Breakthrough Brings Star Trek Transporter Closer

japerr writes to mention The Independant is reporting that a new breakthrough may bring scientists one step closer to a Star Trek style transporter. " A team of physicists has teleported data over a distance of 89 miles from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighbouring island of Tenerife, which is 10 times further than the previous attempt at teleportation through free space. The scientists did it by exploiting the "spooky" and virtually unfathomable field of quantum entanglement - when the state of matter rather than matter itself is sent from one place to another. Tiny packets or particles of light, photons, were used to teleport information between telescopes on the two islands. The photons did it by quantum entanglement and scientists hope it will form the basis of a way of sending encrypted data."

Comments

Teleport?

[jshriverWVU]

This sounds like a new form of fiber optics rather than teleportation. No item was physically disassembled and reassembled in another place. Rather they used telescopes to focus light. Perhaps I misinterpreted the article.

Accurate headline?

[Verteiron]

From TFA, this sounds less like teleportation and more like another extension to the distance quantum cryptography has been successfully sent.

Call me dumb...

[morgan_greywolf]

But it seems to me that 'transporting' data, whether or not using quantum entanglement, isn't quite the same thing as transporting matter and really brings us no close the 'transporter' technology as seen on Star Trek.

We can already transport data through space without using quantum entanglement at all -- it's called radio.

Re:Call me dumb...

[autophile]

It should be noted that quantum teleportation is not able to transfer matter or energy from transmitter to receiver. All the protocol can do is transfer the quantum state of a particle (or, in the future, groups of particles) from transmitter to receiver. That doesn't mean that humans can't be teleported, though; the receiver would simply keep a stock of raw materials such as carbon, hydrogen, calcium and oxygen atoms out of which to reconstruct the person.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Proof:

Scan yourself down to the most fundamental level (regardless of what that is), and build an exact duplicate without destroying the original. Press the start button on the duplicate, assuming instantaneous duplication and starting. Since the original's consciousness has maintained continuity in the original, even if the duplicate is an exact copy of the original's state, it cannot be continuous with the original's state because the duplicate exists at a different location and time. (I considered using "space-time locus", but it's difficult enough talking about this without resort to high-falutin' words :)

Therefore, the "you" that existed prior to duplication is the "you" of the original, and not the "you" of the duplicate. "You" suddenly don't perceive two different realities, one from the POV of the original, and one from the POV of the duplicate.

The conclusion is that if someone destroyes the original, "you" die. Really die. The duplicate may have all your memories and skills, and will think it is the original, but it is not.

Really, the only way teleportation (or brain-to-computer transference) could work is if each individual part (for some definition of "part") were duplicated, placed in sync with the original, and then the original part destroyed. Since consciousness consists of the whole and not the parts (assuming we're not going to invoke the supernatural), the consciousness remains continuous with only one instantiation at any one time.

I've given this some thought, since I hope to download in 2045 :)

--Rob

Re:Bad Summary

[thre5her]

Data doesn't use contractions.

Its all in the time travel...

[javabandit]

First off, I've never slammed an article headline in all the time I've been here at Slashdot, but I'm doing it now. How in the hell is transmitting data even remotely a step in the direction of transmitting matter? Puhleeze. A step closer to teleporting matter would be to vaporize a small animal and then "shoot" the particles 89 miles away -- perhaps.

Secondly, as others have posted, it ain't gonna happen. Teleporting matter by breaking it down and reconstructing it on the other end ain't going to happen. There are so many holes in that approach that its not funny.

I read a couple of interesting magazine articles on teleportation, and the key to teleportation is really time travel. Teleportation would be sending someone on a time-ride, bending the space-time continuum, have them "arrive" at the exact physical destination but still in the same temporal location in which they left. That is the key. However, the big problem with this approach is that the matter being transported will still age the amount of time is took the "time ride" to occur. Still, any teleportation is a feat the will probably never be accomplished.

But let me go on record as saying that rather than for science to focus focusing on teleportation or time travel seems moronic. How about we just focus on building some kind of high-speed passenger transport mechanism that travels at supersonic speeds (something like Mach 3 or Mach 4)?

Personally, I'd be just fine if I could go from Los Angeles to New York in one hour. And that seems like a much more achievable goal.

Re:One step closer to an ansible, maybe.

[Hanzie]

The above post refers to a PARALLEL UNIVERSE, and is NOT making a political statement. SF writers have long used alternate political situations to show a parallel universe that is very similar to ours, but definetly different.

The above post deserves to be moderated as +1 humor, since it is the first to bring up the idea of the quantum entanglement communications device accidentally talking to another universe.

The above post is absolutely not flamebait.

hanzie.