Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy
MikeChino writes "A physicist at Tohoku University in Japan has figured out how to teleport energy from one point in the universe to another. The technique is based upon prior research that shows it's possible to teleport information from one location to another, and involves making a measurement on each [of] an entangled pair of particles. The measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system, and then by carefully choosing the measurement to do so on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy. Heady stuff, but essentially it means that you can inject energy at one point in the universe and extract it from somewhere else without changing the energy of the system as a whole."
How would an experiment like this be interpreted using the consistent histories theory?
For a classic entanglement "teleportation" scenario where a measurement on one particle could cause information to be "teleported" to the state of the other particle, I think the consistent histories interpretation of quantum mechanics says that the second particle was always in the same state until it was measured, and that no information was exchanged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_histories
On another note, is there a way to test if this is correct?
Are there direct practical applications for this, if it is correct?
If you can inject enough energy into the process this could in theory be the replacement for batteries. This is provided you could make a giant transmitter that sends to the receiving devices. (Or possibly battery replacement modules?)
;-)
This is provided the technology isn't only "ten years away" or so.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
If I recall, in Mass Effect 2 they used entangled particles for instantaneous long-distance transmission across the galaxy!
Wait a sec...
Isn't how things started in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect got started off?
*fear*
note "classical communication" (i.e. a telephone call from one place to another) to tell the recipient what to do to extract the energy is needed.
Yeah, but that doesn't make it useless. For example, imagine your television came with an entangled remote control, and it communciates the necessary information "classically" with one of any available low-power wireless transmission methods. The remote can then use whatever power it needs through its "entanglement battery". There you go, a remote control that never needs new batteries.
I'm just extrapolating, assuming that you actually can "teleport" useful amounts of energy wirelessly through this process, so I have no idea whether it would actually work, but the need to communicate information through classical channels does not mean the whole concept is worthless.
Imagine for a moment, that you build a dyson sphere around a small ( lets say, asteroid sized event horizon) black hole, which has a single aperature through which you can feed it. Near this aperature, is an energy collection system (lets be imaginative here, afterall-- this is a thought experiment.) which extracts the obscene energy released by the matter flow as it gets constricted from gravitational influences of the black hole, and begins to emit high intensity X-rays, gamma rays, black body radiation, and the like.
Since the black hole is naturally deleterious to any habitable/habitated area, simply because of the chaos its gravity well would cause, you need a way to transmit this obscene amount of energy to the population center, which could be several tens, or even hundreds of light years away.
If you use this energy entanglement transfer mechanism, you can transfer this absurd amount of energy to the population center at the speed of light, with a very tiny fraction of the losses incured by trying to beam it there, and without any of the line-of-sight issues.
EG, a single power plant on the planet's surface would have access to the full power of the black hole power plant. Moreover, the energy produced by the black hole plant, and transported to the planet in this way, could maintain the entanglement states at both ends.
Such a solution would safely provide nearly unlimited power to said hypothetical civilization, and do so for billions of years. (assuming that the power plants are maintained.)
Forget ZPMs-- You could drive planet building machinery with this approach.
How about a few thousand solar satellites in orbit around the sun, transmitting energy directly to power stations on earth where the energy gets redistributed?
How about no more batteries?
Driving cars that get their energy straight from the sun?
Cellphones that do not just get their energy through an entangled pair, but also their 'net connection?
Or why not just dump one of those entangled particles into the sun? Or, if we're feeling particularly paranoid, into a neighboring star?
question is, what actually is the total amount of energy required to actually hold any object at height, indefinitely, in a gravitational field?
Technically speaking, no energy at all. Work = Force x Distance (as according to Newton), and Work = Energy (Work-Energy Theorem), therefore, if it's not moving along the vector of the applied force, no work, and hence no energy, is done. Once the object is moved to a point above ground in a gravitational field (which would require energy), all that you do by holding it up is preventing its potential energy from becoming kinetic. This is precisely why magnets can exist - they can produce a force, but you cannot extract energy from a force without motion, therefore magnets don't require or dole out energy (perpetual motion buffs, look here). If you're looking for a way to measure the incremental energy that would be produced as the object were to fall through the pair of wormholes you mention, it's simply mass * gravity * height (in this case, distance between wormholes). The real trick would be extracting energy from that system.