entanglement distilled

I bought a book on quantum mechanics, but I haven't cracked it yet because I also bought a text on classical mechanics that I'm determined to finish first. (I've been forced into autodidacticism by an incapacity to pay tuition for everything I'd like to learn.) On break, I've been cheating by reading The Age of Entanglement by Louisa Gilder--a good little book whose only "fault" is maybe getting a bit too involved in the narratives that hold the physics together, though that was perhaps her purpose for writing it. So for those interested in the physical insights and less so in the action that filled the interstices, I've embarked on creating a distilled version of the text that'll nevertheless bore you with my musings on the topic.

Entanglement refers to one thing's continued involvement with another with which it has previously been in contact despite its being spatially divided from the object after its initial encounter with it. Two electrons, for instance, that have touched each other and then been ripped asunder and flung far apart--these electrons will continue to transfer information between them as though they were still in physical contact despite being far enough apart that all known methods of communication would (should) occur too slowly to facilitate their interaction. A condition exists for the objects' continued entanglement: that they refrain from touching any other object once the initial connection has been established. In such an event, the connection with the initial partner is broken and a new one established between the objects involved in the latest pairing. Such a condition can usually only be met by very tiny particles.

Much talk and conjecture has been generated about such manifestations of faster-than-light (ftl) communication. The science fiction (fact!) of it all bores me. What I find interesting is the way the particles involved seem to disregard space almost entirely.