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Power Science

Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy 365

MikeChino writes "A physicist at Tohoku University in Japan has figured out how to teleport energy from one point in the universe to another. The technique is based upon prior research that shows it's possible to teleport information from one location to another, and involves making a measurement on each [of] an entangled pair of particles. The measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system, and then by carefully choosing the measurement to do so on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy. Heady stuff, but essentially it means that you can inject energy at one point in the universe and extract it from somewhere else without changing the energy of the system as a whole."
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Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy

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  • by slifox ( 605302 ) * on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:20PM (#31040968)
    How would an experiment like this be interpreted using the consistent histories theory?

    For a classic entanglement "teleportation" scenario where a measurement on one particle could cause information to be "teleported" to the state of the other particle, I think the consistent histories interpretation of quantum mechanics says that the second particle was always in the same state until it was measured, and that no information was exchanged.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_histories [wikipedia.org]

    On another note, is there a way to test if this is correct?
    Are there direct practical applications for this, if it is correct?
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PIBM ( 588930 )

      Just wait until there is ..

      no more powerline!

      That would clean up a lot of space :)

      • by tyrione ( 134248 )

        Just wait until there is ..

        no more powerline!

        That would clean up a lot of space :)

        Bury the power lines. Problem solved.

        • You can't do that for megavolt-level power lines. It's fine for residential areas though.

      • by CorporateSuit ( 1319461 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:36PM (#31041132)
        Exactly. In a few decades, instead of a power cable leading to your house, you could fit your house with a 30-ton, $7,000,000 quantum disentangler! I imagine it could also be used in place of a battery on your ipad! Never worry about low battery ever again!
      • You think replacement batteries and chargers are expensive *now*

      • Energy teleportation could mean no more need for any kind of fuel.
        Heck... even if the send/receive station is to huge to be portable it would still eliminate any other form of powerplant.

        Just chuck some solar sails on huge platforms up into space and point them towards the sun.
        For the extra credit, get them there by pumping energy collected on Earth into their receiving station and use ion engines to set them up at the most desired position.
        Then, do what they do on Star Trek all the time - reverse the polar

    • by fusiongyro ( 55524 ) <faxfreemosquito.yahoo@com> on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:31PM (#31041096) Homepage

      I am not the guy to answer this, but I'm going to take a stab at it.

      The article says that the prior research worked by transmitting the information separately, at the speed of light. So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

      Still, that rocks pretty hard.

      • by IICV ( 652597 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:40PM (#31041166)

        I am not the guy to answer this, but I'm going to take a stab at it.

        You've just described Slashdot in a nutshell.

        • by mugurel ( 1424497 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:59PM (#31041338)

          you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

          You've just described Slashdot in a nutshell.

          • by Fallingcow ( 213461 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @10:25PM (#31042490) Homepage

            Slashdot (sometimes abbreviated as /.) is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as, "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and evaluated current affairs news stories about a variety of science and technology related topics. Each story on the site has an Internet forum-style comments section attached. Slashdot was founded in 1997 as a blog, Chips & Dips, by Hope College computer science student Rob Malda, also known as "Commander Taco". The name "Slashdot" is described by Malda as "a sort of obnoxious parody of a URL", chosen to confuse those who tried to pronounce the URL of the site ("h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-org").

            Summaries of stories and links to news articles are submitted by Slashdot's own readers, and each story becomes the topic of a threaded discussion among the site's users. Discussion is moderated by a user-based moderation system in which randomly selected moderators assign points of either -1 or +1 to each comment, based on whether the comment is perceived as either normal, offtopic, insightful, redundant, interesting, or troll (among others). The site's comment and moderation system is administered by its own content management system, Slash, which is available under the GNU General Public License.

            Slashdot's traffic is estimated at approximately 5.5 million users per month, and the site has won over twenty awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 for Best Community Site and Best News Site. Occasionally, a story will link to a server causing a large surge of traffic, which can overwhelm some smaller or independent sites. This phenomenon is known as the "Slashdot effect".

