Slashdot Mirror
Laser Beam Teleported
Michael Wardle writes "ABC Australia reports that a team of scientists from the Australian National University have successfully teleported a laser beam. It seems that teleportation of solid bodies is still a way off, but at least we're a little closer to Slashdot's favorite super power." Another Australian newspaper has a more detailed story.
This is a message bearing laser beam composed of billions of photons.
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Suppose they get this working with matter. Then it's just a matter of time before humans would walk into a chamber and be rematerialized somewhere else. The question is, who walks out of the destination chamber? Is it me or is it a reconstructed "me" with a different awareness, while the original "me" was destroyed? Even if it's a perfect copy, it's not worth the risk.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
For all practical purposes, it is like if you die (and disappear) each time you go to sleep, and your complete copy gets reconstructed at the instant you wake up.
Given that cells of your body don't live long, you are a new, reborn person, every N years.
The key to perceived continued existence is the slow transfer of your consciousness into another body, with clear departure from the old one. The copy operation (cp) is not good enough, you need the move (mv) here.
The trouble is you can NEVER prove this to be safe. To another person, yes, of course you will appear exactly the same and have the exact same memories, etc. as you describe. And of course this new person will think "hey, whattaya know, the dagnab thing works, I'm over here now!" Because s/he has all the memories, etc. that the "original version" of him/herself had.
However, the question is where exactly does consciousness live? Does it A) live in the actual, physical atoms that make you up? Is it B) some manifestation of the way your neurons are wired together (as some AI researchers who claim computers have life might contend)? Or is it C) something else, totally unrelated to the physical world (ie on the astral plane, like the Spirit referred to in Christianity and other religions)?
If it's A) there's an exact copy of you somewhere else, but "you" no longer exist. If it's C), well, you're banking that God doesn't mind taking the time and effort to transport your soul over to the "new you". Only if it's B) can you rest assured that your consciousness will be transferred to the new unit, trouble free.
I, for one, wouldn't take chances on something philosophers have been debating to no end for hundreds of years now...
Quantum entanglement isn't nonsense, and I don't imagine that this teleportation experiment necessarily is either, but the article on The Australian site certainly seems to be. Am I the only one who found it to be incredibly poorly written? I'm somewhat familiar with the principles involved, but I couldn't make heads or tails of most of it.
More detailed my foot - it was gibberish. There were definite erorrs (a previous post already pointed out that the "spooky interactions" are instantaneous, not "at the speed of light"). It's a real shame, too - this may be near-sci-fi technology, but it really isn't so arcane that a little basic proof-reading couldn't be done on articles about it.
As for the difference... no science we have yet teleports actual particles.
according to quantum physics, particles are waves and vice versa.
Hold up! This article isnt about faster than light data propogation. Its about encryption. The radio signal still has to cross the distance. The interesting thign here is that it allows you to have two different "one time pads" that change constantly but are also always in sync. This is quantum entanglement. You cant ever send data through this effect becuse my measuring it you change it (and for the other guy to). But you can use it like they have. Bascically this allows you to produce "perfect" encrytion. It dosent move and faster than you can transmit the radio signal.
Anyways, I could be wrong - whadda I know.
"An encoded radio signal is embedded on an input laser, which is combined with entanglement and then scanned. The laser is destroyed in the process. But the radio signal survives and is sent electronically to a receiving station, where within a nanosecond an exact replica of the beam - with the radio signal intact - is retrieved and decoded."
First, a simplified definition from my very limited research into Quantum Entanglement: The supposed link between particles that have once interacted, enabling them to influence each other instantaneously over indefinite distances.
I'll mention before hand I'm not a quantum physics major of any sort, but if I'm reading this correctly, they have encoded a laser beam with a radio signal and "quantum entangled" the two mediums which is then "scanned" (whatever the hell that is) in which the laser is destroyed in the process. So now we should supposively have an intact radio signal with a "destroyed" laser sub-atomically anchored to it in ether somewhere. Sending this radio signal downrange to a receiver will recreate this signal and "pull" the laser back into reality (pardon my butchering of terms).
My problem here is perhapse not how unbelieveable this sound, but how damn vague the artical is. Scanning? How the hell was the beam recreated? Did it appear from thin air? Did it have to be "un" entangled? It doesn't seem as if the laser is infact destroyed at all... How do you go about "entangling" something to being with? This artical doesn't simply bog you down in scientific explanation; In fact it doesn't bog you down in ANY explanation for that matter-- it throws some words in and stirs them up with teleportation references. Hell, the only way I could figure out ANY details was independent research, and oh, how fun that was. The above definition was as easy as it got. After that? Whew... Maybe I'm just bitching, but I'm asssuming this article was written for the common man, but goes far beyond watering things down. It leaves out key pieces nessisary for understanding to occure. Jeez, that's shitty writing...
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My big question would be what the "speed" of the information propogation was. Some say it should be c, some say it should be "instantaneous" - either way, the results will have substantial impact on our view of several well accepted physical models.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
The answer to this dilemna is to realize that the person we were 10 minutes ago is dead. The person you were 10 years ago is very very dead. Each second that passes, what we were passes out of existence, and the the self that seems to be the unitary point of existence is just a collection of modalities and a small amount of working-memory. It sounds Buddhist, but it's more informed by neuroscience: there is no self as such.
So what happens if the original is not destroyed?
There strikes me as being two processes involved here, duplication and destruction. The argument seems to be that the two together has the same affect as moving a person to another location, and that if both are done the second entity is the same as the first.
That doesn't make sense, because nobody in their right mind would suggest the second entity is the same as the first if both exist at once. Destroying the first cannot possibly change that, that's an attempt to remove the evidence, not an attempt to move the position of sentience.
Soul or no soul.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
So if someone duplicates you.. which one is really you? what happens to your sense of continuity? You would both 2 different persons albeit with (very much) the same background. As time goes by different things will happen to the 2 different copies shaping theit minds and opinions differently from each other... Think of it as twins, sort of.
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