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Information Teleported Between Two Computer Chips For the First Time (newatlas.com) 135

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Michael Irving, writing for New Atlas: Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet. This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can "communicate" over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.

Hypothetically, there's no limit to the distance over which quantum teleportation can operate -- and that raises some strange implications that puzzled even Einstein himself. Our current understanding of physics says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and yet, with quantum teleportation, information appears to break that speed limit. Einstein dubbed it "spooky action at a distance." Harnessing this phenomenon could clearly be beneficial, and the new study helps bring that closer to reality. The team generated pairs of entangled photons on the chips, and then made a quantum measurement of one. This observation changes the state of the photon, and those changes are then instantly applied to the partner photon in the other chip.

Information Teleported Between Two Computer Chips For the First Time More | Reply

Information Teleported Between Two Computer Chips For the First Time

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  • Now I can be spied on without even being connected to anything!

    • They are connected indirectly (Score:5, Informative)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @10:40AM (#59561864) Journal
      The summary is not quite right. The chips are both connected to a common source of entangled photons.

      • Re:They are connected indirectly (Score:5, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @11:24AM (#59562092)

        The summary is not quite right. The chips are both connected to a common source of entangled photons.

        The summary is more than just a little bit wrong. Its main point is incorrect. The summary twice says that quantum entanglement is used to send information from one chip to another. QE does not and can not transmit information.

        • +5 Informative.

        • At most they cemented a random bit into a particular state that could be read. You can't even send a binary bit of yes or no over this.

          I think the progress here is having them be in two different computing devices. What that gets you is a mystery. Even sending a message to the other computer saying "the uncertainty has collapsed, you can read the state now" has to travel over classical channels.

          Might as well study whether rabbit, in fact, reproduce like rabbits.

          • And in any event, you have to physically transport the entangled photons to each circuit before breaking the circuits. So it is not even a misunderstanding but just a blatant lie when they say there was no physical connection. There better have been, if they actually did the thing; otherwise they're lying about having even done it!

            The value is determined, but unknown, before the photon is physically transported to the circuit.

            Almost everything about the news story is a lie. Presumably they got the names rig

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
            But muh research grant! Just by using the word quantum I got an extra million!

          • >At most they cemented a random bit into a particular state that could be read ..
            >What that gets you is a mystery

            A key agreement protocol.

        • Mod parent up!!!! I donâ(TM)t know what the tech in these chips is doing, but this summary is WRONG and should be pulled down for being so factually incorrect.

        • The summary is more than just a little bit wrong. Its main point is incorrect. The summary twice says that quantum entanglement is used to send information from one chip to another. QE does not and can not transmit information.

          I've seen several such claims over the past few years. The one that bends my mind the most was made by several Chinese scientists in an article whose abstract is available for your perusal at Science.mag. They describe their work with a satellite-based entanglement distribution to three land-based stations:

          "We have demonstrated the distribution of two entangled photons from a satellite to two ground stations that are physically separated by 1203 km and have observed the survival of entanglement and violation of Bell inequality. The distributed entangled photons are readily useful for entanglement-based quantum key distribution."
          https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6343/1140 [sciencemag.org]

          The key they are referring to is a sort of network encryption key that would be altered if a bad guy tried to do anything with it, and thus be detected easily. If true, this would mean QE can transmit i

      • The summary is not quite right. The chips are both connected to a common source of entangled photons.

        No, the summary is total junk .

      • Yes, you're right, and this is a prime example of what the media does with complex subjects like this: they don't understand, but they're more than willing to hype it up any way they can just to get more clicks. They do the same with so-called 'AI', and more to my point, with so-called 'self driving car' nonsense. 'The Media' is going to get people killed, because the average person doesn't understand that The Media doesn't understand any of these things, is just a Hype Engine, and therefore their hype on t

    • You can't know that the state of one photon was changed by observing the state of the entangled photon without knowing the state of the entangled photon.

      Imagine you have an hourglass that flips over randomly throughout the day, but it is also magically linked to my hourglass a thousand miles away, and it is always the opposite of mine. You are sitting at home watching your hourglass, and if flips 3 times. How do you know which, if any, of those times were me flipping mine? You still have to pick up the p

      • Nice analogy, but it doesn't work. The mere process of observing the hourglass causes the quantum state to collapse. So it's more along the lines of you and I both receive a fuzzy image of a hourglass. And when either of us observe our hourglass, we immediately know what our glass looks like and can infer what the other glass will look like. And when the other glass is eventually observed, our inference is proven to be true.

        • But isn't matter supposed to be fluctuating between states? How can you be sure that the second observation is related to the first one without them being exactly at the same instant?

  • -communicating to other planets (e.g. Mars)
    -Spy networks

    • Let’s be real. Some assholes on Wall Street are going to use it so their high frequency trading bots have an edge over the bot from the other assholes on Wall Street.
    • How is this possible without the transfer of information over classical channels?

      • It isn't, but if you're communicating between planets it is a good idea to think carefully about error correction, and this could be the answer.

        You probably only want to use it in situations where your data transfer is so lossy that you're already using statistical analysis to extract the signal.

