Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

[bik0]

Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

First, they teleported photons, then atoms and ions. Now one physicist has worked out how to do it with energy, a technique that has profound implications for the future of physics.

In 1993, Charlie Bennett at IBM's Watson Research Center in New York State and a few pals showed how to transmit quantum information from one point in space to another without traversing the intervening space.

The technique relies on the strange quantum phenomenon called entanglement, in which two particles share the same existence. This deep connection means that a measurement on one particle immediately influences the other, even though they are light-years apart. Bennett and company worked out how to exploit this to send information. (The influence between the particles may be immediate, but the process does not violate relativity because some informatiom has to be sent classically at the speed of light.) They called the technique teleportation.

That's not really an overstatement of its potential. Since quantum particles are indistinguishable but for the information they carry, there is no need to transmit them themselves. A much simpler idea is to send the information they contain instead and ensure that there is a ready supply of particles at the other end to take on their identity. Since then, physicists have used these ideas to actually teleport photons, atoms, and ions. And it's not too hard to imagine that molecules and perhaps even viruses could be teleported in the not-too-distant future.

But Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University in Japan has come up with a much more exotic idea. Why not use the same quantum principles to teleport energy?
There is a growing sense that the properties of the universe are best described not by the laws that govern matter but by the laws that govern information. This appears to be true for the quantum world, is certainly true for special relativity, and is currently being explored for general relativity. Having a way to handle energy on the same footing may help to draw these diverse strands together.
Interesting stuff. There's no telling where this kind of thinking might lead.

http://goo.gl/xJll

[aquart]

1. But...how does it get there?

[TheWraith]

7. Hmm. Short answer?

It spontaneously stops existing in one place, and starts existing in the other. Instantaneously.

Cool, huh?

[aquart]

12. Ah. And how does it get there?

[phantom power]

15. "here" or "there" is just another piece of information

We think of the universe as a physical system, mostly because we live inside it and the rules we have to obey act like things such as "space" "time" "matter" etc.

It's quite likely that the whole thing is just a computational system. Under the right circumstances, changing location is accomplished by changing the properties that encode location. The information was associated with one particle. Now it is associated with another particle. The rules by which this was accomplished operate at a level where location is just a piece of information, not someplace you have to actually travel through space to get to.

[Orsino]

16. Quite nicely, thank you very much.

I have the feeling that even asking the question, though, will make the particle stop existing. Just out of spite. B-)

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. The entangled particles form a linked system

Today, building on a number of papers published in the last year, Hotta outlines his idea and its implications. The process of teleportation involves making a measurement on each one an entangled pair of particles. He points out that the measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system. He then shows that by carefully choosing the measurement to do on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy.

All this is possible because there are always quantum fluctuations in the energy of any particle. The teleportation process allows you to inject quantum energy at one point in the universe and then exploit quantum energy fluctuations to extract it from another point. Of course, the energy of the system as whole is unchanged.

[abelenkpe2]

2. sweet! nt.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. cooool.....

[mike_c]

4. this sentence leaped out at me....

There is a growing sense that the properties of the universe are best described not by the laws that govern matter but by the laws that govern information.

This very much parallels my own thinking in biology. Over the years I've become more and more convinced that the information content of the universe is intimately connected with everything material. That is obvious at the level of biological organization, but even the most fundamental observations of matter in the universe run into massive amounts of information storage. The heterogeneous distribution of matter itself stores information about the processes and states that created that distribution. And when we add the complexity of biochemical organization, we begin to incorporate enormous amounts of information into every measurable state of living matter.

[wroberts189]

8. I noticed that as well.. here is an interesting site/book you might like:

http://www.signatureinthecell.com/about-the-book.php


Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, by Stephen C. Meyer

[mike_c]

9. is that a joke...?

"The foundations of scientific materialism are in the process of crumbling." Meyer "demonstrates that previous scientific efforts to explain the origins of biological information have all failed, and argues convincingly for intelligent design as the best explanation of life’s beginning."

Good one. You made me look!

:rofl:

[FiveGoodMen]

11. "Increasingly scientists realize they've been wrong"

"The scientific world is just discovering what we always knew...blah, blah, blah..."

IDers say this every time they open their mouths.

Everyone in my extended family fall for it every time.

Lies, damned lies, and creationists!

[wroberts189]

13. no joke... When it comes down to it life needs info to evolve and where it "gets" it you tell me. nt

[laconicsax]

17. This is the science forum, not the creationism forum.

Intelligent Design is creationism in a tuxedo.

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. Tal shaka mel? Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.

[laconicsax]

20. I think you're mixing your languages.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. I was just going to say: "Oh my gosh! That sounds like intelligent design!"

Is anyone familiar with the writings of the late Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin? You might find this interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

I wonder if there is some arcane connection between the subject of the OP and the fact that mere human observation of some sub-atomic particle or other interferes with its state. More confirmation for the scientismificists in a Newtonian, mechanistic time-warp that there is no 'objective' reality, but instead, 'inter-subjective'.

I love Neils Bohr's take on our knowledge of realitys, such as the ones at this link:

"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/niels_bohr_2.html

[BadgerKid]

10. Well, "information theory" for molecules is well known already.

I assume the new idea here is to scale it up to the universe in some way.. This wouldn't be surprising since the notion of entropy, also known as information content, comes up when talking about objects such as black holes.

[Joe Chi Minh]

21. You and wroberts189 might find the first and second articles at the site linked below

interesting:

http://science-spirituality.blogspot.com/search/label/Mysticism

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Toshiba has been playing with this sort of thing.....

http://www.toshiba-europe.com/research/crl/qig/entangledphotonpairsource.html

[ThoughtCriminal]

6. Fax me some paper! - nt

[Vinnie From Indy]

14. Spooky action at a distance

I'll believe it when I see it!