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Breakthrough Brings Star Trek Transporter Closer
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jun 04, 2007 03:32 PM
from the scott-me-up-beamy dept.
from the scott-me-up-beamy dept.
japerr writes to mention The Independant is reporting that a new breakthrough may bring scientists one step closer to a Star Trek style transporter. " A team of physicists has teleported data over a distance of 89 miles from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighbouring island of Tenerife, which is 10 times further than the previous attempt at teleportation through free space. The scientists did it by exploiting the "spooky" and virtually unfathomable field of quantum entanglement - when the state of matter rather than matter itself is sent from one place to another. Tiny packets or particles of light, photons, were used to teleport information between telescopes on the two islands. The photons did it by quantum entanglement and scientists hope it will form the basis of a way of sending encrypted data."
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Bad Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Misleading summary. Minus 100 points.
Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Funny)
He woke up the next day and told Geordi he didn't think he'd be able to go to the holodeck.
"Sorry, but I woke up feeling really encrypted"
- RG>
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Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Explains why Data had the urge to write Perl
-1 Troll
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Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Cpt.: What do you mean?
Data: All my video data has been modified... and there is a number burned in my mind... it's 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
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Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Bad Summary (Score:5, Funny)
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One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
What this would seem (at least on the surface) to bring us closer to is the ansible communications technology employed most famously in the Ender's Game series. That is, by utilizing the properties of quantum entanglement, it may be possible to achieve faster-than-light communication. This also has its problems though
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)
The above post deserves to be moderated as +1 humor, since it is the first to bring up the idea of the quantum entanglement communications device accidentally talking to another universe.
The above post is absolutely not flamebait.
hanzie.
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Informative)
Quantum teleportation doesn't work like that. Here's basically how it works: Two quantum particles are entangled. Then they are separated from each other, one goes to point A the other to B. If you do a measurement on A and COMMUNICATE THE RESULT OF THAT MEASUREMENT to where B is. The other guy can do a special measurement on B based on what A's result was. Then the state of A becomes what the state of B was originally. The particles have not moved (the measurements have changed their states, though), but A's state has been "teleported" to B. It's all to do with the fact that the two particles were entangled in the first place.
But the very important point is that you *still have communicate the result of the first measurement*, which means you're limited to the speed of light.
There is still application for encryption since just knowing what the result of the measurement was is not enough without having the actual entangled particle B.
BUT THERE IS NO APPLICATION TO STAR TREK-LIKE TELEPORTATION OR FASTER THAN LIGHT-SPEED COMMUNICATION. And frankly I'm getting tired of seeing the same wrong information getting played in the media like this. And slashdot even, come on guys, you should know better by now. I'm new here, aren't I?
Yes, IAAQP.
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
I own many of the technical manuals, and they go to pains to handwave over this part of it, making a big deal about "Heisenberg compensators" and working through how these machines capture the data (basically every quantum number in the system, in real time, digitally). All of the gear you mention usually has something called a "phase transition coil" that does the complicated job of making the matter non-corporeal. One can assume the mass is turned into energy, the books won't dissuade you from this, but mass into energy isn't a phase transition, and the amount of energy you'd get from the average human mass would destroy the Enterprise several times over.
The likely explanation a writer, cornered, would give you is that these devices handle matter that is in an as-yet-undiscovered, highly exotic, highly energetic, wavelike, and protean phase of matter, that might as well be energy from our modern-day perspective. In the canon, an object being transported is never referred to as energy, but as "phased matter," which would seem to support this.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going off to sleep with my highly exotic, highly energetic, and as-yet-undiscovered girlfriend.
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:4, Informative)
The type of system they're talking about is where you use entangling to imprint the differences between two particles on a third one. They're fundamentally different and resemble neither the ansible nor star trek transporters.
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Informative)
if you're trying to send data, you'll still need to send photons (or other particles) from one location to another. when you're talking about quantum entanglement and sending data across distances, what you're doing is taking two photons in the same location and tieing them together, then sending one of the particles across a distance. when it gets there, it's still tied together (unless something screwed it up on the way), but if you try to manipulate your photon then it unties from the other, so you cant use it to send info faster than light.
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Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
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Teleport? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Funny)
In other words:
No red-shirted crewman were harmed in this experiment.
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Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Teleport? (Score:5, Funny)
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Nah, he's dead Jim! (Score:5, Funny)
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Accurate headline? (Score:5, Insightful)
Einsteins view at least (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Einsteins view at least (Score:4, Informative)
You can't actually transmit information using entanglement. (From my even more limited understanding, in quantum teleportation, the entanglement is used to extract the quantum state of an object and store it in a photon, which is then sent somewhere else using something like fiber.) You don't control the state of the particle when you first observe it; it is completely random. If you actually change one particle, the two particles are said to "decohere" and are no longer entangled.