            Wikipedia's just described Slashdot in a nutshell.

            • by Kagura ( 843695 ) on Saturday February 06, 2010 @08:14AM (#31044852)

              A nutshell is the outer shell of a nut. Most nutshells are inedible and are removed before eating the nut meat inside. The expression "in a nutshell" (of a story, proof, etc.) means "in essence", metaphorically alluding to the fact that the essence of the nut, i.e., its edible part, is contained inside its shell.

              You've just described in a nutshell on Slashdot.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          .You've just described Slashdot in a nutshell.

          No, he described Wikipedia.

      • I don't understand what the hell is going on, but it seems to me that if you can send energy someplace faster than the speed of light, that could be used to transmit "information".

        Assuming the energy increase is detectable and measurable, I could pre-arrange a system where a particular increase in energy constituted a discrete signal. All you need to do is to be able to detect the difference between "increase in energy" and "no increase in energy", and you basically have a bit. Find a way to have a lot

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Normal Dan ( 1053064 )
          A lot of this has to do with what we call cause and effect and other terminology being used. Reading one side of the quantum pair 'causes' the other side to be of a certain outcome. It doesn't really mean anything spooky or mystical or faster than light is 'really' happening (for some values of reality).

          Here's a different way to think about what's going on. Suppose you have some device that fires bowling balls in opposing directions, you're just not sure what direction they will go. So, on one side, y
          • Actually, "spooky" isn't a bad way to to put it [wikipedia.org]. Entanglement is spooky action over distance. Calling it nothing spooky/mystical is a stretch, and calling it not FTL is just wrong.

          • by CFD339 ( 795926 )

            Please, someone come up with an automotive explanation, Quick!

          • So if I have the sending station at point A, and the receiving station at point B, and I want to transmit power, all I need to do is send point A's measurement to the people at point B so they know how to measure it to get the power out at their end. Is that right?

            My question would be, is the energy required to do this more than what you'd lose just sending the power over the same distance using more traditional methods (e.g. power lines)? I'm assuming measuring, capturing, and converting the energy into

        • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @08:44PM (#31041724) Journal

          I don't understand what the hell is going on, but it seems to me that if you can send energy someplace faster than the speed of light, that could be used to transmit "information".

          In this case, you have to "measure" the particle in a particular way to retrieve the energy, and that way depends on what happened to the particle on the other side while the energy is being "pumped in" (so you cannot know in advance). So there needs to be an existing information channel to transmit the information on exact way of measurement that needs to be performed, which obeys the usual rules.

      • The article says that the prior research worked by transmitting the information separately, at the speed of light. So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

        I'm having trouble with the difference (energy level + time factor = digital information) and that's without getting into the idea that matter basically = energy + information, but I guess that it's the measurement that differentiates them. However, unless I'm horribly mistaken, and I probably am, you could have two sync'd clocks and make repeated measurements of the energy being teleported, and use that for instant information transfer.

        There, I fixed those pesky space travel comms and control delays for yo

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MJMullinII ( 1232636 )

          The article says that the prior research worked by transmitting the information separately, at the speed of light. So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

          I'm having trouble with the difference (energy level + time factor = digital information) and that's without getting into the idea that matter basically = energy + information, but I guess that it's the measurement that differentiates them. However, unless I'm horribly mistaken, and I probably am, you could have two sync'd clocks and make repeated measurements of the energy being teleported, and use that for instant information transfer.

          There, I fixed those pesky space travel comms and control delays for you.

          That's almost infinitely valuable in itself. Imagine being able to instantaneously keep contact with spacecraft, regardless of how far they travel from earth. They're have been theoretical designs for over thirty years for Nuclear Powered unmanned missions to Alpha Centauri, Bearnard's Star (unsure about spelling there), and others. The main drag on spending the enormous amounts of money on such missions is that while everyone pretty much understands it will take a long time getting their (I seem to reme

          • Wouldn't it make it possible to send the craft without humans, because it can be controlled "in real time" here from earth, and perhaps by the time it gets there, we might be able to transport the humans to the ship? All we needed was a destination that we know we could safely send them. That and the technology to do such a thing.

