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Science

Quantum Dots Might Be Key For Teleportation 221

Posted by Zonk from the trek-is-now dept.
prostoalex writes "Researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have created a model teleportation system using quantum dots. PhysOrg reports that 'tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots may be excellent media for quantum teleportation, a physics phenomenon in which information — in the form of a quantum state, a very specific mathematical signature of an atom — can be transmitted almost instantaneously to a distant location without having to physically travel through space.'"
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Quantum Dots Might Be Key For Teleportation More

Quantum Dots Might Be Key For Teleportation

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  • How much POWER will that take? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Travoltus ( 110240 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @02:46AM (#19626243) Journal
    Measured in nuclear reactors, I mean.

    "Teleporting one quantum dot will take 5 nuclear reactors", and such.
    • It depends on what you want to transport. Would you like to transport... yourself? Power probably measured in "sol output minutes" (or hours, or days, or years), but I'm just guessing. Some information? Your cell phone battery is probably more than adequate.
      • Myself? Heck no. I subscribe to the Dr Leonard McCoy school of "eh, how do I know my soul goes along with my body?"

        I'll wait for the whole space folding / gate warping thing, where I can physically step from one spot to another (see: Stargate), thankyouverymuch. :)
        • I'll wait for the whole space folding / gate warping thing, where I can physically step from one spot to another (see: Stargate), thankyouverymuch. :)

          Don't mean to burst your bubble but ISTR the StarGate supposidly deconstructed you in a similar way to a teleporter before transmitting you through a wormhole. Oops, my geek is showing :)
          • Yeah, the stargate is really just a ring teleportation system that transmits through a wormhole.

            (my geek is naked before the world)
          • I was about to say the exact same thing. The biggest difference between the gate system and Trek's teleporters is the distance involved. That and the creators.

            • Re:How much POWER will that take? (Score:4, Funny)

              by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Sunday June 24, 2007 @11:21PM (#19632347)
              The biggest difference between the gate system and Trek's teleporters is the distance involved. That and the creators.

              Whereas, the biggest difference between Star Trek and Stargate SG-1 is that Star Trek stole from westerns, and Stargate SG-1 stole from every sci-fi show that's ever been shown. (I'm not saying they did it badly, though.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SEWilco ( 27983 )
          You do step from spot to another. Just step on the quantum mat. Bend your knees because there is a seven foot fall as you arrive. If you're taller than seven feet, bend your knees a lot.

    • Re:How much POWER will that take? (Score:5, Funny)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @07:31AM (#19627233)
      It depends on what kind of nuclear reactors.

      Are we talking about Africa or European reactors? And secondly how would two reactors carry the quantum dots? With a line or a strand of creeper?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ethicalBob ( 1023525 )
      Obviously it would take 1.21 gigawatts

      (oh, wait... only if it's encased in a Delorean)
  • Drat. iPhone is obsolete and it doesn't even go on sale until Friday. This whole quantum dot thing will make 3G networks obsolete before AT&T even gets it rolled out here in the U.S. I want my "iPhone Quantum". : )

  • Biggest Hurdle (Score:5, Funny)

    by JimboFBX ( 1097277 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @02:53AM (#19626269)
    Biggest Hurdle so far is figuring out how to stop the quantum pac-man who keeps eating them.

  • NOT a matter transporter (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cousarr ( 1117563 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @02:54AM (#19626275)
    Quantum entanglement is a great way to get information from one location to another at faster than the speed of light but offers no way to transmit matter. Theoretically the precesses here allow for technology like the ansible from Card's Ender's Game series but won't be transmitting ensign Ricky to his death from aboard the starship enterprise. Now, if we were all information-based entities teleporting about using quantum entanglement would be highly feasible.