Again, I'm just an interested amateur, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Call me dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
We can already transport data through space without using quantum entanglement at all -- it's called radio.
Re:Call me dumb... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Call me dumb... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are lots of other problems, though. First of all, they can't even teleport single photons yet. All they can do is teleport a single degree of freedom of a single photon, such as polarization or transverse spatial state. Secondly, scaling the teleportation process up to macroscopic objects would require isolating the object to be teleported from its environment in order to preserve quantum coherence. I imagine vacuum exposure would make this procedure uncomfortable for... you know... living things.
It should be noted that quantum teleportation is not able to transfer matter or energy from transmitter to receiver. All the protocol can do is transfer the quantum state of a particle (or, in the future, groups of particles) from transmitter to receiver. That doesn't mean that humans can't be teleported, though; the receiver would simply keep a stock of raw materials such as carbon, hydrogen, calcium and oxygen atoms out of which to reconstruct the person.
For the moment, quantum teleportation bears little resemblance to its sci-fi namesake. It's still useful for sending secure messages because of one bizarre property of teleportation: a teleported state can be sent between points A and B without ever existing between those points. It's also the best way to network quantum computers.
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Re:Call me dumb... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I dunno. Six thousand years doesn't seem like that long to me.
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Re:Call me dumb... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, but no thanks.
Proof:
Scan yourself down to the most fundamental level (regardless of what that is), and build an exact duplicate without destroying the original. Press the start button on the duplicate, assuming instantaneous duplication and starting. Since the original's consciousness has maintained continuity in the original, even if the duplicate is an exact copy of the original's state, it cannot be continuous with the original's state because the duplicate exists at a different location and time. (I considered using "space-time locus", but it's difficult enough talking about this without resort to high-falutin' words :)
Therefore, the "you" that existed prior to duplication is the "you" of the original, and not the "you" of the duplicate. "You" suddenly don't perceive two different realities, one from the POV of the original, and one from the POV of the duplicate.
The conclusion is that if someone destroyes the original, "you" die. Really die. The duplicate may have all your memories and skills, and will think it is the original, but it is not.
Really, the only way teleportation (or brain-to-computer transference) could work is if each individual part (for some definition of "part") were duplicated, placed in sync with the original, and then the original part destroyed. Since consciousness consists of the whole and not the parts (assuming we're not going to invoke the supernatural), the consciousness remains continuous with only one instantiation at any one time.
I've given this some thought, since I hope to download in 2045 :)
--Rob
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IANAP.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IANAP.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:IANAP.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of entanglement this way: you've got two particles, each of them in a superposition of two states (horizontal and vertical polarization, for example). The "spookiness" of entanglement lies in the fact that the particles are created in a state where (for example) they have to have opposite polarizations. Thus even though each particle is in a (literally unknowable) superposition of horizontal and vertical, when you measure the first particle and find that it's horizontally polarized, that automatically means that a measurement on the second particle will show that it's vertically polarized. This occurs even if the second measurement is made a millisecond after the first measurement, and the two particles are on opposite sides of the galaxy.
At first glance, this is remarkable. At second glance, it's just conservation of momentum: say the two particles are created from another particle with angular momentum=0. Then the sum of the two angular momentums needs to be 0, so their polarizations must be opposite. The "spookiness" Einstein referred to lies in the fact that quantum mechanics says that both particles are literally horizontally AND vertically polarized, up until the point where the first one is "collapsed" onto horizontal (or vertical). Then all of a sudden the states of both particles are well defined, which occurs even if both particles are separated by a great distance. Einstein took this spookiness to mean that quantum mechanics must be incomplete (namely, that each particle DID have a well defined state that quantum mechanics simply can't describe), but 30 years later a physicist named Bell found a way to experimentally test the issue using "Bell inequalities". Quantum mechanics predicted the outcome of these experiments (google Aspect experiments in the 1980s) up to very high sigma values.
The problem with using these correlations for superluminal correlations is that each measurement just gives you a random horizontal or vertical outcome. The only interesting facet of these measurements is that, when you meet up with the guy who has the other entangled particles (at sublight speed), you find that your answers correlate perfectly. This isn't useful for communication! The only way that it could be used for communication is if quantum mechanics has small nonlinear terms which would allow one party to "bias" his collapse preferentially onto horizontal or vertical. Unfortunately, decades of testing have shown that any nonlinearities in the Schrodinger or Dirac equations underlying quantum mechanics are very, VERY small.