          • by Brian Gordon ( 987471 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @08:42PM (#31041694)

            Sorry to burst your bubble but you can't transmit information faster than light.

            Period.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Sorry to burst your bubble but you can't transmit information faster than light.

              Period.

              Unless the theory of relativity turns out to be incomplete as a model of the universe. But that's almost certainly impossible as all our previous theories have proved to be perfect in every respect and this one is sure to too.

            • by Failed Physicist ( 1411173 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @11:56PM (#31043078) Journal

              Sorry to burst your bubble but you can't transmit information faster than light.

              Period*.

              *: As long as current observations that the universe is causal are not falsified.

              Fixed that for you.

      • by geekoid ( 135745 )

        Yes, it also looks like the amount of energy doesn't have to be the exact same.
        So if different amounts of energy could be sent then they can be, interpreted as "ones" and "zeros"

      • by FrangoAssado ( 561740 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @08:18PM (#31041484)

        So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

        No, energy can't be transmitted instantly. From the abstract:

        Protocols of quantum energy teleportation (QET) (...) enable the transportation of energy from a subsystem of a many-body quantum system to a distant subsystem by local operations and classical communication through ground-state entanglement. We prove two energy-entanglement inequalities for a minimal QET model. [my emphasis]

        So, you apparently still need the classical channel in order to know what measurement to perform in the receiving end, just like in good old quantum teleportation [wikipedia.org].

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

          No, energy can't be transmitted instantly... you apparently still need the classical channel in order to know what measurement to perform in the receiving end, just like in good old quantum teleportation [wikipedia.org].

          Yes. However, that is for one measurement. To really know what speed you are limited to before you can get surplus energy out on one end (eaten on the other of course), you also need to know how many possibilities there are for measurement, and how much energy you would lose in measuring the "wrong" variable.

          For instance, you could set up, say 100 such entanglements in parallel and then measure at random whether some spin is up or down at some time of some particle or whatever would be necessary at random.

      • Can the energy being transmitted be manipulated in any way? For example, can we choose to send a lot of energy, or a little energy? If that's the case, couldn't we use different amounts of energy to represent different information? How is it that energy can be transmitted instantly, but information cannot?

      • by radtea ( 464814 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @09:30PM (#31042048)

        So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy.

        I'm pretty much pushing a rock up hill here, but some people enjoy pointless struggle.

        Nothing is transmitted instantaneously. Not mass, not energy, not information. Nor, contrary to the article's false claims, has anyone ever teleported an electron, photon or atom, although people who don't understand quantum mechanics and physicists who would rather mislead the public to get positive mention in the press than do actual science will claim otherwise.

        The only thing that gets "teleported" is the quantum state of an atom, electron or atom. As anyone who knows anything about quantum mechanics knows, the ontology of quantum states is a slippery beast, so talking about "teleporting" one as if it was ontologically identical to a brick or Captain Kirk is pretty questionable right off.

        Teleporting a quantum state is completely different from teleporting a particle: if you could teleport a particle then the particle quantum numbers at the transmitter and receiver would change. In the case of quantum "teleportation" they do not. And the information is carried via entanglement using a perfectly ordinary beam of particles: if you were to stick your hand into the space through which information is being "teleported" the perfectly ordinary classical carrier particles would burn a hole through it.

        In the case at hand, what is being discussed appears to be a fairly tame equivalent of quantum tunnelling, in which a spatially extended object like a string is excited into a higher energy state by an interaction at one end. There may be a small but finite chance that you can then de-excite the string from the other end pretty much instantaneously, because the excited state is a state of the whole spatially extended string, although the question of the speed at which that can occur is much debated.

