Teleportation breakthrough made

[rawstory]

As seen on The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com

Teleportation breakthrough made

By Paul Rincon
BBC News Online science staff

In the past, teleportation has only been possible with particles of light Image: Rainer Blatt
Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time, the journal Nature reports.

The feat was achieved by two teams of researchers working independently on the problem in the US and Austria. The ability to transfer key properties of one particle to another without using any physical link has until now only been achieved with laser light.

Experts say the capability to do the same with massive particles like atoms could lead to new superfast computers.

This development is a long way from the transporters used by Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Kirk in the famous Star Trek TV series.

Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3811785.stm

[rkc3]

1. It's a shame we have to wait.

I can think of a few people who should be beamed up.

[GingerSnaps]

20. Beam Bush up Scotty

[DrWeird]

2. Leave it up to the media to fuck things up.

Somebody tunnelled a hydrogen atom several years ago.

[MallRat]

3. Excuse my ignorance when it comes to quantum mechanics...

...but I thought that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle made it impossible to ascertain both the location and momentum of an electron.

If you don't know the location and momentum of the electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom, how can you be sure that you're truly replicating the exact same state from Point A to Point B?

-MR

[Dudley_DUright]

19. Stationary states of the atom do obey the HUP

You can measure the total energy to see what state it is in, but you can't know precisely the kinetic energy (related to momentum p thru p^2/2m) or the potential energy (related to position thru ke^2/r).

[Doctor Smith]

4. The ugly truth about transporters

is that they don't actually transport the original, rather, an exact replica is made at the destination, and the original is then "dealt with".

[Beetwasher]

27. Correct, This is NOT TRUE Teleportation

It's more like tele-transmutation or tele-transmogrification...

[Cronus Protagonist]

5. There is no "transportation of an atom" here. None.

The experiments are performed using "twinned" photons.

One must spin in the opposite direction than the other because they're produced from a source that only produces paired photons with opposing attributes. Measure the spin on one and the spin on the other must be the opposite, no matter how much distance is between the pair and no matter if you invert the spin on on before measuring it, but after it has long left the source. (Bell's proof)

The superluminal passage of information is the fun aspect of this, allowing for communication of information, not the transfer of a physical object, at faster than light speeds. All in apparent contradiction with Einstein's theory of relativity that indicates that nothing in this universe can travel at faster than light speed... apparently this does not apply to information and/or the physical attributes of photons.

This has nothing to do with electrons that are spinning around an atom other than these are used as carriers, and in this case possibly storage, for the quantum atrributes, which are merely the attrubutes such as spin and direction. It is the attribute information which is "teleported" (they should not be using that word), not the atom.

BLAME BUSH FIRST!

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[DrWeird]

6. While I haven't read the Nature paper...

and popular media reporting of scientific breakthroughs is notoriously bad...

I believe what they're trying to say is that they've actually teleported an atom. Which isn't really news, since it's been done before. At the quantum level things tunnel or "teleport" all the time. It's the basis for STMs and has many consequences in the development of modern day electronics.

That said, Einstein's theory of relativity DOES apply to information and thus "superluminal" communication is not physically possible. There are, if I'm not mistaken, a few tricks to make it look like things can travel faster than light, however it still does not violate relativity.

[Occulus]

13. think of it this way

they are using an "instance" of one object. For example:

In computer animation, I create a sphere. I then create an instance of that same sphere (not a copy). Whatever happens to the original object also happens to the instance.

That's the gist I got from this through their mentioning of entanglement. The properties of one are the properties of the other, perhaps only exactly reversed.

I'm probably wrong, though.

[Cronus Protagonist]

17. Look up Bell's experiment

Where quon attribute information does indeed travel superluminally, but none of the physical matter has been "transported" or "teleported" anywhere at all, which would be in violation of Einstein's theorems.

Superluminal attribute correlation between photons is a proven fact, proven by actual experiment. (Bell, again)

Contrary to your claim, an atom has never been "teleported", only the attributes of its quons have been "transmitted" or, more accurately, entangled and disentangled, which is what the article is about - using phase entanglement of quons associated with charged particles using Bell's breakthrough theorem.

BLAME BUSH FIRST!

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[Beetwasher]

29. That's A Good Explanation

Well put...I like to think of what they did as tele-transmutation or tele-transmogrification...

[aneerkoinos]

21. Information

Einstein got the concept of 'information' badly wrong, by definition information means giving form to something, and that has no problems with superluminality. Quite an other thing compared to "information" that is relied on "stuff", atoms and bigger, and is manipulable by human will, which should be rather called a 'message'.

