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Scientists "Teleport" Quantum Information One Meter
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jan 29, 2009 05:12 PM
from the teleport-a-child-and-we'll-be-impressed dept.
from the teleport-a-child-and-we'll-be-impressed dept.
the4thdimension writes "While we may not be beaming up to the Enterprise anytime soon, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan have managed to teleport information between two atoms up to a meter apart. Until this point, only very tiny distances were able to be traveled. However, using a complicated system of photons, ions, lasers, and electromagnetics, scientists have managed to 'teleport' information contained on one atom to another atom that is in a separate sealed container. This can lead to a wide range of developments in computing and communications." Update: 01/29 22:29 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe, but today's article in Time is better reading than the abstract anyhow.
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Scientists Teleport Information Between Ions a Meter Apart 220 comments
erickhill writes with word that scientists from the University of Maryland have successfully transferred information from one charged atom to another without having it cross the intervening space of about one meter. The academic paper is available in the journal Science, though it requires a subscription to see more than the abstract.
Scientists have previously teleported unmolested qubits between photons of light, and between photons and clouds of atoms. But researchers have long sought to teleport qubits between distant atoms. Light's high speed of travel makes photons good transporters of information, but for storing quantum information, atoms are a much better choice because they're easier to hold on to. 'This is a big deal,' comments Myungshik Kim, a quantum physicist at Queen's University Belfast in the United Kingdom. 'To store information as it is in quantum form, you have to have a teleportation scheme available between two stationary qubits. Then you can store them and manipulate them later on.'"
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Discussed A Week Ago (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Discussed A Week Ago (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Last week was the success. This week is the atempt.
Stay tuned for next week's announcement about a new idea called "Quantum Physics"
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Obviously you do not watch Lost...
Perhaps this week is last year and last week was next year?
Did you see a blinding, flashing light in the sky?
But seriously, a meter is a bit farther than other reports I have read. Prior to this report I thought the distance was microscopic. Guess I need to go back and read last weeks report again.
One day we (err our kids) may be able to say, "Beam me up Scotty!"
Re:Discussed A Week Ago (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Discussed A Week Ago (Score:5, Funny)
<bofh> up scotty is the last place I'd want to be beamed.
Yeah, you don't want to get kilt.
Parent
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I went and read the article. What they did, or more exactly tri
Why can't we just do it the normal way? (Score:2)
Why can't we just do plain old regular teleportation?
http://xkcd.com/465/ [xkcd.com]
The funny thing (Score:5, Funny)
...is for the whole week in between the experiment simultaneously existed as both a success and a failure.
Parent
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...is for the whole week in between the experiment simultaneously existed as both a success and a failure.
i.e. no different from most stories on slashdot.
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i.e. no different from most stories on slashdot.
Most stories on slashdot are simultaneously a failure and a gigantic failure. :P
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i.e. no different from most stories on slashdot.
Most replies on slashdot are simultaneously a failure and a gigantic failure. :P
Fixed it for you.
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...is for the whole week in between the experiment simultaneously existed as both a success and a failure.
Until some slashdotter finally observed TFA.
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Wouldn't we have read about the success last week and the attempt this week?
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1.21 gigawatts
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Yeah but.... (Score:2)
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I'm glad to hear we've mastered traveling forward through time. This is a major breakthrough.
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Editors "Teleport" Summary Information One Week
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I just teleported data to slashdot.
Star Trek Shenanigans (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Star Trek Shenanigans (Score:4, Interesting)
For the last time quantum teleportation isn't star trek style [xkcd.com], its far more impressive. It's [crystalinks.com] transferring information you don't even know across space.
Parent
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Is this really new? (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched a BBC documentary 'Visions of the Future' online a couple of days ago, and a team in Vienna had already teleported information between photons years ago. See here [google.com], about 50 minutes in. (I recommend watching all three programmes, it's an interesting documentary). The professor in the video states that the record stands at 600 metres. I'm no physicist, so could someone explain what is so different about what has been achieved in the article? Is the difference between teleporting information between photons and atoms so distinct?
Re:Is this really new? (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy to teleport photons - it's the basis of quantum cryptography for which we now even have commercial applications. I believe current record is about 1000km.
However, in this experiment scientists have teleported the state of an _atom_ using photons as intermediary quantum information carriers.
Parent
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If you're talking about the existing product, the basis of "quantum" "cryptography" is shining a really dim light (or perhaps selling your product to a really dim bulb). There's more marketing buzzward than truth in both the "quantum" and the "cryptography", and further it doesn't actually solve any problems.
