Quantum Entanglewhat?

University of Washington physicist John Cramer is going to do an experiment based on quantum entanglement that will possibly prove backward causality. Essentially that means that because of quantum entanglement something that happens can happen before it happens.

This article got me thinking on the subject and although I'm not a quantum physicist, I think I see a flaw in the thinking. The experiment outlined in the article appears to encompass creating a beam of light from a laser, splitting it in two. The first beam is delayed and later manipulated. The second beam is immediately observed. The theory is that the second beam will show the manipulations before the first beam is changed. This part seems pretty straight forward.

My hypothesis is that this experiment won't even show quantum entanglement. unless the second beam is manipulated and the second observed.

If I understand this theory right, and I probably don't completely, spooky action at a distance truly happens instantaneously, the problem I see is that in terms of time, The second beam would reflect the state of the first beam only at the instant it is manipulated. Since the second beam has already been observed, that manipulation wouldn't even show.

Light is fast, but instantaneous is faster, so assuming that an object moving at the speed of light passes through time faster, if it were instantaneous it would pass through time instantaneously - thus at least a little faster than light. So in theory, the second beam would reflect the changes before the first beam was changed. I imagine that the difference between the speed of light and instantaneous is very small by our standards. The chance that it will be measurable would be extremely small unless there was a way to amplify the change, and I've never heard of a method of accomplishing this at a quantum scale.

If this experiment does work, that's great. I'd love to see it. If not, I won't be too surprised.

On another note, Are there any basement quantum physicists out there? I'm very interested in learning more and as a full-time dad who needs to learn a living at the same time, I'd love to hear some recommendations on where to start learning more...