        It could be used to detect a MITM, but isn't good encryption a better plan than line of sight?

    • If the summary were correct, yes. But the summary is absolutely wrong.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Not really. This doesn't actually prove FTL or entangled communications possible. But rest assured that if it did, several laboratories in Bristol and Denmark would mysteriously burn down. Nobody will be allowed to bypass Room 641A [wikipedia.org].

  • At last (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 )

    I remember when I first heard about quantum entanglement and the attempts to use it as a communication medium. People here on slashdot kept saying it was impossible.

    Well, here we are at the end of 2019, and quantum communication is now a reality.

    This opens up extremely interesting possibilities for space-related projects, such as instantaneous communications with deep space missions (moon, mars and beyond). Imagine having a live video feed from Voyager 2, for example.

    And while this means the beginning of th

    • Re: At last (Score:5, Informative)

      by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @10:50AM (#59561916) Homepage
      You have misunderstood what quantum communication does. It allows a secure channel to be formed between two parties, but does not allow FTL communication. The bits are random, but their state is correlated, acting like a shared secret password salt. You still have to send the salted password through classical means.

    • Re:At last (Score:4, Informative)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @10:53AM (#59561942)
      No one ever said sending the information was impossible, just that it’s impossible without a classical information channel which limits the speed to that of light. That’s still the case. The article is too clickbaity and could benefit from instantaneous information transfer itself.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by atisss ( 1661313 )

      I still believe those commenters more than any journalist covering topic.

      From source publication:

      In our chip-to-chip teleportion experiments, the quantum states were transmitted from chip A (transmitter, where the multiphoton states
      are created) to chip B (receiver, where the teleported states are reconstructed). The two chips are coherently linked by a single-mode optical
      fiber, using the path-polarisation conversion technique. The chip-to-chip experimental details and results are provided in section 4.2

      Doesn't sound neither instantaneous, nor communication without connection.

    • I remember when I first heard about quantum entanglement and the attempts to use it as a communication medium. People here on slashdot kept saying it was impossible.

      Well, here we are at the end of 2019, and quantum communication is now a reality.

      This opens up extremely interesting possibilities for space-related projects, such as instantaneous communications with deep space missions (moon, mars and beyond). Imagine having a live video feed from Voyager 2, for example.

      And while this means the beginning of the end for satellite-based communications, it does means we can finally start clearing all the junk we have in orbit around the Earth. It also means a lot less rocket launches, which means it's better for the environment too.

      I can't wait to see all the telecom companies going into panic mode over this new technology.

      We've had press releases like this for years.

      Sure, it could pan out, but I'm going to wait before I get too excited.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DavenH ( 1065780 )

      They said it was impossible because it was impossible, still is in fact, despite the breathless pop-science journalism. It is categorically not "communicating"; that is a misnomer. That the same wavefunction is stretched in space does not mean there is a pipe through which to exchange information. You always need a classical channel limited by light speed to complete the so-called teleportation process.

      So, unfortunately for all of us, none of your implications follow.

      • The “impossible” will follow, it’s just a matter of time and research.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DavenH ( 1065780 )
          You're right, there's a chance our models, despite their amazing empirical accuracy, are mistaken. Takes much more faith to believe that than the contrary, however.

        • Causality - which roughly means that effects happen after causes, that time travel is impossible etc, relies completely on there being no FTL transmission of information. Some non-physical things can more faster than light (like sweeping a laser beam across the surface of the moon) ,but they cannot communicate information.

          Causality could be wrong - but it would require an enormous re-write of physics, and would need to somehow be consistent with a wide range of experiments.

          Its not that scientists are not

          • I refuse to believe that, with our current technology levels, we have done little more than scratch the surface of physics, and I refuse to believe that our universes laws have been unequivocally laid out as set in stone by scientists who could not begin to imagine the technology we have today, let alone what we might have a thousand years from now to investigate the universe with.

            Yes, causality might be wrong, but it wouldn’t take a huge rewrite of physics for it to be so, as physics doesn’t ch

            • Its always difficult to know if we finally have a good understanding of the universe, or if there will be complete revolution in physics.

              At the moment we can predict such a wide range of effects, from very small to very large scales, from very low to very high energies, that it seems that our understanding might be good.

              We are also running into the limits of practical experiments: Much higher energies are beyond the reach of realistic particle accelerators. Telescopes let us see back to the first 300,000

        • The “impossible” will follow, it’s just a matter of time and research.

          We can always hope that that is so, but we need to be grounded by what we observe, until we observe otherwise.

          And there may well be some principles of science that will remain intact forever.

          The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

            And there may well be some principles of science that will remain intact forever.

            There will always be a space on our charts marked "There Be Dragones Here". We just keep pushing the boundary a little further every time. But we can only observe to the physical limits we're allowed to observe at, so we bump into a barrier be it one of scale or one of time. Some things may happen so fast we simply can't perceive them. Likewise some things are so slow it's likely the human race will be extinct before noticeable, measurable change happens.

