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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."
It is true that "Star Trek style Transporters" are used to send Data, but it is with a capital "D" and they can send other crew members too.
Misleading summary. Minus 100 points.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
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.
From TFA, this sounds less like teleportation and more like another extension to the distance quantum cryptography has been successfully sent.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
The only thing spooky about this article is that the editors think data transmission and matter transmission are in any way related.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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.
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than star trek, sounds more like an ansible than a transporter, though i suppose that ender's game is not as well known as star trek.
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and I don't understand quantum entanglement very well. So I was wondering - Is it possible that something like this can enable faster-than-light communications?
-R
A lovely headline, but the only practical application of this form of "teleportation" is cryptography (you could have some pretty damn unbreakable keys with this). Even if you could "teleport" any significant amount of matter, it would be many, many, many orders of magnitude more challenging than this and you would have to get past some pretty significant hurdles (Heisenberg being one of the least of your problems).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I bet he would really hate that since he is still alive.
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Sure they have. That's why all the Star Trek transporters employ "Heisenberg compensators". Duh.
I read Usenet for the articles.
Given the way he speaks, I find a 5 stage rocket more fitting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They tried to teleport the name of the source directly into the summary and it got scrambled. Cut them some slack, it's a new technology.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
LORA - Well, here goes nothing ...
GIBBS - Hah. Interesting, interesting. You hear what you said? "Here goes nothing."
LORA - Well, I meant -
GIBBS - Whereas actually, what we propose to do is to turn something into nothing and back again. So you might just as well have said, "Here goes something and here comes nothing." Hah!
I vote for beaming William Shatner into space now. Why wait for ashes?
The article says that quantum entanglement is one of the scientific principles invoked by Star Trek to explain how transporters function, and that may be true as I don't own all of the tech manuals, but my understanding is that the main principle behind transporter operation is the idea that matter-energy conversion is possible (and practical). Same goes for holodecks and replicators.
... I've read some bits by physicists who claim that such technology is impossible or unlikely to ever be achieved, but I'll admit that I didn't really understand the first thing about their arguments.
What this would seem (at least on the surface) to bring us closer to is the ansible communications technology employed most famously in the Ender's Game series. That is, by utilizing the properties of quantum entanglement, it may be possible to achieve faster-than-light communication. This also has its problems though
Have these guys who wrote the summary heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?
Yes, but as soon as they heard of it, they couldn't locate it.
TFA mixed up both the author's name and the journal this work was published in. The author's real name is Rupert Ursin (not Robert), and the article was published in Nature Physics Online, not Nature Physics (those are separate journals). The article itself is available here as a pdf.
Read the paper here!
atom by atom, and send information on what component parts were and where they were located.
Next we can put it back together.
You'll still be dead, no longer a functioning biological biochemical organism which is in constant motion and has altering states of being at the nanosecond level, and you'll still have died in agony while we ripped your body apart.
But now we can bury you on the other end!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You mean -1 Indepedantic, don't you?
Well, a google search for "the independant" changes all the options to "independent" and http://theindependant.com/ looks like a news site but it's just a parked domain. So yeah, it may be a typo.
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.
Derek Parfit is an interesting philosopher who's done a lot of work on personal identity just by examining various Star Trek transporter scenarios (like what if you're reconstructed at the other end but don't disappear at the start).
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
whats the big deal?
at the moment all it seems they have done is transmitted data(with small d). We have been able to do that since morse code... Can somebody explain to me what the big deal is becasue apart from the ultimate aim, I'm failing to see how this is a breakthrough.
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they used telescopes to form a fibre link.
they didn't teleport anything.
they used a giant remote control.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I was reading one of Dr. Hawkings writings, and he specifically addressed this issue, and described very nicely what some of the possibilities were, should this kind of technology ever become reality.
One of the interesting ideas is that since you would have every possible particle of information about an object, or person -- that you would not only be able to transport things, but also duplicate them much in the same fashion that a computer can copy and duplicate files.
Spooky..
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Why does everyone get so hung up with transportation of matter, when data is so much more exciting and more relevant to the world we live in.
What I want to see is the first two-way transmitter/receiver that works via quantum entanglement. Instant communication over any distance!
Just imagine the possibilities -- real time communication with probes throughout the solar system, or even further. Eventually it might be possible to have a mobile phone that works anywhere in the world, without the need for a satellite network and with no signal blind spots. Countries could increase their backbone bandwidth without the need for more fibre cables. TV and Music could be broadcast from anywhere, to anywhere in real time. I'm sure you can think of hundreds of other applications for this.
That wouldn't do you much good if you were 89 miles away from where your penis went.
It sure would freak her the hell out though.
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>> You can't send information faster than the speed of light.
Correction: You can't send information faster than the speed of light in current models.
Science is about devising consistent mathematical models, using them to create hypotheses that should be observable in reality, and then determining the degree of correlation between the prediction and the observed behaviour of reality. If the correlation is good then the model is considered useful. That's it, that's all there is to the scientific method.
Our current scientific models say that you can't send information faster than the speed of light, and that's an inescapable property of these models, built into their mathematical basis, but it is not a property of reality herself. We have no means of knowing what reality will or will not permit. We'll need to devise new models in order to test deeper properties, as it's beyond the capability of current models.
Don't confuse models with reality, nor properties of models with properties of reality. The two are quite distinct.
The above explained crudely and innacurately using ascii diagrams.
/Y/ has been traveling rapidly to the /right/. As such, only half of half an hour has passed for her, and her watch says 9:15.
X and Y are at the same location. It is 9 o'clock
XY
9
X has a sudden, irresistable urge to get as far away from Y as possible. He departs rapidly to the left at Mystery Speed(tm)
X {- Y
Y's Tale
Y stands around for an hour, at which point she feels needy and clingy and rings him with her Nifty Ansible(tm). Her watch says it is 10 o'clock.
Now, from Y's perspective, X has been travelling so fast to the left that he has reached relativistic speeds. As such, only half as much time has passed for him. His watch says it is 9:30.
X {- Y
9:30 10
He gets a phonecall. Y says "I miss you I need you come back (bring me a magazine)"
He replies "Fine." and hangs up.
X's Tale.
X realise he didn't know which of the seventy million identical celebrity magazines Y wanted. But from X's perspective,
X -} Y
9:30 9:15
She gets a phonecall. X says "What magazine do you want?". Y says "OMG YAY YOU WERE THINKING OF ME a people would be nice."
Y, having gotten the reply 45 minutes before she sent the initial call, thinks X called off his own bat. She feels happy and validated, and does not ring him 45 minutes later. So he never calls her. So she feels lonely and calls him. So he calls. So she doesn't. So he doesn't. Then the universe explodes.
X BOOM Y
And that's why relativity and relationships don't mix.
infact; v; 1. to agressively attack with facts and/or information 2. the state of being so set upon ("I'm infacting as hard as I can, Captain!", "Help! Help! I'm being infacted!") n; any implement used in the execution of such
See also "LART", "clueing"
I'm not so sure that "Independant" is an infact, but it makes my head hurt so you may be right.
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