    • Re:NOT a matter transporter (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:21AM (#19626363)
      Your post is almost rigth. Quantum entanglement is used for quantum teleportation but in no way can informaion be transmitted faster than light. In fact in order to be able to teleport somehing, some classical information has also to be exchanged.
    • In order to teleport an object, you don't need to actually transmit its matter, as long as you have some matter at the destination that you can use. All you need is to teleport the information about the quantum states of the matter so that the matter you already have at the destination can be put into the exact same state as the matter at the source.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jamu ( 852752 )

        Isn't one of those quantum states made up of positions? If you aren't transmitting matter then clearly the position (and momentum) quantum states aren't being included. The only way of identifying identical particles is by their state. If all the states move from one, otherwise identical, particle to another, then the particle itself has moved. The only way you can say it hasn't, would, obviously, be if the position state of the particle hasn't changed. So all the other identifying properties of the particl

    • Re:NOT a matter transporter (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:48AM (#19626419)
      First of all, I don't want a matter transporter. People are going to insist on using it for an alternate form of transportation. That might seem a fantastic idea, but just wait until some underpaid asshole with a hangover uses the wrong coordinates and doesn't beam you into your office cubicle, but sticks you halfway into a concrete wall in the lobby of your office building.

      Now, as for actual matter transportation -- and particularly people -- I've always wondered exactly how that would work. I am not one of those morons who believes that we have a soul or some particular part of our body or supposed spirit that makes us who we are. So - does that mean that simply taking my precise atomic makeup at point A and re-assimiliating it with different atoms over at point B will result in a real, actual me? Or would it be me without whatever makes me myself? I mean, soul and spirit bullshit aside, how could every neuron firing in my brain and every receptor and every blood vessel and capilary and memory stored away in my brain ever be re-produced somewhere else? Surely with so many trillions or quadrillions of atoms that make me up, there will always be some loss. So when you transport me from home to the office, I am a lossy me.

      And then, of course, the more you transport, the more you become like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Or, if you like another analogy, you go from being Alec Baldwin to Stephen Baldwin to Daniel Baldwin to a pool of primordial goo.

      I've also always wondered what would keep someone from just creating many copies of themselves. A transporter would never truly transport you. It would simply map your makeup here and assemble the same thing somewhere else. But that isn't to say that you'd have to destroy the version at point A from which the map came.

      So at best, we might some day have matter duplicators. There is no way we would ever have matter *transporters*. If you are going to assemble an orange a mile away, why bother with the energy to destroy a perfectly good orange here, that the duplicate came from? And when it comes to people... can you possibly imagine the indescribable agony you would experience every time you went through the process? They'd confirm that your duplicate was assembled and functional at your destination... and then destroy you at your point of origin. You would somehow be taken apart at the atomic level. Perhaps reduced to a very fine recycleable dust. It wouldn't be harmless and fun like in Star Trek. It would probably be like having a trillion surgical scalpels cutting into you while every inch of your body inside and out felt like it was burning and being shredded and ripped apart.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by SEWilco ( 27983 )

          The risk of cancer from DNA corruption scares the hell outta me.
          Alteration of DNA is not as disastrous to the body as you might think. The decay of a C-14 atom in DNA happens about 50 times per second, changing a carbon atom to one of nitrogen. So there is DNA corruption in about 50 of your cells each second from that cause alone. How often that has disastrous consequences for each cell is somewhat relevant to the body.

      • Re:NOT a matter transporter (Score:5, Informative)

        by asuffield ( 111848 ) <asuffield@suffields.me.uk> on Sunday June 24, 2007 @04:28AM (#19626579)

        I've also always wondered what would keep someone from just creating many copies of themselves. A transporter would never truly transport you. It would simply map your makeup here and assemble the same thing somewhere else. But that isn't to say that you'd have to destroy the version at point A from which the map came.


        Various fundamental results have already been formally proved about quantum physics. One of them is the no cloning theorem [wikipedia.org], and one of its many implications is that no duplication is ever possible: copying anything on a quantum level must always involve destroying the original.

        Another proven result is the no teleportation theorem [wikipedia.org]. This one indicates that quantum matter teleporters are fundamentally impossible. It just can't be done. It's not a problem with scale or accuracy, you cannot even teleport a single atom.

        These two theorems are not based on vague arguments, but on the mathematics underlying quantum physics. As such they are iron-clad.

        If either a working duplicator or teleporter is ever built, we already know that it will not be based on quantum physics, but on some lower level of physics that has not yet been discovered. This is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes (it takes roughly 100-200 years to move from one level of physics to the next, based on history).