        • While there are probably lots of things that are in fact possible that we currently mistakenly think to be impossible, it does not follow that everything we think to be impossible must somehow be possible. Breaking causality is one of the least likely things to be possible and instantly transferring information through quantum entanglement falls in that category. There might be some other sneaky way to transfer information faster than light, but if such a method exists, you can be sure it will not break cau
        • And funding, don't forget lots and lots of funding.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Still impossible. This is not communication, these are synchronized dice-throws, nothing more.

      You lack basic understanding of Physics, that is why you have a quasi-religious (and similarly unfounded) belief in this thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsqr ( 808554 )

      I remember when I first heard about quantum entanglement and the attempts to use it as a communication medium.

      Well, here we are at the end of 2019, and quantum communication is now a reality.

      Apparently you haven't been following the developments too closely. According to the first FA, teleportation of information across a room via quantum entanglement was demonstrated five years ago.

      I can't wait to see all the telecom companies going into panic mode over this new technology.

      If you'd read TFA that isn't paywalled, you would have noticed that this is not being touted by the developers as something that will be commercially exploitable any time soon. It's not 5 or 10 years away. This is a baby step towards the sort of breakthrough that has you excited.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by amorsen ( 7485 )

        This is a baby step towards the sort of breakthrough that has you excited.

        It is not even that. This does not get us closer to instant communication.

        That would be like saying that the first waterwheel was a baby step towards a perpetual motion machine.

    • No, the article is intentionally incorrect. No data was transmitted. One bit was shipped to another location then read.

    • This isn't sending any communication. It is like you have an RSA Key fob for Second Factor authentication, and you give an other one which uses the same seed, and refreshes at the same time. You travel 1 light second away and the observer who is in the middle who can see both of your fobs will notice they flip to the same number at the same time.

      Now this Quantum computing isn't as magical as they make it sound. While advancements will provide benefits and probably replace current computer architectures in

    • You have been mislead by bad journalism. The original paper makes no such claims, you cannot in fact transfer any information faster than light. You can however generate same truly random number in two different places at the same time without any third party being able to listen in, very useful for encryption that one. Doesn't transfer any information faster than light though, causality shall not be violated.

    • I remember when I first heard about quantum entanglement and the attempts to use it as a communication medium. People here on slashdot kept saying it was impossible.

      Well, here we are at the end of 2019, and quantum communication is now a reality.

      I can't wait to see all the telecom companies going into panic mode over this new technology.

      Is this a joke or are you serious?

    • Nobody ever said you were a Moran, though. It is true.

  • Source (Score:5, Informative)

    by atisss ( 1661313 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @10:49AM (#59561908)

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.078... [arxiv.org]

  • What scenario requires the fewest new assumptions here -- that some researchers managed to break special relativity by transmitting information faster than the speed of light, or that this is a case of bad science journalism?

    To quote [wikipedia.org] Wikipedia:

    Certain phenomena in quantum mechanics, such as quantum entanglement, might give the superficial impression of allowing communication of information faster than light. According to the no-communication theorem these phenomena do not allow true communication; they only

  • Hey, this is nice and all, but maybe they could spend a few minutes figuring out a way for me to get broadband to my place up in the Blue Ridge Mountains?

  • How do you know that changing the quantum state locally changes quantum state at a specific remote location and not some other location?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Because you have transmitted the entangled particle to that specific location. That part works great. The instant communication part, not so much.

  • ... seems somewhat of an overstatement. From the article it seems that they were able to manipulate and measure an entangled pair.

    Possibly someone here may be able to explain how this is any different that this..

    https://phys.org/news/2019-08-... [phys.org]

  • Entangled. Or not entangled. There is no "so entwined."

    • Understand Quantum Mechanics, you do not.

      Strong am I with The Physics. But understand Quantum Mechanics, I do not either.

  • Gee, 5G has not yet reached widespread deployment, and already 6G experiments have begun...

  • ...pairs of entangled photons on the chips ...

    That's the channel.

  • FFS there wasnt information translated. As far as we know, information theory still gives this as impossible.

    Useful for encryption though as the actual paper clearly points out.

  • it will mean spying all over the globe. Put in a small camera or microphone and be able to see/hear others. Russia, China and USA will know everything about each other as they learn how to place these clandestinely.

    The other interesting location will be in Computer chips. This will make possible not just for chips to talk to one another without a bus, but what ever nation is building the chips will likely put these in them so that they can listen to what is going on.
    • No, there is no teleportation of data. Just delayed reading of matching pre-transported data. These articles always make it sound like data transmission, it is intentionally incorrect news and should be treated accordingly.
  • This old teleportation of data crap again. Give me a break. STOP IT.
  • Now he can share his solace with far-off loved ones...

  • Quantum Entanglement on a chip is a neat trick but it does NOT mean you can transfer information.

    Entanglement requires you to ASK the particle you're measuring "What state are you in?" and it may say +1 or -1 and that in turn will "set" the state of the entangled particle on the other chip. What you can NOT do is TELL the particle on the first chip "I want you to be in a +1 state". If you do that, you break entanglement and the other chip will have an undefined state.

    So you can't set a bit on one chip an

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