homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Quantum technology of spinning black holes

Are black holes trying to tell us something?

Ovidiu Racorean
October 17, 2017 @ 5:46 pm

share Share

As I’m sitting on a bench, a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I contemplate the black and starry sky. Dragging smoke from the cigarette and drinking some coffee, I think of the light that crosses the Universe all the way from the farthest stars.

A strange idea does not give me peace.

Could black holes be powering natural quantum computers? Image credits: NASA / JPL.

Like a mosquito, it irritates me with its perpetual buzz. Does the light that comes to us from far away contain quantum information, just like the one I produce in the laboratory, with the help of mirrors, beam splitters and prisms?

We used to encode quantum information in photons by manipulating the polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM). It’s tedious work, but in the end, twisting the polarization and creating OAM, using beam splitters and prisms, a quantum message is stored in a tiny single photon.

More smoke, more coffee.

Surprisingly, dead stars can provide a plausible solution to that question. Remarkably, our laborious work in the is easily done, naturally, by the gravity around rotating black holes.

Black holes are changing the “face” of the surrounding spacetime, curving and twisting it. While traveling through this distorted spacetime, the photons twist the polarization and create OAM. Finally, if they finally manage to escape the gravity of the black hole, they have a quantum message stored. A message that we might be able to read. If this is the case then…

Unbelievably, a quantum computer already exists in nature!

More smoke, more coffee.

Still, what an irony to think that gravity is creating the “spooky action at a distance”. I wonder what Einstein would have said about this, as I finish my last drop of coffee.

I finish the cigarette and it’s time to put on paper all these thoughts. You can find them in my newly published research in the New Astronomy journal (Creation of single-photon entangled states around rotating black holeshttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.newast.2017.09.001).

Now, all that remains is to decipher the quantum message that the black holes send us. But that’s a story for another coffee.

share Share

A Brain Implant Just Turned a Woman’s Thoughts Into Speech in Near Real Time

This tech restores speech in real time for people who can’t talk, using only brain signals.

Using screens in bed increases insomnia risk by 59% — but social media isn’t the worst offender

Forget blue light, the real reason screens disrupt sleep may be simpler than experts thought.

We Should Start Worrying About Space Piracy. Here's Why This Could be A Big Deal

“We are arguing that it’s already started," say experts.

An Experimental Drug Just Slashed Genetic Heart Risk by 94%

One in 10 people carry this genetic heart risk. There's never been a treatment — until now.

We’re Getting Very Close to a Birth Control Pill for Men

Scientists may have just cracked the code for male birth control.

A New Antibiotic Was Hiding in Backyard Dirt and It Might Save Millions

A new antibiotic works when others fail.

Researchers Wake Up Algae That Went Dormant Before the First Pyramids

Scientists have revived 7,000-year-old algae from Baltic Sea sediments, pushing the limits of resurrection ecology.

A Fossil So Strange Scientists Think It’s From a Completely New Form of Life

This towering mystery fossil baffled scientists for 180 Years and it just got weirder.

ChatGPT Seems To Be Shifting to the Right. What Does That Even Mean?

ChatGPT doesn't have any political agenda but some unknown factor is causing a subtle shift in its responses.

This Freshwater Fish Can Live Over 120 Years and Shows No Signs of Aging. But It Has a Problem

An ancient freshwater species may be quietly facing a silent collapse.