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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 30 March 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It reviews quantum entanglement, nonlocality and EPR experiments, and asks whether nonlocal quantum effects could carry observer-to-observer signals faster than light. The paper describes proposed experiments and an example of real-time Earth control of a Mars rover. It concludes that there is no compelling answer yet and that experimental tests are needed.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/30/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD reviews quantum entanglement and nonlocality with a focus on whether those phenomena might be usable as a means of faster-than-light communication between observers, especially for real-time space operations over interplanetary distances. The report surveys the relevant quantum experiments and no-signal theorems, then examines proposed communication schemes based mainly on momentum-entangled photons, including scenarios involving superluminal and retro-causal signaling. However, it repeatedly acknowledges that the central question remains unresolved experimentally, and it gives substantial attention to the coherence-versus-entanglement tradeoff and other features of standard quantum mechanics that may prevent usable signaling even if non-local correlations are experimentally validated. Overall, the document is an exploratory analysis of whether quantum nonlocality could conceivably support a practical communications application rather than a demonstration of prospective utility.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /P81t errl@IAL ~SI! 8HL'I The Space-Communication Implications of Quantum Entanglement and Nonlocality Foreword and Introduction This paper reviews quantum entanglement and nonlocality and considers the possibility that this phenomenon could be used for sending observer-to observer signals. Such a demonstration would break several quantum "no signal theorems" in the physics literature. Nonlocal quantum signaling would have far-reaching implications as an enabling technology for superluminal and retrocausal signaling. Scenarios that might lead to nonlocal quantum communication are described, and applications to retrocausal signaling and real-time space communication are considered. Also considered briefly is the nonlocal communication implications of nonlinear quantum mechanics. Communication in space at the scale of the solar system is severely limited by the space-time scale set by the speed of light. Light signals, whether in the form of radio waves, microwaves, visible light, X-rays, or gamma rays, require about 3.3 microseconds to travel a distance of 1 kilometer. A light signal sent from Earth requires about 1.3 seconds to reach the Moon, between 4.4 and 20 minutes to reach Mars, and between 4 and 4.3 hours to reach Neptune, depending on their orbital positions. This time delay makes real-time control of remote space-based devices impossible and leads to the need for pre programmed robotic devices with enough "intelligence" to perform limited operations with a minimum of remote control. The burden of these limitations raises the question of whether there is some way to speed up the space communications link. The conventional answer is "No!," because the well-established special theory of relativity is viewed as limiting signal transmission speed to the speed of light, with superluminal communications strictly forbidden. However, as will be discussed in Section III, relativity prohibits only certain forms of superluminal communication, while other forms are not in conflict with relativity. One phenomenon that appears, at least superficially, to exhibit superluminal aspects while preserving compatibility with special relativity is quantum nonlocality, the ability of quantum phenomena to enforce correlations between quantum states over large separations in space-time. When two photons emerge from a single quantum event, the state of one photon may be subtly connected to that of the other. The classical view is that, once separated, such photon states must be fixed according to mechanics and conservation relations that act at the point of their origin, so that modifying one later will not affect the other. In quantum physics, however, as borne out by experiment (Reference 1, 2), the outcome of a measurement of the state of one of the photons, even well after their point of joint creation, can affect the state of the other photon. This connection is referred to as quantum entanglement, a phrase first coined by Erwin Schrodinger (Reference 3). Questions raised by the phenomenon of quantum entanglement are: (1) what is the causal connection between entangled states, and (2) can the phenomenon possibly be used for sending observer-to-observer signals? This UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOR OFFI&I.t.k Wliliii QfslL¥ iv
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