        • Re:NOT a matter transporter (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Jamu ( 852752 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @05:49AM (#19626859)
          I'm not so sure the teleportation theorem does say that. If it's possible to transfer quantum states without measurement, and all you need for teleportation is to transfer these states, then you don't need to make measurements (which is what the teleportation theorem describes). Quantum physics doesn't rule out teleporters. In fact, the cloning theorem suggests that if you do teleport a person, then they are teleported and not destroyed after duplication. That is, if you only transfer their state and don't make measurements in the process of teleportation.
          • I don't think that teleportation without measurement is useful.

            You should note, that by saying "measurement" you're actually referring to any sort of interaction between the teleported particle and its surrounding.

            You don't always have to use a ruler to call something a measurement, you know...

            • I believe that some work has been done towards teleportation without measurement by entangling a particle first, and then measuring its pair, although I don't know what the outcome was.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by syousef ( 465911 )
          You're right that we're unlikely to see teleportation in our lifetime, and that it may be that the universe is constructed in such a way that it will never be allowed to happen.

          You're wrong about science taking 100-200 years to move from "one level of physics to the next, based on history" as you put it. The rate of scientific advancement has been increasing quite quickly. Take relativity for example.

          Einstein put out his famous 4 papers including special relativity in 1905. By 1945 - just 40 years - you had
      • Even without considering the concrete wall or degeneration of copies, every time a person is transported/duplicated correctly into an "empty space" that space is not really empty because there are always particles floating in the air which would get embedded into the person each time. That would be enough to very soon destroy a person's health and well-being.
      • Larry Niven covered all these topics (and more) in his excellent essay, "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation".

        Sadly, a quick google didn't show any copies on the web, but it's worth picking up one of his short-story collections that contains it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by robably ( 1044462 )

      Now, if we were all information-based entities teleporting about using quantum entanglement would be highly feasible.
      We are information-based entities. You'd still be you if your mind was teleported in to another body. Maybe a robot body. With breasts.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by joto ( 134244 )

        Now, if we were all information-based entities teleporting about using quantum entanglement would be highly feasible.

        We are information-based entities. You'd still be you if your mind was teleported in to another body

        That is your opinion, but that doesn't make it so. Since nobody has performed the experiment yet, we just don't know. Or to be more precise, we don't even have a fucking clue, as we haven't even succeeded with brain-transplants yet.

        Maybe a robot body. With breasts.

        I believe my personalit

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Mod parent up.

      I've been saying this every time one of these articles in quantum-entangled info transmission pops up.

      Isn't the idea of instantaneous information transmission outside the light cone, which can possibly even violate causality, a big enough deal on its own? The Ansible is a wonderful technology, and this stuff actually makes it possible in theory.

      Why keep adding "teleportation" to the headlines, which isn't even theoretically made possible as yet?

      Cool stuff the quantum dots DO enable:

      Send a spa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Danse ( 1026 )

      Quantum entanglement is a great way to get information from one location to another at faster than the speed of light but offers no way to transmit matter.

      We really need to get the government to fund this research now! This could solve all our lag problems in CS and BF!!

    • Quantum entanglement is a great way to get information from one location to another at faster than the speed of light but offers no way to transmit matter. Theoretically the precesses here allow for technology like the ansible from Card's Ender's Game series but won't be transmitting ensign Ricky to his death from aboard the starship enterprise. Now, if we were all information-based entities teleporting about using quantum entanglement would be highly feasible.

      Exactly what I was thinking. It would also revolutionize teleoperation of robots, or "waldos" as some pedants insist on calling them. I'm thinking of Ghost in the Shell, second manga series, where the Major does not enter action with her real body and brain but does everything through teleoperated droids.

      If we want to get all cyberpunk about this, consider how in today's world the major movers and shakers of the games turn out to be average people or pure nobodies. In the imagined cyberpunk futures, people

  • Speed? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Almost instantaneously" seems to be another way of saying "not instantaneously", which we could have guessed anyway. So why not say how fast it actually is?

    • Re:Speed? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by asuffield ( 111848 ) <asuffield@suffields.me.uk> on Sunday June 24, 2007 @04:34AM (#19626603)

      "Almost instantaneously" seems to be another way of saying "not instantaneously", which we could have guessed anyway. So why not say how fast it actually is?


