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Improvements in Teleportation
assaultriflesforfree writes "Here's a little update on quantum entanglement and teleportation from The New York Times (free registration, yay): 'Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.' I am a little skeptical about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle statements, though. Is this really a form of Star Trek's Heisenberg Compensator?"
By KENNETH CHANG
Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.
Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.
The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting
the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.
"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of an article today in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the long distance."
The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the "Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But teleporting something from the everyday world like a person that contains more than a trillion trillion atoms is highly unlikely, if not impossible.
Even with the light particles, photons, about one in a thousand were received at the other side.
"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said about human teleportation.
Still, the experiments show that scientists can overcome a seemingly insurmountable conceptual barrier, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The principle states that the location and velocity of a particle cannot both be precisely measured at the same time. That would seem to make it impossible to teleport anything, even single particles, because without knowing their exact specifications they cannot be copied somewhere else.
Devised in 1993 by scientists led by Dr. Charles H. Bennett of the I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., quantum teleportation produces pairs of "entangled" light particles that can be thought of as a pair of encoding and decoding rings. A message is combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message. Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher the message.
Other encoding techniques using quantum cryptography are simpler, and a more immediate use for teleportation would be as a repeater. Photons almost all peter out after traveling about 50 miles through optical fiber. Teleportation would enable the creation of copies every 50 miles or so, letting the message be sent across an unlimited distance.
I agree with you...
If i am being teleported... teleportation would create copy of me and killed original.
How do they know it's the same electron? What distinctive marks are they basing this on? If it's just one electron that disappears and another one that reappears, the applications would be rather more limited. I mean, if I step into a teleportation machine, I would quite like me rather than someone who looks just like me to step out a mile away.
Virtually serving coffee
Obligatory Spacegirl quote.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
two particles of the same type and with the same properties are completely indistinguishable.
Yes, they are equal. Are they the same particle?
This means that a human being destroyed, but replicated exactly somewhere else, will have the exact same properties
Now, suppose you replicate exactly someone, but do not destroy the original. Again I ask, Are they the same person?
Many human cells are constantly dying and get replaced. Not many of the cells in the human body existed when the human was born. This means that your existing body/cells have been destroyed and recreated already - you simply didn't know.
Now this is a really interesting argument. Suppose you have some kind of degenerative disease and you need a prostetic leg. Later you need an arm, eben later you need a new heart. Suppose that the disease destroys even your brain cells and you need some kind of artificial storage to yield your conscience.
When do you stop being alive? When do you stop being yourself?. Dang if I know
Kilroy was here!
please dont post anymore news from the NYT (not hard to find another source if it is really newsworthy). when i click the link i get a huge registration page asking for date of birth, income, detailed employment info. on top of that there is a lot of opt in crap for yummy spam.
the reason i read webbased news sites and groups in the first place is to get away from biased, orverpriced, overrated, and generally slow newspapers.
A name you can trust.