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Single Photons Bounced Off Orbiting Satellite

KentuckyFC writes "If we're ever going to benefit from the perfect security of quantum communication, we're going to need ways of transmitting entangled photons around the globe and certainly further than the current record of 144km through the atmosphere. Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and colleagues have taken an important step towards this by bouncing individual photons off the Ajisai geodetic satellite (essentially a space-based disco ball) which is orbiting at 1400km. The group says the experiment is an important proof of principle for satellite-based quantum communications."

9 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Complicatedly Unacceptable by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and colleagues have taken an important step towards this by bouncing individual photons off the Ajisai geodetic satellite (essentially a space-based disco ball) which is orbiting at 1400km. Big deal. Drunken frat boys at sports games bounce millions of "single photons" off of the opposing team members with pen lasers. *snort* You're a few zeptometers short of the goal.

    Not to mention photons are like words: you shouldn't use those you don't understand. Is it a wave or is it matter? Huh, Mr. Smarty Pants? Oh, what's that you say? A boson followed by a long explanation, how utterly predictable! Ha, you would say that. No. I want answers and I wanted them back when the church would persecute you for publishing them!

    We need something smaller. Go back to the lab, anything larger than a Planck Length is unacceptable. And only 1400km? So help me god, if you can't express the distance it travels in double up arrow notation or tetration, I don't want to hear about it. Come on people, this is real science, not some religious mumbo jumbo (6,000 years? Is that the absolute limit of your imagination!?) ... and if there's one thing I rely on from real science, it's announcements of experiments with inconceivable units performed in a totally contrived and intangible environment. The fact that I understood this experiment speaks libraries of congress about its complexity (or lack thereof). I'm encouraging you to go the extra yottameter here.
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Complicatedly Unacceptable by XenoPhage · · Score: 1, Funny

      It's both. When you're lookin' at it it's a particle, when you're not it's a wave. Is this just too hard for you to accept? Does that means it's like those annoying characters that wave at you behind your back?
      --
      XenoPhage
      Technological Musings
    2. Re:Complicatedly Unacceptable by EMeta · · Score: 1, Funny

      +1 Troll.

    3. Re:Complicatedly Unacceptable by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Funny

      No. I want answers and I wanted them back when the church would persecute you for publishing them!

      You won't like it. You really won't like it.

      The answer to life, the universe, and everything is...

      Forty-two.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  2. Shiny Disco Balls? by DotNM · · Score: 2, Funny

    essentially a space-based disco ball
    Shiny disco balls anyone?
    --
    There's no place like localhost
    1. Re:Shiny Disco Balls? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ah, ha, ha. ha, staying entangled, staying entangled
      Ah, ha, ha, ha, staying entaaa-aaaan-gleeee-eeeed, oh yeah!

      Well, you can tell by the way that I've been spun,
      I'm either a zero, or eyther a one.
      Quantum entangled far and long.
      I've been a qubit since I was born.

      And now it's all right, it's O.K.
      But you must look the other way.
      'Cos if you look, you'll understand
      A quantum state's effect on man.

      Whether you're a top or whether you're a bottom
      You're quantumly entangled, quantumly entangled
      Though we're separated, our states are identicated
      We're staying entangled, staying entangled

      Ah, ha, ha, ha, staying entangled, staying entangled
      Ah, ha, ha, ha, staying entaaa-aaaan-gleeee-eeeed, oh yeah!

      Light goin' nowhere
      Quanta probability
      Someone observe me now
      Light goin' nowhere
      Someone observe me now
      I'm stayin' entangled

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  3. Come clean by sleeponthemic · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is just an elaborate game of pong, isn't it...

    --
    I record my sleeptalking
  4. In other news... by JCSoRocks · · Score: 3, Funny

    People are still puzzling over how the world's largest rave got started. It seems that once a light show started from what appeared to be a giant disco ball in space people everywhere got out their glow sticks, drugs and pacifiers and started dancing.

    --
    You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
    1. Re:In other news... by eepok · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wow, I miss college.