Improvements in Teleportation 437
assaultriflesforfree writes "Here's a little update on quantum entanglement and teleportation from The New York Times (free registration, yay): 'Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.' I am a little skeptical about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle statements, though. Is this really a form of Star Trek's Heisenberg Compensator?"
And now something with mass (Score:2, Funny)
Re:And now something with mass (Score:2, Informative)
A moving photon behaves as though it has mass and momentum. Consider the Compton effect, where a photon striking an electron causes the photon to scatter off the electron like a billiard ball. It's all about quantum theory.
Re:And now something with mass (Score:2)
Keyword: "behaves"
While this is impressive, this is IMO still all fantasy. Light (photons or waves) is still not fully understood and to say that it behaves like it has mass is not the same as saying it is mass and I've replicated elsewhere.
I want to read about actual matter moving.
Re:And now something with mass (Score:2, Informative)
It shouldn't be. Light does have momentum (part of the idea behind solar sails). However, light does not have mass (but you might be able to argue that since it has momentum it behaves like it has mass, whatever that means). Most people think that this cannot be since p=m*v and if it has no m, it can't have any p. Well, relativity shows that E=p*c for light so if the light has energy, it can have momentum. In this way, momentum is more of a fundamental quantity than mass or velocity and cannot, in general, be separated into a product of the two.
Re:And now something with mass (Score:3, Informative)
Light has momentum: true.
Light doesn't have mass: false.
Light has mass because light has energy. Mass and energy are the same quantity expressed in different units. The conversion factor from mass to energy is c-squared.
What light doesn't have is rest mass.
Paul
Re:And now something with mass (Score:2)
Re:Neither did Albert (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Neither did Albert (Score:2)
Not beaming... (Score:3, Insightful)
Without registration... (Score:5, Informative)
(from Anonymous Karma Whores R Us)
Re:Without registration... (Score:5, Informative)
In the URL of the NYT article, replace "www" with "archive".
Re:Without registration... (Score:3, Funny)
Does it bother anyone else that the wavelength quoted in the National Geographic article is a few orders of magnitude too large?
You'd think a science writer would puzzle over a photon with a wavelength of 0.05 inches being able to travel in a glass fiber instead of a microwave waveguide.
Probably some editor confused microns with millimeters and then converted to inches, because we all know that inches are a more familiar unit to use when talking about light wavelengths.
heineken uncertainty principle (Score:4, Funny)
Great weapon development here, I guess you could teleport bullets halfway around the world faster than the speed of light?.. ouch.
Re:heineken uncertainty principle (Score:2, Funny)
No Reg. Required (Score:5, Informative)
By KENNETH CHANG
Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.
Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.
The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.
"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of an article today in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the long distance."
The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the "Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But teleporting something from the everyday world like a person that contains more than a trillion trillion atoms is highly unlikely, if not impossible.
Even with the light particles, photons, about one in a thousand were received at the other side.
"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said about human teleportation.
Still, the experiments show that scientists can overcome a seemingly insurmountable conceptual barrier, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The principle states that the location and velocity of a particle cannot both be precisely measured at the same time. That would seem to make it impossible to teleport anything, even single particles, because without knowing their exact specifications they cannot be copied somewhere else.
Devised in 1993 by scientists led by Dr. Charles H. Bennett of the I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., quantum teleportation produces pairs of "entangled" light particles that can be thought of as a pair of encoding and decoding rings. A message is combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message. Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher the message.
Other encoding techniques using quantum cryptography are simpler, and a more immediate use for teleportation would be as a repeater. Photons almost all peter out after traveling about 50 miles through optical fiber. Teleportation would enable the creation of copies every 50 miles or so, letting the message be sent across an unlimited distance.
A fascinating abuse of language (Score:3, Interesting)
The important thing about this "teleportation" process to remember is: if you stick your hand into the region between the transmitter and reciever you will still get a hole burned in it by the perfectly ordinary beam of energetic, physical photons that is "teleporting" the information.
--Tom
years ago? (Score:2)
Never really got what was supposed to be so amazing...
Re:years ago? (Score:2)
Re:years ago? (Score:2)
I think it was some 10 years ago.
Re:years ago? (Score:2)
reg free link (Score:3, Informative)
Does this... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Does this... (Score:2)
It's spooky action at a distance, or entanglement. But it's not so much that you change one of the 'items', as it is that cause it to choose a state.
