The Twin You Never Met

Science News recently reported - December 21, 2018 - that the quantum state of “entanglement” had been obtained in a crystal made up of ten billion atoms. Verrrrry interesting, for a couple of reasons. First, entanglement itself is as fascinating as it is counterintuitive - Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.” And it is. When two particles are “entangled,” when you do something to one of the particles, the other particle demonstrates the affect of that “something” instantaneously - regardless of the distance between the particles. Yeah, Einstein got it right again - very spooky.  Seems like information is moving faster than the speed of light, which is supposed to be a major no no. Scientists have been messing around with the distance part of the phenomenon for quite awhile, and now claim to have entangled earth-bound and satellite particles that are 750 miles apart.

The second shocker is the “10 billion atoms” part.  10 billion is a little deceptive for us lay people - I mean 10 billion is a big number for everyone except politicians, oligarchs and hedge fund managers.  But ten billion atoms is still a pretty tiny cluster of matter. You certainly can’t see it with the naked eye. Still, the story got me thinking - what if we let the guys and gals in the back room have free reign and unlimited resources? How far are we from being able to entangle something as big as, well, a human being?

If we assume that technology will continue to evolve as swiftly as possible with little regard for ethical boundaries - CRISPR babies in China, for example - how long will it be until we can create "entangled twins"? And what might that look like? Or more precisely, what might we - us and our entangled twin - look like? And who would get to decide what actions we would take that would instantly be manifested in our twin? If meA fell in love, would meB fall as well? And with whom? And would the object of meA’s affection reciprocate? And would that individual’s entangled other have anything to say about the relationship? Or relationships?

Even stranger, let us consider the multiverse. See where I’m going here? Twins, or trips or quads entangled across various universes? Sharing experiences across incredibly vast variances of space-time. Obviously the stuff of science fiction. But then it wasn’t that long ago that the same was true of radio, television, audio/video/text communication computers you could carry in your pocket, and self-driving cars.