How is faster-than-light communication achieved in Away?

How is faster-than-light communication achieved in Away? - Clear Light Bulb on Black Surface

Most of the technology in Away is just a small extrapolation of today's technology. For example, they are still using chemical rockets instead of e.g. nuclear ones. They still use bulky uncomfortable hard-shell space suits instead of mechanical counter pressure suits.

In the pilot, it is mentioned that the lunar base is melting water from the lunar pole to pump into the spacecraft for radiation shielding, so they don't even have "magic" shielding a la Andrew Weir's The Martian.

There is no artificial gravity, no AI running the ship, no ubiquitous robots.

In almost all aspects, their technology is only slightly more advanced than ours, in some aspects, it even feels like a step backwards. (E.g. we do have experimental robots on the ISS.)

There is one exception, though: they obviously have faster-than-light communication, which is not "just" a huge leap forward from our current technologies, but in fact physically and mathematically impossible based on our current understanding of the universe.

However, I do not remember any explanation as to how this is achieved. (Unlike e.g. the radiation shielding, which the writers felt important enough to explain that they put it in the pilot episode.)

Is any explanation given about how they achieve faster-than-light communication?



Best Answer

There's a huge difference between a story that claims to have faster-than-light communication, and a story that simply omits the delay from sublight communication because it hinders the flow of the scenes and doesn't add anything of value.

Away seems to be an example of the latter case. There is no mention of FTL communication that I can find, and the communication we do see would've been unchanged (plotwise) even if there had been a delay between each message.




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How can we communicate faster than light?

Superluminal communication is a hypothetical process in which information is sent at faster-than-light (FTL) speeds. The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment.

Can a message travel faster than light?

The bad news is that it's impossible to send communications any faster without breaking established laws of physics \u2013 but the good news is that some workarounds have been suggested, which hold the tantalising promise of allowing for faster-than-light, or \u201csuperluminal\u201d communication.

Can we transmit information at the speed of light?

The answer to whether meaningful information can travel faster than light is currently no. We're only at the level of moving a few quantum particles at speeds that may possibly be over the speed of light, if the data pans out on subsequent experiments.

Is quantum entanglement communication possible?

Quantum entanglement can be used for communication by taking advantage of the unique correlations exhibited by entangled qubits. We can use entangled qubits to create instantaneous agreement on information across very long distances.



Why Can't You Use Quantum Mechanics To Communicate Faster Than Light?




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