You look in Schrodingers box to check on the cat. Now if you'd entangled the cats. Then let them seperate moving the boxes to hither and yawn, they're still both living and dead. They haven't been made to choose. But once you look in on one of the entangled cats, you can infer the state of the other. So even though it's far away, and doesn't seem like it should have been made to choose, it was.
Re:Does this... (Score:2, Informative)
This is better:
You put two cats in a closed box with a poison cat treat (only 1). Only one of the cats will eat the treat, you don't know which.
Then the cats are seperated into two closed boxes and seperated.
While the boxes are unopened, you don't know the state of either cat.
If you open one box, you then know the state of the other cat.
Hidden variables (Score:5, Informative)
The original Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment used a truly quantum-mechanical device to determine whether the cat should live or die. I don't think you can remove that quantum element and still have a valid analogy. The point (or one of them) of the thought experiment is that the cat 'magnifies' the quantum effect.
Re:Hidden variables (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway. I think the idea behind the cat was to show the absurdity of an indeterminate state like something being both spin up and spin down. Under the copenhagen interpritation it doesn't really matter what the inscrutible secret reality is, but many extremely clever experiments have shown repeatedly, and perhaps most dramatically in investigations of 'spooky action at a distance', that the universe really is that wierd. The thought experiment is wrong, because, for the most part, that quantum nature were discussing disintigrates as things get bigger. The cat wouldn't be alive and dead, the cyanide wouldn't be contained and released, the vial smasher wouldn't have spared and smashed the vial, and radioactive particle will either have decayed or not. It might 'think' about it in a maelstrom of virtual particles, but once it decays, it quickly joins the larger system. And before you know it PETA is suing your ass. I think this particular thought experiment remains popular because it spotlights a flaw in our intuition, and how we interpret uncertainty.
If you're religious you can believe god watching the universe is what makes it go, if you're a Kari Wurher fan maybe there's an alternate universe where she'll rub up against you, or, if you're like me, you favor decoherenece (not that I wouldn't favor Kari). It's just important to remember these comfortable ways of framing or describing what's happening aren't nessecarily what's acctually happening where we aren't allowed to look.
Re:Does this... (Score:2)
0.0 latency gaming anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure 400 years from now people will be using spooky action at a distance to teleport to their flying cars so they can head out to stores to finally buy a shrinkwrapped copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
Re:0.0 latency gaming anyone? (Score:2)
Only on slashdot would someone think that the ultimate application of teleportation technology is 0.0 latency gaming
Re:0.0 latency gaming anyone? (Score:2)
You can't escape latency with entanglement, but you could at least be sure no one messed with your "packets" in transit.
Re:0.0 latency gaming anyone? (Score:2)
Wouldn't that require you to have to predict when exactly I was going to request the packet? We could arrange that ahead of time, but in that case why don't you just give me the information then.
don't beam ME up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Teleporting an object with considerable mass - ok
NOT me though. What do you think might happen to you between the time you are destroyed and the time your mass is replicated?
I would think that even if it were a very short time there would still be problems -- after all you WERE destroyed.
On the good side - imagine a future when you can purchase something online and have it in 5 min. by replicating it in your new replicator(duh) thats connected directly to your computer. You buy the item - then download the mass profile(perhaps a
- very cool stuff
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Yes, but if you were "rebuilt" on a particle level, no matter how long you'd be destroyed/dead, it seems logical to me that you should be in the exact health as you were when you were destroyed".
The problem might of course be to rebuild an entire person with the billions of particles in the exact same relative positions as before.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2, Interesting)
There's the problem right there though, it's not the same particles, the result on the other end is NOT you, it's a duplicate.
About the only way I ever see any sort of teleportation ever succeeding is to cause the existing particles that you're made up of to shift to a higher engery state (think mattergy), encapsulated in some sort of field, and the bubble containing you pushed/pulled somewhere else. I've only come accross it once before, but I read an article that subatomic particles can travel anywhere almost instantaniously (slipstream?).
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, all of this depends on how you define your "self". If you are the particles you're made of, then yeah, you're gone after (Star-Trek-style) teleporting. If you are your self-awareness, your consciousness, then you'll still be you. I'd tend to the latter definition.
Parts of your body matter (like your blood) gets destroyed and rebuilt - partly from particles that are/were most definetely not you (like food) - every day. Does that mean that that blood is not yours? Okay, not a very good analogy.
(Obviously, this more a philosophical discussion than anything else. If it is possible at all, none of us will witness human teleportation.)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Likewise, if you create an exact ("bitwise") copy of a human, it will be the same human. How exact this copy has to be has yet to be discovered, but assumedly a physical copy as created by teleportation would suffice. If, as you say, "the concept of "self" derives from the interaction of electrochemical signals", then re-creating those signals and the context for their interaction would create the same being as the original. It'd be a duplicate, but that is as irrelevant as the fact that the number two in the sentence "2 plus 2 equals 4" appears in two duplicates.