        Arguments over the "velocity" of the wavefunction under the barrier in quantum tunnelling have been going on since the early 1930's--there's a nice paper in Phys Rev from 1932 or thereabouts in which the authors did a pre-electronic-computer numerical solution to Schrodinger's equation to study the issue.

        So to my mind, this is pretty ordinary, although a nice way of studying a much-debated and well-known curiosity of the quantum world, that has been marketed in a misleading and dishonest way to an ignorant press by the scientists in question, or which has been picked up the the ignorant press and distorted beyond all recognition despite the scientist's attempts at an honest and clear presentation.

      • So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy

        ... which would immediately violate the principle of the conservation of energy.

        The problem here is that energy == matter (via e=mc^2) and the system of matter/energy together in space-time yields information. Beckenstein shows that the total information in a volume of space is described by the area of the volume which encloses it. See "Bekenstein Bound" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound/ [wikipedia.org]
        So in order for this new theory to work, the energy that is instantly transfered to another

  • How long before something like this makes it's way into communications? Granted it's no 'beam me up Scotty', but it's getting pretty damn close, at least from an energy perspective. Is this instantaneous across a distance?

    • by txoof ( 553270 )

      All we need now are some Heisenberg Compensators and we're half way to a teleporter.

      • by geekoid ( 135745 )

        I suspect that if you can transport mass and energy, you could manipulate the energy so your momentum is correct for where you are arriving at. In fact, if you did it right, you could create an energy generators.

        • by v1 ( 525388 )

          well if E still equals MC^2, if you can teleport energy, then you can teleport mass. And that causes all sorts of problems with issues such as angular momentum and conservation of energy, so I remain skeptical.

          Generally speaking, the 'to every action there is an equal but opposite reaction" means that if you teleport something, something else of an opposite nature also was teleported the other way. So either they're wrong, or they've overlooked something important.

      • Its ironic that we use the term Heisenberg to denote uncertainty, considering how very right he was.
    • I've re-read this 3 times, and I'm still not sure. It seems the information can be passed instantaneously across a distance, but some other piece of this requires plain old speed of light. Is there an engineer in the house?

      "The technique relies on the strange quantum phenomenon called entanglement, in which two particles share the same existence. This deep connection means that a measurement on one particle immediately influences the other, even though they are light-years apart. Bennett and company worked

      • by dissy ( 172727 )

        It seems the information can be passed instantaneously across a distance, but some other piece of this requires plain old speed of light. Is there an engineer in the house?

        It seems what they are saying is not that the information can be teleported faster than light (even though in limited prearranged cases it can), but instead that the 'information' can be ignored as such, but its useful energy can be raised by lowering the useful energy at the other teleporter site by the same amount.

        Think of each end of the teleporter as each end of a power extension cord.

        I for one am OK with the fact, after plugging one end into the wall, that I have to and carry the other end at speeds mu

      • I'm an engineer, and I can't help you too much. What you're looking for is a scientist, more specifically a physicist.

        We engineers don't usually get too involved in stuff like this until there's practical applications for the scientific findings, and real pieces of equipment being designed to exploit them. When someone's figured out how to make teleportation machines or FTL communicators with this data, then you can call an engineer to tell you how it works.

    • I'll believe it when they transport a red shirt into oblivion.
  • Wow. (Score:5, Funny)

    by tool462 ( 677306 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:25PM (#31041022)

    Best. Physics quote. Ever.

    "He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton's balls."

  • Wow.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cheerio Boy ( 82178 ) * on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:26PM (#31041042) Homepage Journal
    If you can inject enough energy into the process this could in theory be the replacement for batteries. This is provided you could make a giant transmitter that sends to the receiving devices. (Or possibly battery replacement modules?)

    This is provided the technology isn't only "ten years away" or so. ;-)
    • by dissy ( 172727 )

      If you can inject enough energy into the process this could in theory be the replacement for batteries. This is provided you could make a giant transmitter that sends to the receiving devices. (Or possibly battery replacement modules?)