Bummer. On the other hand, FTL communication automatically implies backwards-in-time communication (and thus travel) so at least we don't have to worry so much about being killed by our own grandchildren.
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Re:IANAP.... (Score:5, Informative)
The gist of the argument is that special relativity divides the universe into three regions of spacetime: the timelike future (which is the set of all points where you COULD be in the future if you could travel at any speed up to and including the speed of light), the timelike past (which is where all events that could POSSIBLY have an affect on you at the present reside) and "elsewhere", which is comprised of all other events. An example of an "elsewhere" event is the state of the Mars rovers RIGHT NOW. I can't possibly know that at the moment because there's about a 30 minute light travel time delay. It's important to realize that FTL communication connects you to an event in "elsewhere" in a causal manner.
If you draw a spacetime diagram for two people, one of whom is moving very fast (at a conventional sublight speed) relative to the other, you'll find that the "elsewhere" of one observer intersects the past of the other. So using FTL communication and sublight engines to send a message to the past would work like this:
1. Bob gets in his fancy spaceship and travels directly away from earth at 90% the speed of light. He travels for 1 year (the time and speed aren't really important, they just allow the message to be sent farther into the past).
2. Alice, on earth, sends Bob an instantaneous message using her FTL communication device. It travels to Bob along what Alice considers to be her "line of simultaneous events" - the line in her spacetime diagram that goes through her present position and on through "elsewhere", to define the "present". It's not necessary for Alice's communication to be instantaneous, but it makes the argument (a little) clearer and doesn't really matter because going 1.0000001x the speed of light is just as impossible as going infinitely fast (as an instantaneous communication device would have to do).
3. Bob receives the message at the exact instant (in Alice's timeframe) as when she sent it. He then sends the message back to Alice using the same FTL device. The difference is that Bob is travelling at 90% of the speed of light, so his "line of simultaneous events" is completely different- it actually intersects Alice's "timelike past".
All of this makes a lot more sense once you get the hang of drawing spacetime diagrams, but it confused me for many years. You might want to google for tutorials on spacetime diagrams or "pole and barn" paradoxes to see some examples of spacetime diagrams...
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Its all in the time travel... (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, as others have posted, it ain't gonna happen. Teleporting matter by breaking it down and reconstructing it on the other end ain't going to happen. There are so many holes in that approach that its not funny.
I read a couple of interesting magazine articles on teleportation, and the key to teleportation is really time travel. Teleportation would be sending someone on a time-ride, bending the space-time continuum, have them "arrive" at the exact physical destination but still in the same temporal location in which they left. That is the key. However, the big problem with this approach is that the matter being transported will still age the amount of time is took the "time ride" to occur. Still, any teleportation is a feat the will probably never be accomplished.
But let me go on record as saying that rather than for science to focus focusing on teleportation or time travel seems moronic. How about we just focus on building some kind of high-speed passenger transport mechanism that travels at supersonic speeds (something like Mach 3 or Mach 4)?
Personally, I'd be just fine if I could go from Los Angeles to New York in one hour. And that seems like a much more achievable goal.
Re:When the day come... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:When the day come... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Matter? Yeah, right. (Score:4, Informative)
Sure they have. That's why all the Star Trek transporters employ "Heisenberg compensators". Duh.
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Re:The "Independant"? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dear Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dear Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:spooky? (Score:5, Interesting)
and "spooky" is a reference to Einstein's phrase "spooky action at a distance"
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Re:spooky? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's put it this way - there are two sects in the field of teleportation that I'm aware of right now.
Sect 1 defines teleportation as the tearing down of matter, converting it into energy, transport that energy, and convert it back into matter.
Sect 2 defines teleportation as scanning all of the information about an object, transport that INFORMATION to destination, create replica, then tear down the original.
Star Trek subscribes to version 1, unless of course you're watching a very particular episode.
Anyway, in both cases, you recall hearing the term "pattern buffer" in trek, right? In either case, you have to break Heisenberg's Law (Heisenberg compensator anyone?) about knowing the exact state and location of all particles that make up an object. You store that information, transmit it to the other site, and from that site you either reconstruct the original, or duplicate the original.
The frightening thing is, I see this program in my head writing an XML document, with trees and braches going something like atom/particle/state, and gzip compress it, then transmit it over the fastest method available, decompress on the other side. Just add matter.
Wow I'm sick.
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Re:IndependEnt! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Give me data, not matter (Score:4, Funny)
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