It's quite difficult to put into words. Sorry if I'm a bit vague.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:3, Funny)
perhaps a .mpr file
I'd certainly hope our computers will be rid of @#$% filename extensions before we have practical applications of teleportation. Although from the current state of it (with even Apple regressing into the Middle Ages of Metadata), chances are slim.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are destroyed and then replicated, you are effectively dead. Consider if you could meet your replicate before being destroyed. He would say to you: "Ok, I don't need you anymore, so I destroy you now." Is that good for you? Maybe it is good for him, but certainly not good for the real you.
However, the copy of you would be good for me and everyone else. To us, you are the same person. You will fulfill your life's duties and make great works. However, you won't be around to witeness it.
So basically we concluded that teleporting an object by replication/destruction would be helpful to everyone except the object in question. Feel free to teleport burritos and things, but teleporting yourself would not be doing you a favor.
The only solution I can think of would be to come up with a teleportation method that does not involve destruction. If we ever want to be bouncing around the Universe like in Star Trek, we're going to need to be able to travel the speed of light or use weird things like wormholes to get anywhere. Physically transferring object data from point A to point B is just too time consuming. You'll die of old age by the time you reach Neptune.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
How ? Are you going to apply that eleet aging algorithm to my replica when it reaches there? Damn you !
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:5, Interesting)
So basically we concluded that teleporting an object by replication/destruction would be helpful to everyone except the object in question.
Not necessarily. You assume that there is a "real me" and a "copy-of-me". However, if the replication process is perfect, then both the individuals that come out of the other end will for all practical purposes be me - look like me, feel like me, think like me, remember the things I remember and all of the other characteristics that together constitute me.
The crux is, as you point out, the destruction of "the original copy" in the teleportation process. The implicit point in your argument is that the death of one of the copies matters. My question to that point is: To whom? Me-before-the-teleportation doesn't care - I will live on in the copy. The teleported copy is alive, so it doesn't matter to it. "The original copy" is "dead", and didn't mind before it happened.
So it all ends up being very philosophical: Does it matter to be dead per se, or is it the absence of a continued existence (such as in the form of a copy) that is wrong about being dead? I would say the latter, and therefore you may teleport me as soon as your device is 99,99999% secure (or even less, if the destination is an exiting place).
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
This is not a matter of who is the "real you" necessarily. You are the "original you" right now, and you will not be gaining any further memories once you are destroyed. Under the assumption that there is no spiritual connection between the "original you" and the "copy of you", these would be two separate entities with exact physical properties. If you somehow got in a fight with your identical clone, you would still care about who survives.
Of course, the rest of the world only needs one copy of you. We need you to finish your job and pay your taxes, we could care less which is the more original copy, just so long as you are around like you always were.
So yes, you will live on from my perspective, but the "original copy", that is, the copy you should care about, would be gone.
The SPEED of Destruction makes people uncomfortabl (Score:4, Interesting)
The crux of the problem is really the SPEED of destruction. IIRC, over the course of seven years or so our bodies flush out and replace every cell in the body. That means that essentially we are composed of entirely different matter than we were seven years ago. Because the process is gradual and slow, we don't consider this to be a personal death and resurrection, we consider ourselves to be the same person we were seven, ten, or twenty years ago, though materially we are not.
Or put another way, if we had perfect organ transplanting technology and could replace bits of ourselves as they wore out, when would we stop being us? After the first new knee-joint? Most would say no. After the first brain graft to replace that failing visual cortex? How about after the 79th brain graft, which replaces the last of the old, decaying material?
Why should replacing this process, whether it be a natural one through the course of eating and shedding old cells or an artificial one through gradual organ replacement and grafts, with an instantaneous one be any different? Surely the mere compression of time doesn't fundamentally alter what is happening.
So we are left with two choices. ONE: we do die over the course of 7 years, and we are not the same people we were 7 years ago, we are merely self-deluded copies, or TWO: we are the same people, in which case the length of time is irrelevant, and a teleported person will be as much the same person they were before, whether or not the atoms that comprise them are the same ones (teleported) or new ones with a quantum signature imposed.
As to which belief one subscribes to, that is more of a religious or philosophical discussion, but whatever belief one chooses, one must apply it consistently to the natural replacement of ourselves, and any forthcoming organ transplant technologies, as much as one would to a hypothetical teleportatioin technology, and accept the implications of said belief.