      It's not measurable (really! to measure it would require a system that can transport information faster than light, and that's not possible so far as we know) and not really important. You teleport an entangled blob of quantum state, which arrives "almost instantaneously". You cannot do anything with it until you receive the companion classical information from the transmitter, which you need to "unpack" that blob of quantum state and extract the teleported information from it. The effective speed of the process is precisely the same as the actual speed of your classical (non-quantum) slower-than-light information channel, and that's the important part.
      • Could it be possible to organise things such that information sent from a third party, equidistant between the sender and reciever, was used as the classical communication channel? If the sender and reciever were 2 light-seconds apart and the sender got the trigger 1 light millisecond before the reciever, couldn't that work? Or does the information going from A to B along classical channels need to be generated by the sender?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zCyl ( 14362 )

      "Almost instantaneously" seems to be another way of saying "not instantaneously", which we could have guessed anyway. So why not say how fast it actually is?

      Quantum teleportation requires the transmission of classical information before the "teleportation" can be completed, and the transmission of this classical information is done by conventional means which are limited to the speed of light. For some reason there seems to be a popular and often repeated misconception that quantum teleportation is instant

  • Ok, I want to hear from a single guy in this forum/site, who can take this "teleportation might use quantum dots" information and make some use of it.

    And I don't mean Star Trek or cell phone jokes. I don't mean jokes at all (which I suspect will constitute 99% of the posts over here).

    This article in fact doesn't have anything to do with the audience here, except that it's about (drum rolls) magical teleportation. Which won't happen probably in the next 50-60 years, yet we get teleportation articles over her

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zCyl ( 14362 )

      Ok, I want to hear from a single guy in this forum/site, who can take this "teleportation might use quantum dots" information and make some use of it.

      You could use it to make a Beowulf cluster of quantum computers.

      (I kid you not.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stjobe ( 78285 )

      Ok, I want to hear from a single guy in this forum/site

      There should be no shortage of single guys here... :)
    • So you'd rather us spend 100% of our time dwelling on the realities of today and imagining the possibilities of tomorrow?

      Sounds awfully droll to me.

      As for comprehension, don't lump all of us in with you. Some people on here are quantum physicists, and some of us like it as a hobby.

  • Read the discussion... (Score:5, Informative)

    by niceone ( 992278 ) * on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:15AM (#19626351) Journal
    The article is pretty light on information, but hte discussion has a pretty thorough description of why this can't (AFAIK) be used to send information, including a link to the wikipedia topic [wikipedia.org]. Maybe they have a way round that, but you can't tell from the article.

  • Teleporter death (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:21AM (#19626361) Homepage Journal
    This reminds me of a question I never found the answer to: if you teleported yourself, would you die and a clone be made?

    From the sounds of TFA, the new "you" would not actually be you at all, just a copy. It sounds like your conscious mind would be obliterated and a new one created, although the new one might not be aware of it.
    • From the sounds of TFA, the new "you" would not actually be you at all, just a copy. It sounds like your conscious mind would be obliterated and a new one created, although the new one might not be aware of it.

      If you weren't aware of it, and you kept your previous consious state, would it even matter?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stjobe ( 78285 )
        It would matter to the old you -- would you teleport yourself if you knew it was going to kill you?
        Okay, so they say that there's a "new" you at the destination, but the old you dies, right? You die.
        Would you bet your life on the process "keep[ing] your previous cons[c]ious state"?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MythMoth ( 73648 )

          It would matter to the old you -- would you teleport yourself if you knew it was going to kill you?
          Okay, so they say that there's a "new" you at the destination, but the old you dies, right? You die.
          Would you bet your life on the process "keep[ing] your previous cons[c]ious state"?

          Every night I shut down my consciousness and restart it every morning. Ok, maybe I'm semi-conscious during REM, but during deep sleep I'm utterly unconscious. How do I know that my consciousness doesn't die every night and an indi

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by stjobe ( 78285 )
            You can be pretty certain that your body isn't destroyed and rebuilt every night, and there's the difference. To our present knowledge, destruction of the body equals death of the person.

            Teleportation (as we speak of it in this thread) requires that your body be destroyed at one end of the transmission and rebuilt at the other without the death of the person. Since we don't know -- and can't know -- yet what that does to a person's "conscious state" this is a philosophical question. Science doesn't have t

      • Right. Another person who doesn't understand the difference between an original and a photocopy.

        Tell you what, you go first.

