Austrian Physicists 'Teleport' Light Over 600m

openSoar writes "The BBC is reporting that: 'Physicists have carried out successful teleportation with particles of light over a distance of 600m across the River Danube in Austria. When physicists say 'teleportation', they are describing the transfer of key properties from one particle to another without a physical link.'"

Comments

Story title and summary all wrong

[menscher]

Ok, as a physicist I initially thought these must be crackpots. A careful read made it clear that the science is good, it's just the slashdot title and summary that don't make sense.

What they did NOT do is teleport particles of light. That just makes no sense. Light was used as the means of conveying the information used to teleport the quantum properties from one particle to another, without the particle having to travel.

By the way, the reason this is called "teleportation" is that the particle effectively travels at the speed of light -- its properties can be transferred by light. If this could be applied to humans, for example, it would allow for light-speed travel, without all the nuisances of acceleration. It should be noted that this does NOT violate the universal speed limit.

Oh, and before someone asks, this is entirely different from quantum tunnelling....

Re:Story title and summary all wrong

[rikkus-x]

Indeed, this isn't so much teleportation as rsync.

Rik

Re:There was a physical link..

[Rolken]

Um, I'm not even entirely sure what you're getting at... but the point is, two photons are entangled, you move one far away, then mess with the first one and the second one instantly changes in the same way. The photons don't teleport, but their information does.