Personally, I believe I am the same person I was 10 years ago (modulo gradual personality changes), and I would have no problem teleporting myself around the universe at lightspeed if such facilities were available to me. And if I am deluding myself, I'm not deluding myself any more than all of us already are every time we look back on the myth of our own past, so either way it is a wash.
Re:The SPEED of Destruction makes people uncomfort (Score:4, Insightful)
The nerve that runs from a motor neuron in your brain down to a muscle in your lower leg is ONE cell, and that cell doesn't regenerate if it dies.
This is why spinal cord injuries are such bad news, and why stem cell research (cells that DO grow) is so neat.
So when you're 80 years old, some of your most important cells are also 80 years old! I think this will be the most limiting factor in exending human life span -- we'll figure out how to reset telomeres to cause infinite regeneration of cells, so your skin, muscles, bones will all stay 20 years old forever. But those pesky CNS cells... aren't used to dying and being replaced.
But maybe they WILL be able to convince CNS cells to die, and get new ones to grow in their place. Conceivably, every 40 years you'd need a CNS cell flush, along with some rehabilitation to train in the new cells to function properly.
Memory could even be preserved! What was the
- Peter
Re:The SPEED of Destruction makes people uncomfort (Score:3, Interesting)
What if you could build a quantum duplicate without destroying the original. Which one would be the real you?
If the entire sum of our being is composed of our physical components as opposed to stored in our physical components, then there is no difference.
Either way, it's not speed that's the problem, it's a question of identity.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Anyone else hungry?
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:3, Interesting)
That assumes that there is no component to a sentient being that we cannot presently measure. If you believe in the soul, then clearly that isn't the case.
I read an interesting theory some time ago, which stated that the mind/soul is a separate thing from the body. How exactly does the interface work? It said that the mind could influence quantum probabilities. The Russians did experiments in ESP (apparently) that showed that certain gifted individuals could control the rate of decay of a small particle of a radioactive material. The larger the particle, the harder it became for them to control. They "controlled" it by watching a counter with the rate on, and attempting to make it move faster or slower.
Inside the neurons in our brain, there is a column of something, I forget what. Anyway, it is at the level where quantum probabilities (?) affect it. The theory goes that the mind controls the body by controlling/influencing the probabilities at the neuron level, acting as a kind of giant control panel.
This theory is of course difficult if not impossible to test, but it begs the question - is it possible to interrupt that connection?
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Under my scenario, you are right, both copies are exactly the same. However, you should still care about the copy that you currently are. This is why I brought up the possibility of meeting your 'clone'. You would still care about your own survival. The 'clone' might be exactly the same as you in all ways, but it is a separate physical entity with no binding to you.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
no, the parent was right. this argument will always turn into whether theres something more to "you" than your component atoms. if you think there is, you won't want to be teleported. if you think there isn't (i.e. no soul), you're fine with it.
since you're not fine with being teleported, you believe in the soul, you just don't realize it yet.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
- very cool stuff
The copyright and patent issues here are staggering.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
"I Teleported home one night,
With Ron and Jan and Meg.
Ron stole Megan's heart away,
and I got Janet's leg"
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Whatever you do, don't even SUGGEST the format should be *.mpX - RIAA will quash it instantly.
You dont buy it silly... (Score:2)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:3, Interesting)
called 'Think like a dinosaur'
synopsys from the outer limits web board:
Michael Burr (ENRICO COLANTONI) is the only permanent human occupant of the Tuulen station, situated on a vast empty plain of the Moon. His companions are the Hanen, an emotionless lizard-like alien species who have developed a highly advanced means of long distance travel by 'jumping' through space. Achieved by creating an exact duplicate of the jumper, the copy is reconstituted at the destination point and the original destroyed, thus leaving only one. Kamala Shastri (LINNEA SHARPLES) is one of the test jumpers to arrive for travel to the planet Gend, but in the final stage of the transfer, something inexplicable happens. Confirmation of her duplicate's arrival is not received from Gend and the procedure is temporarily aborted. When it's later determined that Kamala's copy does indeed exist, Michael is called upon to balance the equation and eliminate the original. Michael knows the human race is desperate to access a technology that would allow them to leave behind a planet now virtually destroyed by pollution and over population. He also knows it is imperative that he avoid a protocol breach with the Hanen, but can he bring himself to kill Kamala?
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:5, Funny)
> copy of me and killed original.