         

    • Re:Teleporter death (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WarJolt ( 990309 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:53AM (#19626449)
      What you are talking about is philosophical issue. With teleportation you no longer exists where you were and you exist where you are now, but thats true as you walk through space. I think the problem occurs when you consider the energy that makes up your matter is part of you.

      Let me ask you a question. Isn't it true that your cells are constantly regenerating themselves? The matter you were made up of when you were born no longer is the same matter, but you are still you. So if your qunatum state was duplicated and during the process the original was destroyed then you would still think you are you. Would you still BE you? That just opens a whole can of worms.

      The question in my mind is can quantum teleportation bring along your soul? If you don't believe in a soul you have to ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you only you because of that matter that makes you up? The matter that makes you up comes from the stuff you eat. So is the stuff you eat part of you before you eat it? Is it only you when you make food part of your cells and your body? What makes you unconfortable with the idea of your body being made up of different energy? Consider this: Your body is constantly rebuilding itself with new and different energy and disposing of the old parts. Whats the difference?

      I bet most people wouldn't step into a teleportation unless the quantum state of your atoms were reconstructed with the SAME energy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stjobe ( 78285 )

        With teleportation you no longer exists where you were and you exist where you are now

        Not quite. With teleportation you cease to exist where you were because your body is destroyed and rebuilt with new matter so that you can exist where you are now. Not as trivial as "walk[ing] through space", is it?

        You might be on to something with the next paragraph though, people usually have a hard enough time getting to grips with the fact that a future me or a past me is somehow still me. Now try and make them see

      • You are making a great "step" to hide a flaw in your reasonement. The difference is that the body is not destroyed and rebuilt each instant. It only very small parts which die off and are replaced. But not identically else you would neither grow, nor would you forget, nor would your body differentiate during foetus growth. I repeat the MAIN mass of the body and brain is NOT replaced at each and very instant even if it is over time. This enorm step you take is assuming a Destruction of the whole body, then a
      • Your post is probably the most fundamentally relevant writeup I have ever read on Slashdot. I know this sort of questions and subjects are not discussed often among people, geeks or not. But they should be.
      • "Are you only you because of that matter that makes you up?"
        Is a sound only that sound because of the matter that makes it up?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chemisor ( 97276 )
        > Consider this: Your body is constantly rebuilding itself with new and different
        > energy and disposing of the old parts. Whats the difference?

        Consider this: no matter how often you upgrade your PC, you can still run the same exact copy of Windows. When you understand that there is no difference between software running on hardware and a soul running in the brain, you'll know that no matter how much health food you eat, you can still end up in Hell.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by caudron ( 466327 )

        Let me ask you a question. Isn't it true that your cells are constantly regenerating themselves? The matter you were made up of when you were born no longer is the same matter, but you are still you. So if your qunatum state was duplicated and during the process the original was destroyed then you would still think you are you. Would you still BE you?

        I'd argue the answer is no, but it is, as you point out, an existential problem. For many people there is a qualitative difference between the slow regenerati

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Lobais ( 743851 )
      Exactly, because if we said that it _would_ be _you_ in the new body, then if the old you was not destroyed you would be consciously in two bodies at the same time, and that'd be rather confusing.
    • Your body completely remakes itself every few years (I forget the precise length of time). Quite literally, you're not the same person you were 10 years ago.

      Ultimately, though, if a copy is absolutely perfect and wholly indistinguishable from the original, then there is no difference between the two. This is the fundamental basis behind digital data. I doubt all religions will see it that way, though. Those that hold the body sacred (like Jehovah's Witnesses) will probably object to it's use on humans.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stjobe ( 78285 )

        Your body completely remakes itself every few years [...] you're not the same person you were 10 years ago.

        Say you have an axe. You break the handle and replace it. Is it still the same axe? Most people would say yes.
        Now say you later broke the head and replace it. Is it still the same axe? Most people would say yes, even though no parts of the original axe remains.
        Finally, say you broke both the handle and the head and replaced them both. Is it still the same axe? Most people would say no, because you n

    • Luckily Star Trek takes a rather agnostic view of the Universe otherwise Heaven and Hell will be filled with Kirk, Spocks, McCoys, perhaps even more of them then red shirts.
    • Easy suicide!
    • Teleportation is only limited by your imagination...

