This week we have an introspective treat from a quantum economic theorist out of Romania.
Ovidiu Racorean takes us inside his mind as he meditates about the nature of black holes.
I sit here on the bench, coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, contemplating the black and starry sky.
As I take a drag from the cigarette, I think of the light that reaches me from across the universe.
Like a mosquito irritating me with its perpetual buzz, a strange idea won't give me peace.
In our lab, we encode quantum information in photons by manipulating the polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons.
It’s a 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.
I take another drag from the cigarette and gulp some more coffee.
Does the light that comes to us from far away contain quantum information like the one I produce in the laboratory? Dead stars can provide a plausible answer to the question.
Our laborious work in the lab is easily done by gravity around rotating black holes. Black holes are changing the ‘face’ of the surrounding spacetime, curving and twisting it.
While traveling through this distorted space-time, the photons twist the polarization and create OAM. Photons escape the gravity of a black hole with a quantum message stored.
Unbelievably, a quantum computer already exists in nature!
And still, what an irony! The gravity is creating the ‘spooky action at a distance.’
What would Einstein have said about this, I wonder as I drain the last drop of coffee.
I put out the cigarette and it's time to put all these thoughts on paper and send them to the New Astronomy journal.
Now all that remains is to decipher the quantum message that the black holes send us.
Time for another coffee and cigarette!