OK Mr Hatchet, your duplicate ('you++' as we like to call
him in my line of work) is now at your destination being
Heisenburg compensated. Boy are --you lucky --you won't
have to go through *that* indignity!
Please stand perfectly still while I blow --you away with
this zap-o-matic ray gun of mine. No, No, it won't hurt
a bit. Well, actually, it hurts --you a hell of a lot - but
since you++ are now at your destination, you++ won't remember
a thing about it.
Re:don't beam ME up. (Score:2)
But if you create an exact copy of yourself, wouldn't it also be you? Essentially teleporting people now is just copying the mass somehow, so this would ultimatly be a philosophical question, would you mind being copied and then killed? (ofcourse preserving one of the two)
Re: physical object piracy (Score:2)
I am sure the RIAA, farmers the government who doesn't want people copying money will make it illegal.
Meanwhile millions of starving children in Africa will die because replicators would be outlawed. But at least bob in Indiana can still grow his corn.
Re:Replicator! (Score:2)
Improved Teleportation (Score:2, Funny)
Sure glad to see some of the improved teleportation arriving. I was getting mighty sick of the old style.
I left my heart in San Francisco. Literally.
no Heisenberg (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:no Heisenberg (Score:2)
Physicists Teleport Quantum Bits More Than a Mile (Score:2, Interesting)
Quantum information (Score:5, Insightful)
poem (Score:3, Funny)
I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.
Douglas Adams
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
This can produce interesting results (Score:2)
"Improvements" in Teleportation...? (Score:4, Funny)
Customer: "But it doesn't work."
Salesman: "That is the state of the art..."
To be honest, I wasn't aware there was any base in teleportation from which to improve.
Cheers,
Ian
Probably a dumb question, but (Score:2, Redundant)
How do they know it's the same electron? What distinctive marks are they basing this on? If it's just one electron that disappears and another one that reappears, the applications would be rather more limited. I mean, if I step into a teleportation machine, I would quite like me rather than someone who looks just like me to step out a mile away.
Re:Probably a dumb question, but (Score:2, Insightful)
Note that it's also effectively the same one in probability terms anyway - all electrons are just blips in spacetime's electron density probability.
The whole point of teleportation is the transmission of information instantaneously. I.e. effective at infinite speed (or zero distance, depending how you look at it).
Re:Probably a dumb question, but (Score:2, Funny)
For goodness sake, read the article.
Ooooh, I thought the idea was that one person read the article and we all asked him questions :-)
To all intents and purposes...
I can't say I'm reassured that it would be me rather than a copy of me who stepped out of the teleporter, although the question is probably closer to theology than physics...
Photons VERY different from massive particles (Score:5, Informative)
My point? It is one thing to teleport a photon, which is a massless boson. It is quite another thing to teleport a massive fermion, let alone a collection of them as would be found in any massive object of appreciable size. The physics of teleportation would most likely be very different, since the quantum mechanics and statistics of bosons are quite different from those of fermions. So don't get your hopes up yet regarding teleportation a la Star Trek.
Re:Photons VERY different from massive particles (Score:2)
I don't follow you. How does ANY of that show that it would be harder for fermions? You just listed a bunch of ways it would work differently. DIFFERENTLY. That doesn't imply "more difficult." Unless you have something you wish to elaborate on...
Also. Not all bosons are force-carriers. Atomic nuclei can be bosons (think Rubidium-80). But we don't view atomic nuclei as the quanta of any particular field. Unless you want to believe in the "Rubidium-80 field" :-)
Heisenberg (Score:2, Interesting)
If we measure an object's velocity 100% perfectly, then it no longer has a definite position.
Is that cool or what?
Heisenberg (Score:5, Informative)
If you could get around that uncertainty issue, it would blow away quantum cryptography entirely; the beauty of it from a security standpoint is that any eavesdropping can be detected, because observing the qubits (in this case, photons with particular spin) necessarily disrupts a certain portion of them.
Yes, this means that a determined eavesdropper could mount an effective DoS by reading all the bits, but with that kind of access, there are easier ways. (Uh, how about cutting the fiber?)
And it's not really teleportation. It's still fundamentally limited to the speed of light. "Teleporting" anything more complicated than a hydrogen atom is going to be insane due to (here it comes again) Heisenberg Uncertainty - you have to extract its state, but you can't do that to within that certain magic tolerance
Transporting Mass (Score:2, Funny)
One of them is wearing a red sweater...
State of the Union (Score:2, Interesting)
Now if this data was released just a little earlier, Bush could have addressed this in the State of the Union, rather than something as "old school" as hydrogen-based vehicles. Like those will ever see the light of day!
