“Quantum teleportation has achieved a new milestone or, should we say, a new ten-milestone: scientists have recently had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles, an unprecedented length. The researchers who have accomplished this feat note that this brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal, and that the ten miles they have reached could span the distance between the surface of the earth and space.
As we’ve explained before, “quantum teleportation” is quite different from how many people imagine teleportation to work. Rather than picking one thing up and placing it somewhere else, quantum teleportation involves entangling two things, like photons or ions, so their states are dependent on one another and each can be affected by the measurement of the other’s state.
When one of the items is sent a distance away, entanglement ensures that changing the state of one causes the other to change as well, allowing the teleportation of quantum information, if not matter. However, the distance particles can be from each other has been limited so far to a number of meters.
Teleportation over distances of a few hundred meters has previously only been accomplished with the photons traveling in fiber channels to help preserve their state. In this particular experiment, researchers maximally entangled two photons using both spatial and polarization modes and sent the one with higher energy through a ten-mile-long free space channel. They found that the distant photon was still able to respond to changes in state of the photon they held onto even at this unprecedented distance.”
Read more at Ars technica
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Why do they change states because of the other ones and how? :S
This is so exciting to me, not just for the possibilities in telecommunications, but also the implications philosophically.
Philosophically ? No, you must be kidding … This is a breakthrough in our understanding of the nature of reality. This is in line with what mystics have always been saying …
im pretty sure atoms were teleported across the Danube without a fibre channel a few years ago
@Hermant
I hope you’re the one kidding. Exactly how is it in line with what mystics have always been saying? As a heads up, I’m expecting an answer from the Deepak Chopra school of pseudo-scientific babblery.
It’s not really a breakthrough either – particles have been teleported for many years. This is just an improvement in transporting one of the two entangled particles so that its superposition doesn’t collapse (or that’s my understanding of the above article, anyway).
Wow this is exciting news, I agree. The possibilities on many different levels are quite astounding.
Alex: you’d have to ask someone who studies quantum physics to explain. Basically the behaviour of the universe, and the particles in it, at the subatomic level is quite different from the behaviour we witness in “traditional” Newtonian physics. It’s extremely confusing because much of it is about the duality of energy such as electrons or photons. I don’t pretend to understand it – as my background is in computing and psychology rather than physics – but I find it fascinating and have many books on the topic. For some background information try Wikipedia http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
I guess kind of like a fax machine. You need paper on the other end to receive the information. :p
does distance matter? i didnt think so.
And so the evolution of communication between points continues to grow. Everything turning into one giant neural network. As for whether this has implications for actual teleportation, I for one would never EVER step into a teleporter.
My reasoning being, the person at other end might just be a perfect copy who everyone thinks is me. As for my true concious self, he died stepping into the teleporter. No-one else would ever know the difference and thus would never raise the alarm :O
Disappointing that comments do not allow ‘reply to’, have to type @Rob : Yes, exactly, mystics say that everything is connected etc. there is really no space between matter and so forth. I have read one of Deepak Chopra’s book ‘Timeless Mind, Ageless Body’, makes interesting reading. I don’t know about his other stuff that might be pseudo-scientific.
Doesnt it sound just like human interaction? At least the type you get to see a lot nowadays. And also .. the type of relation we all have in ourself with our two selfes.
Telepathy ..
I myself think telepathy can work .. but most of us dont want to be entangled with someone like that … it’s about true cores … Who would want to be recipient. Training can do something about that perhaps.
Totally OT? Depends .. the mechanism is not really about anything else.
i have a strong suspicion that this is a bunch of cobblers
Maybe I’m missing something here, but if the “teleported” items are not the actual items physically relocated from one point to another, then surely they have not been teleported. They are merely replications of the original item, created at a remote locality. This sounds to me like another example of “bigging-up” science. Similar to the recent “creation” of life. Which was actually more a case of hijacking than scratch-building.
Heres a good book about the similarities of eastern thinking and physics – The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by physicist Fritjof Capra.
Alan, the article states “As we’ve explained before, “quantum teleportation” is quite different from how many people imagine teleportation to work.”
It is information (ie the state of the proton) that is being teleported.
Thanks Tony. I should have known better than to take science at their “chosen” word. What they mean is data transmission. Since their “teleportation” does not mean teleportation, as defined in the dictionary. And this “quantum leap” is in actuality an infinitesimally small step.
I already use teleportation when I’m touching cloth
@Hermant
Oh dear. You fulfilled my expectations.
Firstly, what you described there has nothing to do with this article. Secondly, what you described there has nothing to do with anything scientific.
Deepak Chopra makes a living out of pseudo-science. His bastardisation of quantum physics is breathtaking. I have seen a ‘debate’ where he claims the Moon is quantum soup until we observe it (at which point the room erupted with laughter). I highly recommend you don’t read any more of his books, and get into some equally exciting but more reality-based stuff like Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku.
In no way is quantum physics a confirmation or validation of mystics or psychics. Once they demonstrate the efficacy of their claims, we can look into mechanisms. This hasn’t been done yet.
The book ‘Ender’s Game’ by Orson Scott Card describes a form of quantum communication using entangled particles. I believe it is a book much loved by physicists. It is a good read, if a bit cheesy at some points.
For me the interesting thing is that the communication is not, and cannot be, superluminal (faster than light). But the process is supposed to be instantaneous! For anyone who is looking for magic in the real world, HERE IT IS.
My thought images – I imagine a see-saw with an entangled particle at either end. The bar between the particles is the universe itself. Push down one end, the other comes up. Instant action at a distance. You can’t see the bar moving because we are all part of it. It doesn’t ‘move’, either, since all that is changed is the spin of the particle.
I am probably spouting nonsense. Any physicists, put me straight if you can.
Even Einstein thought that an acausal link was too much to handle. Where is the chain of causality? Cor blimey guv, I better do some work before me brain overheats.
Sounds to me like they’re on their way to making a working ansible.
Thanks, Rob, for simplifying/clearing up some of that
@Chris… lol