Mathematical Breakthrough Sets Out Rules For More Effective Teleportation

dsinc sends this news from the University of Cambridge: "For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of ‘entanglement’ may hold the key to eventual teleportation of information. Now, for the first time, researchers have worked out how entanglement could be 'recycled' to increase the efficiency of these connections. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the result could conceivably take us a step closer to sci-fi style teleportation in the future, although this research is purely theoretical in nature. ... Previous teleportation protocols have fallen into one of two camps, those that could only send scrambled information requiring correction by the receiver or, more recently, "port-based" teleportation that doesn't require a correction, but needs an impractical amount of entanglement – as each object sent would destroy the entangled state. Now, physicists from Cambridge, University College London, and the University of Gdansk have developed a protocol to provide an optimal solution in which the entangled state is 'recycled,' so that the gateway between particles holds for the teleportation of multiple objects. They have even devised a protocol in which multiple qubits can be teleported simultaneously, although the entangled state degrades proportionally to the amount of qubits sent in both cases."

Re:Where does extra energy go?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand the summary, this is dealing with quantum entanglement and the teleportation of information not matter...

In star trek terms, think subspace radio, not transporter.

Re:Where does extra energy go?

[Charliemopps]

Despite the authors attempt to make this sound like it has something to do with teleporting real world objects, it doesn't. Entanglement has to do with 2 particles sharing a state such as spin, and when that state changes in one entangled particle it also changes simultaneously regardless of distance or the speed of light in the other entangled particle. All of the laws of physics are observed. Information can not be passed faster than the speed of light. Matter can not move even at the speed of light, most of it no-where near the speed of light. You can not teleport an object from one place to another at all. There may be extended spacial dimensions that would allow us to do an end-run around distance, but keep in mind, if there are 4 or more spacial dimensions, we and all other matter already exist and are moving in those dimensions. There is very likely physical laws governing travel in them that would have the same effect that normal travel would. For example think if we were 2 dimensional creatures living on the surface of the earth and we suddenly discover the 3rd dimension and realize we could travel through the earth to reach china in half the time. While physically possible, there is that whole "Drilling through thousands of miles of solid rock" obstical that would make it a lot easier to just hop on a jet.

Also, keep in mind that, to my knowledge and I just did a quick check and found nothing, humanity has never entangled anything other than photons/light. Which are technically both a wave and particle, but it's a hell of a long way off from entangling actual normal matter. Let me know when they entangle a Neutron and it'll be a big deal. Don't get me wrong, I think it's not beyond the laws of physics but we are very very very far away from true real world applications. The entanglement of photons can be explained via classical physics/optics, and doesn't need quantum theory to explain the effect. That doesn't mean it's not real, it just means you should take it with a grain of salt.

This discovery makes experimentation easier. Teleporting yourself to work? Not so much.

Re:Teleportation and special theory of relativity?

[Tanuki64]

Instant teleportation of information according to STR violates causality. Is this a really serious science?

For now it is math. Whether it is really relevant for real world physics is a totally different question.

Re:Where does extra energy go?

[stuckinarut]

Humanity has entangled stuff bigger than photons; The Biggest "Spooky" System Ever Seen: 4 Entangled Ions (Jun 2009) [discovermagazine.com] and Entangled diamonds , big enough for the eye to see (Dec 2011) [nature.com]. We haven't managed the information transportation part with anything other than photons though but we're doing well on distance; quantum key transmitted wirelessly 144km [aps.org].