Quantum Teleportation (Score:5, Informative)
First, "teleportation" only teleports "DATA", quantum information, like the spin of an electron. You won't see any beam me up scotty, despite how much people wants to and how wrong reporters are in artciles =)
Second, here's a VERY brief info page on Quantum Teleportation on IBM's page:
http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/telepor
For more in depth info, try to find articles in magazines and books, especially one written by Charles H. Bennet and/or Gilles Brassard.
One lecture by Brassard can be found online here, there's even a PDF:
http://www.msri.org/publications/ln/msri/2002/q
They will explain this much better than my understanding will do. It's MUCH funnier and interesting when Brassard presents it, and it's MUCH harder to understand too. The few pictures and bits at the begining of the lecture are what Quantum Teleportation is NOT. Even renowned scientific publication are fooled by bad journalism, and even IBM went over it's head with this, it's kinda funny =)
Anyway, "Beam me up Scotty" will never result from Quantum Teleportation, so don't hold your breath =) The article briefly states this tho, but only seems to gloss over it and even says "maybe", which is completely wrong.
Also, Brassard stated MANY times that is does not violate ANYTHING, and especially not Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The original DATA must be destroy, then it is "rebuilt" on the other side, and because of a property of EPR, "entanglement", you never mesure the quantum information completely, thus not violating Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
One last note, the following bit on the article is probably the most simplistic non-explanation of what is Quantum Teleportation:
"A message is combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message. Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher the message."
Tele-magic 9000 (Score:2, Funny)
Vaporware? ;o) (Score:4, Funny)
What kind of power are we talking here? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What kind of power are we talking here? (Score:3, Interesting)
Teleportation, destruction or movement? (Score:4, Interesting)
I want to counter that with two points:
According to Quantum theory, no particles or physical entities have an identity other than the collection of their properties. This means that two particles of the same type and with the same properties are completely indistinguishable. This means that a human being destroyed, but replicated exactly somewhere else, will have the exact same properties aside for position, in other words - moved. If you're worried that changing your position is a problem, you're already dead :)
Many human cells are constantly dying and get replaced. Not many of the cells in the human body existed when the human was born. This means that your existing body/cells have been destroyed and recreated already - you simply didn't know.
Re:Teleportation, destruction or movement? (Score:2, Redundant)
Yes, they are equal. Are they the same particle?
This means that a human being destroyed, but replicated exactly somewhere else, will have the exact same properties
Now, suppose you replicate exactly someone, but do not destroy the original. Again I ask, Are they the same person?
Many human cells are constantly dying and get replaced. Not many of the cells in the human body existed when the human was born. This means that your existing body/cells have been destroyed and recreated already - you simply didn't know.
Now this is a really interesting argument. Suppose you have some kind of degenerative disease and you need a prostetic leg. Later you need an arm, eben later you need a new heart. Suppose that the disease destroys even your brain cells and you need some kind of artificial storage to yield your conscience.
When do you stop being alive? When do you stop being yourself?. Dang if I know
Re: (Score:2)
Telefragged? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wouldn't there always be something there, even if it was just air, in which case what happens to the atoms that existed in the space before? Do they have to be destroyed in order to make space, or are they displaced / merged?
Old Bumper Sticker (Score:4, Funny)
Improvements in secure optical commincation (Score:2, Informative)
If you can transmit messages with entangled photons over an optical network, you can prevent anyone from "tapping" the line and observing your communication without you knowing. If someone fucks with one of the entangled photons, the other party will know.
Are they violating uncertainty? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a rule in QM called "no cloning" which means you cannot make an exact copy of a quantum state without destroying that state. In other words, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents you from duplicating a photon precisely. It does not stop you from teleporting that photon to a new location, thereby destroying the "original" photon.
This is done through a dual process. Part of the photon state is transmitted "classically," by measuring the photon and sending the information along a wire. The other part of the photon state is not measured, but "travels" to the new location via entanglement. The two pieces of information are put back together at the other side to recreate the photon. The process of making the classical measurement is what destroys the original photon. This destruction is unavoidable -- you can't end up with an identical copy of the photon, while still keeping the first photon.
Star Trek transporters could be a theoretical possiblity. But replicators cannot exist, because that would involve exact cloning of quantum states, which is impossible.
Worst physics joke ever. (Score:3, Funny)
Let me get this straight... (Score:2, Interesting)
Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.
The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.
