

I have always used the schematics and descriptions in the Mega Traveller Starship Operators manual as my working model of how the drives and power plant work. Each drive gets it's power for the same high yield fusion power plant. The Power Plant consumes the fuel, then sends the flow of power (electrical?) via power condiuate to the drives in a normal engine room.
Instead the power conduit is interrupted with a "quantum receptacle". Dumb sounding name I know, but for now it's the best I got. The Quantum Receptacle in the warehouse on a planet is matched to it's counterpart in the engine room on a distant ship. From there the power flows as normal to the drives.

Yes, I know that real world experiments today on earth can only entangle photons, and (I think) electrons. But this is a science fiction game. I simply need the working concept or theory to make it plausible. After all, do we need a real world proven lab experiments on Jump Space to play traveller? :wink: I'm not a physicist. I'm an Architect. Don't ask me to give you equations proving quantum entanglement works powering future drives or communications or robots in a cargo hold etc... I will leave that to future science fiction Traveller scientists and engineers. :lol:

This thread is me "thinking out loud" long range for a future encounter with an alien space hulk. The alien craft, predating human developed technology (around the time of human seeding by the predecessors of modern dryone) will have advance M-drives and FTL (non-jump drives) but no obvious power plant or sizable fuel source. In stead it uses(d) quantum entanglement. The players may or may not be able to figure this out. It will be a mystery to them, leading to another plot hook / story seed.

Right now I thinking about TL 20.

 

[GJD]

I see what you are saying, but the "Quantum receptacle" is, in effect, a teleporter that "sends" the power to a counterpart on the starship. That's not QE, that's some form of teleportation.

To get the "power" you'd need to create either a plasma in the warehouse for the ship to tap into (an MHD turbine can generate electricity from a moving plasma) - which still requires you to have the fuel on the ship to become entangled with the plasma created in the warehouse, or maybe create an entangled flow of electrons through the cabling to the jump drive et al. To do that you'd need an entangled jump drive in the warehouse, though, to be able to get the electrons to flow to the right places. Not sure it'd be practical.

G.

 

[Solomani666]

I have been using quantum entangled particles (QEPs) in my Traveller campaigns for several years now. I have a TL16+ race that uses them for FTL communications.

The rule I have IMTU is that:
The entanglement is broken should one of the particles enter jump space.

This not only puts a limit on this game altering technology but seems to make intuitive sense for future possible real-world physics. TL 20+ ancients may have found a way around this however.

In none of my reading on the subject could I find anything about the transmission of power between QEP's. Even if this was the case, the cost of making a few dtons of QEPs to transmit power would be cost prohibitive and the necessary gear to contain and convert the QEPs into usable energy would be size and cost prohibitive.

 

[GJD]

And therin lies the problem. You don't "transmit" anything between particles, just whatever change of state you do to one is also done to the other.

G.