[chris_mahan]

Yeah, not saying this was possible now. But in 10, 20 years?

Perhaps they can be entangled at the factory in the "special room" then kept stable over the next 10 years. That would be enough, no?

[sp332]

Sure. Last year, they stopped a photon for a solid minute. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162289-light-stopped-comp... Note this preserves the quantum state of the photon - it's not just storing the energy and then re-emitting a different photon.

[devilshaircut]

It is my limited understanding that the idea of "a different photon" would be sort of irrelevant here as quantum state is the only thing that differentiates objects such as photons from one another. Outside of that, photons are essentially fungible. I don't really understand the finer points of the experiment however and I could be totally wrong in my understanding.

[knodi123]

I can imagine a world where they're more than just fungible-

They could even be literally the same object. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

[sp332]

Oh yeah, I think the current model is that it gets stuck in an electron somehow. But since it preserves the quantum state, it's still usable for quantum crypto and quantum computing.