So what they did is destroy light, use light to transfer the "destroyed" light a mile away and "ressurrect" that light? That doesn't sound like teleportation to me. Its like using a laser beam to send a laser beam.
Unraveling the mysteries of Teleportation... (Score:2, Interesting)
The teleportation of humans, objects and anything else is already possible and has been for thousands of years, but not with the aid of technological gadgets. The ability to create something out of nothing has been spoken about in religion since it's very conception and up to modern times.
Now before you scoff at the rest of the post thinking it is religious crap please consider the following scientific aphorisms:
1) There can only be one truth/one set of laws that govern the Universe. A simplistic example, gravity does not go both up and down and/or sideways, when you drop an object it always falls down. Over the last many centuries our scientists have proved over and over again that things in our physical universe behave according to a set of laws. Laws which even to this day science is discovering, which means we do not as of yet know or understand all of these laws. Therefore one can conclude that the very scientific community we praise and cheer for thinking they have all the answers - that very same community admits their ignorance. Every single day they claim to be discovering this or that. If you are at the discovering stage, then you can not possibly know everything.
2) If you read both ancient religious texts from several different religions (Christian, Buddhism, Hinduism, to name but a small few), all of them contain accounts of so called "miracles". What is a miracle? Is it really something that defies the natural laws of the Universe? No, that's hogwash. You can not claim the Universe is has 1 set of laws and in the same breath claim those laws can be somehow put aside and something takes place which defies those laws. That is just absolutely ridiculous - if we've learned anything from science it is exactly THAT! What is more likely as I've stated is that we don't know how all the laws work yet and when we see or hear of something which seems to defy the few laws we do currently know, we tend to say it is lies, or magic, or miracles or anything but something NORMAL. However; let's wind the clock back a few centuries and let's pretend we could teleport/travel back in time and bring with us some gadgets with us, say a video camera. We walk into the most advanced city on Earth at that time, say the Roman empire for example, and we tape Julius Caesar giving a speech.. then we walk a few miles away and show somebody who was not able to be at the speech presentation and we hit the play button. To the ignorant watching the movie playback on the LCD screen this is nothing short of a miracle, a magical act, how can after all Caesar and his entire palace fit inside this little box? And how can you possibly make him give the same speech exactly the same time after time???? I think you get my point. Those that have performed great feats in the past were not doing something beyond what is physically possible. A video camera that works in 2002 will work just as well in the year 1000 B.C. The laws of the Universe have not evolved over 3000 years - they are the same. Eternal and Immutable!
Miracles are given that name, IMO by those who do not understand how a specific feat was conceived. How did Christ turn water into wine? Or resurrect, or cure people with touch? How do Indian Yogi's or ZEN Masters perform acts of levitation or how are they able to accelerate the growth of plants by a factor of 20-100 times, making them grow right before your very eyes? How have so many Christian saints and Hindu Yogis performed acts of Bi-location (being in 2 places physically at the same time, witnessed being there and having conversations by different people at different locations at the same time?) These are just truly very few examples of the so called acts we name miracles and they have not all been performed by a single person, or claimed by a single religion. In fact at the core of every major religion you will find such miracles and claims of the so called super-natural, more correctly assigned the name of the occult mysteries (occult meaning hidden - do not confuse this world with some of the crazy cults going around). But the reality is not that it is super-natural... the reality is that it is natural, the average person just does not understand how such an act is performed. And this may sound like a surprise to you but believe me intellectual understanding will NEVER allow you to mimic such miraculous acts. The very same people
At any rate here, my point is, man can only accomplish what he is capable of imagining. If he can not imagine it, he can not create it.
But let's get back on topic, so how can teleportation be accomplished? Well, let's take a look at a simpler version of teleportation - clairvoyance. What is clairvoyance as most people understand it? It is the reading of thoughts, in particular images from the past or future and somehow having access to them in the present. This is a very common so called unexplained miracle performed today, however it is not called a miracle as much by most people because it has become far more common place and therefore a little bit more acceptable and considered closer to normal, yet not quite there because even the people who perform such feats can not explain in scientific or any other intelligible words how this is accomplished, at least not to the satisfaction of a scientist wanting to replicate the feat.
The fact that not Jesus, nor any Yogi, Zen Master, Christian Saint, or any high ranking Buddhist master are considered to be extremely high intellects possessing at the tip of their tongues the answers to all scientific questions serves to us as proof that it is not through scientific intelligence that teleportation can be accomplished today. It is therefore an act feasible today not by scientists possessing great intellect, but by their counterparts - the true spiritual man!