  • Quantum dots (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    kids have such cute names for herpes these days!

  • Couldn't time delay be the form of communication (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ConfusedSelfHating ( 1000521 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @04:53AM (#19626673)

    Let us take 9 "quantum pairs" (honestly, I don't know the exact terminology of them). You have 9 of them on Earth (A) and 9 of them elsewhere (B). They are ordered from 0 to 8. Assuming that you can determine when the quantum waveform collapses into spin up or spin down, you start the communication when A0 is caused to collapse. Instantly B0 becomes up or down. That's the start of the communication. If after 1 ms, B1 is found to have collapsed into an up or down, that counts as a 0. If after 2ms, B1 is found to have collapsed into a up or down, that counts as a 1. You would be able to generate a byte of data this way.

    So start-2-1-2-1-1-1-2-1, would be 10100010.

    The point is that it doesn't matter whatever B0 to B8 end up as. Just when they end up as an up or a down.

    Are you going to be able to determine whether the waveform has collapsed without collapsing it yourself.

    Of course, I didn't sleep last night. My guess is that if you are in a position to determine whether or not the waveform has collapsed, you will collapse it yourself. Maybe there's an indirect method.

    As far as matter transportation, I wouldn't rule it out as impossible. I certainly wouldn't say it's inevitable. When quantum communication is studied in greater depth, some inconsistencies may be uncovered which could lead to a "greater truth".

    • Faulty assumption (Score:5, Informative)

      by cat_jesus ( 525334 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @05:50AM (#19626869)
      Assuming that you can determine when the quantum waveform collapses

      This is the faulty assumption.

      Think of of entanglement this way. You have two roulette wheels and they are "entangled". What this means to the roulette wheels is that they are spinning and the marbles are bouncing along inside them synchronously(I know they'd be at right angles but being the same value works well for the visualization). So you split them up and one roulette wheel is in another galaxy and the other is here. Both are spinning and the marbles are still bouncing around in sync. If you stop one, the other keeps going. If you stop them at the same time the marbles will have the same value. But the problem is the one you assume away. You cannot tell that the other roulette wheel has stopped.

      In QE, if you attempt to observe the entanglement, you make it collapse. You can't tell what the state of the particle is without destroying the entanglement.

      IINAQP and I could be wrong. But this is my understanding and my cousin who is a Physicist tells me I have an accurate, if rudimentary, understanding of this particular phenomenon.

      I wish you were right.
      • So what makes an "observation"?

        Can a ruler alone do it? Can bacteria do it? Or does it require a human level consciousness to collapse the wave function?
  • IANAP(hysicist), but it is my lamens understanding that the No Communication Theorem is such that the act of observation lies in direct contradiction with the potential for communication.

    If you have a set of atoms on earth, and an equivalent set of atoms on say Mars (light minutes away), synced with teleportation - any message sent from earth would be received on Mars faster than the speed of light, but when observed the message would inherently be garbled to the point where it could not be understood due t

  • Quantum teleportation is nothing more than the equivalent of the MOV instruction on a quantum computer, with the oddity that this instruction actually does *move* the data, rather than copying it. As you can imagine, this is one of those basic instructions that you have to be able to implement properly in order to be able to have a quantum computer, which is why people are trying to get it right.

    The reason it's called "teleportation" is just to emphasize that the data was once in one place and now is i

  • Isn't that the "ice cream of the future" you see advertised all over the place? Just asking.

  • Model teleportation system (Score:3, Funny)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Sunday June 24, 2007 @09:39AM (#19627813) Journal
    They made a model teleportation system. Why do models get special treatment? I can undestand their being able to deduct makeup as a business expense, but why do they get a teleportation system first?
  • So if communication via entangled quarks is impossible (ref: the forum comments in TFA), and seems to be impossible because passing information instantaneously (i.e., faster than the speed of light) is thwarted by the quantum states being "a jump ahead" of free will and conscious action, adjusting themselves to compensate for the actions of supposed free will -- does this mean that free will is an illusion?

    That we are steered by the manipulations of quantum states, and have no real say in what we do?

    Do we l
  • I tend to think that when something is too good to be true, it probably is. Quantum entanglement is most probably a result of an error in the physics model and likely doesn't exist in reality.
  • And it only transports matter!?

  • ....makes me roam.

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