      To teleport energy between two points in space, I would imagine a little bit of hardware would be needed to accomplish this.
      Instead of just 'device a' and 'device b' as our two devices that teleport energy, lets call them 'battery' device'\ which comes in a tiny pellet sized unit, that comes with adapters of the sizes of our current batteries, and the other one called the 'power brick with no wire' device that plugs in the wall.

      It's a start!

    • by jfengel ( 409917 )

      > This is provided the technology isn't only "ten years away" or so. ;-)

      This is the kind of technology they call "40 years away". As in "Yeah, I suppose, maybe, but I'm not even sure it's theoretically possible."

      (As opposed to "10 years", meaning "It's theoretically possible, but I have no idea how.")

  • If I recall, in Mass Effect 2 they used entangled particles for instantaneous long-distance transmission across the galaxy!
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      If you recall? It came out last week. My copy arrived today.
      Too bad the post office couldn't entangle it into my mailbox sooner.

    • by neokushan ( 932374 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:47PM (#31041230)

      Yes, according to the lore they use entangled particles as a form of long range communication. EDI (Tricia Heifer of BSG fame) goes into some detail about how it works, which isn't that different from how the article here describes it.

      Bioware deserve points for doing that kind of research into the game.

      • EDI (Tricia Heifer of BSG fame) goes into some detail about how it works,

        You may not like her like most other BSG fans, but that's no reason to call her a cow.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Tmack ( 593755 )

        Yes, according to the lore they use entangled particles as a form of long range communication. EDI (Tricia Heifer of BSG fame) goes into some detail about how it works, which isn't that different from how the article here describes it.

        Bioware deserve points for doing that kind of research into the game.

        Its actually been around in Sci-Fi for quite some time. See Ansible [wikipedia.org], Orson Scott Card used it as the basis for Ender's Game and that whole series of books (though it got a bit extreme after the first one).

        tm

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Except it can't and that's not this. Other then that, you are spot on...this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ShakaUVM ( 157947 )

      >>If I recall, in Mass Effect 2 they used entangled particles for instantaneous long-distance transmission across the galaxy!

      Yeah, one of the things I love about the Mass Effect series is that they actually have a consistent physics that would actually work if their core premise (Element Zero / Eezo) actually existed. Essentially, if you run an electric current through the Eezo, it reduces the mass of objects in the area based on the electric current, and the mass. When you reduce mass to zero, then y

  • Positioning? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mikkeles ( 698461 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:30PM (#31041080)

    Exactly how do I get the 'second' particle to where I want the information to be retrieved?

    • Exactly how do I get the 'second' particle to where I want the information to be retrieved?

      I'm guessing that's the rub. You'd most probably need to get said second particle to wherever you were wanting to transmit too the old fashion way (meaning anything you can manage below the speed of light), so it's not as cool as "Warp Drive", though assuming you are able to constantly communicate with the ship (were assuming space for the purposes of my example), you at least could be kept abreast of the trip the entire way to said destination.

      That's kinds how it works today when laying fiber optic cable.

  • Information. Well I mean besides the states of the 2 entangled particles. (You look at one, it's state is set and therefore the entangled particle gets it state set.)
  • Man, I love the headline, whatever the details. Even better, the scientist(s) is Japanese!
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Which means the technology will be used to give people faster access to tentacle porn.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:41PM (#31041178)

    Speaking as a Physicist, it seems the title should be " A physicist has posted a preprint in which he claims that "energy can be teleported"
    (as opposed to beiing transmitted)." and someone has praised it in a blog post.

    The astract says
    "Protocols of quantum energy teleportation (QET), while retaining causality and local energy conservation, enable the transportation of energy from a subsystem of a many-body quantum system to a distant subsystem by local operations and classical communication through ground-state entanglement. We prove two energy-entanglement inequalities for a minimal QET model. These relations help us to gain a profound understanding of entanglement itself as a physical resource by relating entanglement to energy as an evident physical resource. "

    note "classical communication" (i.e. a telephone call from one place to another) to tell the recipient what to do to extract the energy is needed.