My friends, I could go on, and on and on... My point is science may one day be able to explain in intelligible language how teleportation of a human being can be accomplished, but I guarantee you it will not be within our life times and whenever it does one day become possible - if by scientists - it shall require very fancy highly complex and expensive machines. If you wish to teleport within your life time, your best bet are to not only study, but in particularly practice the occult sciences - i.e. Alchemy (the founding science of Chemistry initiated by Paracelsus - a science which combined chemistry and spirituality and philosophy in one great art, but the 2 more important parts of it have now been thrown out by those who chose not to see beyond what their eyes show them in the physical), Astrology (the founding science of Astronomy - Astrology combined the science of Astronomy with the spiritual and philosophical, but again modern-ignorant man has stripped out 2/3rds of that and chose to look at only what he could see. If you chose to ignore 2/3rds of reality, then do not expect to be able to understand the whole of the Universal laws! If modern scientists would learn this, we'd be centuries ahead in every aspect of evolution than we are today).
Enough said. "Seek and ye shall find!"
Now go seek.. I have
-Adeptus
PS. "The wise every seeketh that which once known, ALL is known!" - One may come to realize this scientifically through yet to be conceptualized "theory of everything" or one may achieve it today through spiritual enlightenment. The latter of which will provide you not with mere knowledge, but with the experience of the ALL - to experience ALL there is, was and there will be is to be omnipresent, omnisencient and even omnipotent - That my friends is to truly know GOD. Once this takes place, the act of teleportation will be as amazing to you as a grain of sand in the Sahara!
The really interesting thing (Score:2)
Teleportation's already been standarized (Score:2)
by the IETF. At least it's so according to this RFC [ietf.org].
I think this'll be included in the next version of KMail
speed of teleportation? (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, I could measure exactly how fast we were moving and in what direction by measuring our time skew by synchronizing to a quantum state to measure the ammount of time it takes for a photon to travel so far. Basically, I would have an independant, third party perspective of time. You might just be able to measure the time skew by carrying a clock from point A to B, then point A recieves information from point B, and they both record the time. Either the clock traveling from point A to B was traveling faster, slower, or the same as the person from A (depends on weather the Earth is moving toward A, B, or neither). This means you could measure the discrepancy, and calculate if relativity is true, thereby proving or disproving the theory once and for all. (Though it would seriously be undermined in a lot of ways, you could prove part of it being true.) Either that, or we can patch the theory some more to make it work in another way it doesn't seem to. Einstein knew about these situations, a good study of this may help lead a little closer to a unified theory?
The only problem I could see is that you wouldn't know what you were sending, but how could quantum computers be useful if you couldn't set at least some value?
Semantics (Score:2)
If you don't consider yourself to be constantly "dying", then presumably you'd also say that making a teleporter wouldn't "kill" you when it sends you to the other end. Of course, the original is also just as valid, so there's not much point in killing him.
I remember a sci-fi book where the teleporters left the original alone...
Re:Semantics (Score:2)
Yeah, there was a (new) Outer Limits episode about that... some alien race visited us and gave us teleportation, and a woman reporter was going to go live on their planet for a year and do a book about it or something.
There was a malfunction with the transporter that left her hopsitalized for a while and having funky nightmares, and at the end we find out that after the transporter made the copy of her on the distant planet, it didn't destroy the original like it was supposed to... and now the humans being trained to run the transporter have to finish the job, but the guy can't bring himself to do it, and it leads up to pretty much the standard, surprise Twilight Zone/Outer Limits ending.
~Philly
Re:I've never really understood... (Score:5, Informative)
1) CANNOT be Cloned or copied
2) CANNOT be Broadcasted
3) CANNOT be Measured Reliably (Heinsenberg Uncertainty Principle)
4) Is disturbed by observation
5) Sometimes appears to propagate instantaneously (EPR)
6) Can exists in superposition of classical states (Can be BOTH 1 and 0 at the same time)
Taken from Gilles Brassard's lecture:
http://www.msri.org/publications/ln/msr
So, by the parameters above, it CANNOT be a Xerox machine. Comparison of Quantum Teleport to classical replicator can be seen here
http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/telepo
Quantum Teleportation uses EPR to get around the limitations stated above, it's a really nice trick to send information across distance, without having to send the quantum information physically, which can be pertubed. Classical Info cannot, so the trick is only to send classical information, and use EPR to "teleport" the quantum information.
Science Fiction Teleportation will NEVER be achieved by Quantum Teleportation, so it's a moot point. This is only a way to have a smart way to get around HUP.