Yes, it strongly looks like exchange of messages 'supraluminally' is impossible (too bad), but supraluminal information is a most natural thing. Well, there's some hope with telepathy, that seems to fall under information, not sending or receiving messages.

[JayS]

7. Big deal...

My fax machine transmits matter all the time. Stick in the document and it is transported somewhere else. The machine even makes a copy of the document for you.

[Vogon_Glory]

8. Transporter? Mebbe Not. But We Will Have the Ansible

While I'm doubtful that this development will produce Star Trek-type transporters, it looks like humanity might gain the benefit of of another often-posited device--the ansible.

Of course I'm wondering if the reason humanity hasn't heard from the civlized parts of the galaxy because they use teleportation to transmit information instead of radio waves.

[0rganism]

11. I suspect the reason is somewhat different

Imagine you're sailing past an island of hostile cannibals, engaged in devouring one-another and destroying their habitat with some extremely dangerous and stupid behaviors. Do you stop by to say hello? Or do you just keep on moving...

[DarthDem]

24. Heh. Exactly.

Unless they're looking for natural resources (as in Independence Day), I see little reason for such a visit at this point either. The sci-fi fan in me has always figured that maybe we're being loosely monitored by a few scouts from time to time to see if anything interesting has turned up, but that's about it. :)

[0rganism]

31. In the immortal words of Calvin...

"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

[KittyWampus]

15. Ansible? What's That?

Please? :dunce:

[Teaser]

16. A device that allows faster-than-light communication...

Mentioned in Ursula K. LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" and Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"

[missile_bender]

9. This sounds more like a duplication

machine rather than a transporter. That's OK. Wouldn't it be nice to duplicate food and energy sources? And forget cloning, we could keep a copy of the president in quantum storage for use in case of assassination. Think of the savings in Secret Service!

[Occulus]

14. sounds like more like a mirror to me

[aneerkoinos]

22. No

Definately not, because in the act of quantum teleportation the original state is destroyed the instant it is teleported. In that sense, it is a genuine Scott machine.

[MikeG]

10. How long before we can fax pizzas?

[nolabels]

25. Lets get in quick before Bill Gates corners the market on pizzas

http://www.d.umn.edu/~mohs0025/funny/

[Beetwasher]

28. Actually, This COULD Eventually, Very Far Down The Line

Do something like that (theoretically). But you'd already have to have some matter on your end to be transformed into a pizza...

[InkAddict]

12. It may be possible to change history?

Read: "The X President" by Philip Baruth to learn the "truth" of BC's life story as "revealed" by a dedicated biographer snared by future American agency types who, I think, are attempting to stop a HUGE ongoing war.

Haven't finished it yet so don't blow the ending for me, o-kay?

[Ilsa]

18. Jebus. I dare someone here to go

post this on freeper-public and see what kind of "duh" comments they come up with.

There is no doubt in my mind that DU members are some of the smartest people in multiple disciplines I have ever met.

[Lautremont]

23. Well I don't know much about teleportation,

but I know enough to keep a sharp lookout for flies in the telepod.

[MallRat]

26. Help me! Please, help meeeee!

The remake still gives me the shivers when I think about it. Just incredible.

-MR

[THUNDER HANDS]

30. do we really need faster computers?

Mine works just fine, thank you very much. :)

[Occulus]

32. we do, trust me

For example, only a quantum-based computer or "calculating method" could possibly accurately mimic a living system. Brownian motion in the blood, and all that. All those factors need to be taken into account when simulating a living system.

By the same token, only computers much faster and operating under a totally different architecture could make TRUE artificial intelligence (sense of self, sense of one's own mortality, etc) possible.

To that end, there have been some truly remarkable experiments done in the realm of DNA computing. I wonder where that will take us.

I suppose it's also possible that we could use computers thousands of times more powerful than what we have now to help find a way to make the need for superluminal speed irrelevant. I'm thinking of an "Event Horizon" form of travel; Alcubierre's (sp?) "Warp Bubble" is one posited method for doing so.

[Cronus Protagonist]

33. Absolutely - I could use ten orders of magnitude increase in speed

Just for my audio processing. It currently takes up to two hours to process just 12 minutes of audio with some complex filters and I have a $9000 machine with SCSI RAID and fiber optics.

I'd like to get that down to under a second. I can dream, can't I?

ANYBODY BUT BUSH

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