    Note that an arxiv post is an assertion by an author, prior to any refereeing. The are only minimal "fences" at arxiv.org to keep out the "Einstein was wrong, I am right" nuts.

    • note "classical communication" (i.e. a telephone call from one place to another) to tell the recipient what to do to extract the energy is needed.

      Sounds like another one of Maxwell's Demons [wikipedia.org]. "If something were smart enough to assess the properties of a local particle..."

    • by ignavus ( 213578 )

      So you can instantly teleport energy to Alpha Centauri, but it would take over 4 years for your phone call to reach them, telling them about it?

      And add another 8 years if they say "WHAT? Can't hear you."

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      note "classical communication" (i.e. a telephone call from one place to another) to tell the recipient what to do to extract the energy is needed.

      Yeah, but that doesn't make it useless. For example, imagine your television came with an entangled remote control, and it communciates the necessary information "classically" with one of any available low-power wireless transmission methods. The remote can then use whatever power it needs through its "entanglement battery". There you go, a remote control that never needs new batteries.

      I'm just extrapolating, assuming that you actually can "teleport" useful amounts of energy wirelessly through this proce

  • Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dissy ( 172727 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @07:43PM (#31041200)

    Wait a sec...

    Isn't how things started in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [kuro5hin.org] got started off?

    *fear*

  • I can teleport energy through a "power cable".

  • All I can sat is: Jesus, what the fuck? This is insane. This can't possibly be even close to as real as I think it is. Does this mean that we could actually have space-based solar cells that are just *magically* linked to the ground?
    This is blowing my fucking mind.
    -Taylor

    • Not trying to be down on you, but the word 'magically' is out of place in a discussion about the fundamentals of the cosmos. The reality of the universe is FAR more interesting then any 'magic'
  • It's Not That Kind Of Teleportation [xkcd.com]

    And the first comment on TFA is, of course, someone saying how this can be used for FTL communication.

  • I've been doing that for years. I shove a pizza in my mouth and it teleports to my ass!

  • its called peristalsis

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peristalsis [wikipedia.org]

    aka, every time you swallow, you make a future fart

    so what is this? interstellar peristalsis? gives new meaning to the term "worm hole"

  • by Pfhorrest ( 545131 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @08:34PM (#31041610) Homepage Journal
    People both here and on the linked blog article seem to be thinking that this "teleportation" talk is all about sending things from one place to another faster than light. That's not the big deal; it's already well-established that that cannot be done, at least not via quantum entanglement.

    The breakthrough the article is talking about is moving energy from one place to another "instantly" by means of performing the right pair of measurements on both end; but the communication between ends about what measurements to make still happens at light speed or less.

    For example, say I have a bunch of particles here on Earth and my colleagues on Mars have another bunch of particles entangled with mine. Mars is at the moment ten light-minutes away from each. On my end, I perform a measurement on (i.e. I interact with) my particles in a way which raises their energy from X joules to Y joules; I then send a radio transmission (with said transmission using less than Y-X joules) to my colleagues on Mars giving them instructions for what measurements to make on their end, i.e. I transmit information, in normal ways, at the speed of light or less.

    Ten minutes later, my colleagues on Mars get my message, perform the measurement, and BAM, the energy of their particles jumps up to Y joules. The most efficient classical alternative for transmitting that (Y-X) joules of energy would be to beam a signal of said energy between the two points, but that requires a clear line of sight between them, or some set of relays capable of carrying that signal, each of which adds inefficiency to the transmission. An even less efficient, even more classical method would be to take whatever the energy is stored in here on Earth and physically move it to its destination, which is both much slower and much less energy-efficient.