Of course, scifi quantum crypto is very cool, but then so is setting phasers on stun.
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Of course, scifi quantum crypto is very cool, but then so is setting phasers on "evaporate the bitch".
Fixed. "Stun" is for pussies.
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not news (Score:2, Funny)
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First teleported comment (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW I am patenting 'Teleposting' as I like to call it.
What does this tell us? (Score:2)
Seriously... from the title of the article: "Teleportation Is Real" (picture from Startrek).
From the article: "For scientists, it's [teleportation] just very, very complex, so much so that at this point, teleportation is not a matter of moving matter but one of transporting information."
Substance of article: "It doesn't work reliably, but might be useful for not-yet-existing computers".
While this is interesting, I can't help but thinking that more to-the-point article about the real achievements of this gro
Re:What does this tell us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it seems like every so often, there's another story in the media that "teleportation has been achieved," or "we can make things invisible," or "scientists have made light go faster than light." They go on to explain all the great things we could do if we could teleport things, go faster than light, and make things invisible.
Then, down near the bottom somewhere, they finally explain that no, we're not talking about real teleportation, but rather quantum entanglement that can't really be used for communication. We're not talking about real faster-than-light travel, but making a light wave that sort of looks like it's going faster than light but isn't. We're talking about something that might be useful for stealth airplanes, making them invisible to radar, and not real invisibility. Stuff like that.
And then they tag some throw-away line at the end like, "But who knows, maybe we'll be able to teleport to the moon next year!"
I hate journalists.
Parent
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While I agree with you, it is one way of cathing the public's eye. Journalists want to make headlines, when they can't, they make up headlines remotely tangential to whatever material they've got.
My beef is with the Slashdot editors; when I started reading Slashdot, it was because the editors chose interesting stories. They still do, this is interesting, but they choose to present this particular mainstream article as the only link in their ingress as documentation and background inform
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Then, down near the bottom somewhere, they finally explain that no, we're not talking about real teleportation
While I agree with the thrust of your complaint and share your hatred of journalists, I'm at least happy to see that both the recent /. stories on this have prominently featured the word "INFORMATION" as the 'thing' teleported. It still isn't quite correct, as 'information' in the ordinary sense of the term carries more ontological weight than 'quantum state' but it is a huge improvement over the u
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Perhaps those of you in this thread who hate journalists so much should make efforts to give scientists some media training so that when they are interviewed, they speak in clear language, not jargon.
Yes, it's the journalist's job to be clear and accurate, but it's pretty damn difficult when the interview subject spews out line after line of technobabble only meaningful to another scientist.
Also, don't blame journalists for trying (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) to spice things up and present sc
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It doesn't work reliably, but might be useful for not-yet-existing computers
Kind of blows the whole concept of bandwidth out of the water, doesn't it? When you can instantly duplicate bits of information to a machine at any location...
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"Oh my gosh, you solved their problem. They can achieve 90%, you only need to implement an error correcting algorithm capable of handling 10% of error, and you have achieved instant information transmission!". :)
No, really, I find their results intriguing, but that was not my point at all
a dupe you say... (Score:2)
Ironic?
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Ironic?
Indead it is ironic as quantum teleportation destroys the original, if only that happened here
OMG ! They did it ! (Score:2, Funny)
Didn't they read the c'eth commandment ?
Thou shalt not teleport information from 1 atom to another atom at a speed greater than thy Lord hath deemed forbidden[1] lest thou wishes to kill thy grandfather before thou art born - and create earth engulfing black holes in the process[2].
Fools ! we are doomed !
--Ivan
[1] Ok.. I didn't read TA.. so what ?
[2] That's last sentence is not in the original text - consider this creative license.
Conjecture... (Score:2)
If I post a comment on last weeks article, will it also show up on this weeks article?
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If I post a comment on last weeks article, will it also show up on this weeks article?
More to the point, if you post a comment on this week's article, will it travel back in time to last week's article?
No Communication Theorem (Score:2, Interesting)
Wonderful... (Score:2)
Indeed. Why read the article written by the guy who understands it when you can read the article written in someone's spare time when he's not covering Britney?
Re:Insert Quantam Leap joke here - (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Only in the common three spatial dimensions. They're pretty much right on top of each other in the 5th and 6th dimensions, which results in all kinds of practical jokes going on between their physics departments.