    With this method, my colleagues could be buried deep underground in a sealed lab with no way of getting anything in or out except for a limited range of radio signals carried by equipment incapable of carrying high-power signals... and still I can "beam" them arbitrary amounts of energy straight into their lab just beaming energy into some particles in my lab and then telling them over the radio what to do in their lab to receive it.
    • And what if nobody receives the call? Does the energy "disappear"? What if two people get the message? First one to reproduce the directions gets the energy? Who determines which is first? What if they are (as close as possible) simultaneous?

  • What can untangle the pairs? How stable is the entanglement?

    Also, how much energy does it take to do the correct measurement to receive the transmitted energy?

    Depending on how much energy can be transferred in this method, would it be possible to mass a large amount of entangled pairs and send them into the Sun (or a solar array in space) that could then transmit that energy back to the other pair located somewhere on Earth?

    Limitless energy with no loss to transmission... Sweet deal...

    BTW, which do

  • by arthurpaliden ( 939626 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @08:53PM (#31041806)

    Using time sequencing you can now transfer binary data. Energy at this time code (i) no energy at this time code (0).

    So you can now have real time control of distant space craft and rovers.

  • zero point? (Score:3, Funny)

    by davek ( 18465 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @09:36PM (#31042118) Homepage Journal

    Editors, I love ya, but if anyone on earth really did discover "how to teleport" anything, I'm pretty sure I'd be seeing it scroll by on the CNN news ticker right now. It wouldn't be the first time /. has scooped the media complex, but so far its been 2 hours since the story was posted, and I don't see any breaking news on Channel 6. Seriously, enough with the sensationalist headlines. Call me when you have my flying car or jet pack ready.

  • Think Bigger (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jovetoo ( 629494 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @09:54PM (#31042256) Journal

    How about a few thousand solar satellites in orbit around the sun, transmitting energy directly to power stations on earth where the energy gets redistributed?

    How about no more batteries?

    Driving cars that get their energy straight from the sun?

    Cellphones that do not just get their energy through an entangled pair, but also their 'net connection?

    Or why not just dump one of those entangled particles into the sun? Or, if we're feeling particularly paranoid, into a neighboring star?

  • by Interoperable ( 1651953 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @09:56PM (#31042266)

    From the abstract of the article:

    Protocols of quantum energy teleportation (QET), while retaining causality and local energy conservation, enable the transportation of energy from a subsystem of a many-body quantum system to a distant subsystem by local operations and classical communication through ground-state entanglement.

    There's an important line in there: while retaining [...] local energy conservation. What lies at the heart of the proposal is that the measurement devices add or remove energy from the system that they are measuring. The energy is in no way removed from one location and given to another, spatially distant, location. What happens, is that a measurement device at one location gains energy from the quantum system and, based on the outcome of that measurement, the measurement device at the second location can be configured to lose energy into the quantum system at that location.

    The thing to take away is that no energy is lost or gained at either location. Instead, the measurement devices at each location gain or lose energy to compensate changes in the energy of the system. This proposal is in no way a method to teleport energy in the intuitive sense; the total energy of the quantum system and measurement device at each end is conserved. The notion that measuring a system changes the energy of the state is very fundamental in quantum mechanics and is well understood. Honestly, there's nothing particularly new about it and the paper doesn't appear to be written to be submitted to a major journal.

    This reinforces my opinion that people need to stop submitting papers they find on arXiv, especially single-author papers.

  • by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Friday February 05, 2010 @11:00PM (#31042696) Homepage Journal

    I can see it now:

    AT&T and Apple partner to offer the first remotely-charged cellphone. AT&T has exclusive rights on the self-charging iPhone 6G S SC until 2022. Mandatory selection of "UNLIMITED CHARGING" is required with the two-year contract at time of purchase.

    Six months later:

    AT&T has been sending cancellation notices to iPhone 6G S SC users who are heavy power users. Heavy gamers have been a drain on the charging network, so when a user reaches 200W the user will receive a courtesy call the first time, and the second time the user exceeds 200W the user's account will be shut off. Subscribers are outraged, since they expected "UNLIMITED CHARGING" means what it says.

    AT&T did not respond to our request for comment.

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