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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?
Best. Physics quote. Ever.
"He gives the example of a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field trap, a bit like Newton's balls."
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!
Exactly how do I get the 'second' particle to where I want the information to be retrieved?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Speaking as a Physicist, it seems the title should be " A physicist has posted a preprint in which he claims that "energy can be teleported"
(as opposed to beiing transmitted)." and someone has praised it in a blog post.
The astract says
"Protocols of quantum energy teleportation (QET), while retaining causality and local energy conservation, enable the transportation of energy from a subsystem of a many-body quantum system to a distant subsystem by local operations and classical communication through ground-state entanglement. We prove two energy-entanglement inequalities for a minimal QET model. These relations help us to gain a profound understanding of entanglement itself as a physical resource by relating entanglement to energy as an evident physical resource. "
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.
Note that an arxiv post is an assertion by an author, prior to any refereeing. The are only minimal "fences" at arxiv.org to keep out the "Einstein was wrong, I am right" nuts.
Wait a sec...
Isn't how things started in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect got started off?
*fear*
Which means the technology will be used to give people faster access to tentacle porn.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People both here and on the linked blog article seem to be thinking that this "teleportation" talk is all about sending things from one place to another faster than light. That's not the big deal; it's already well-established that that cannot be done, at least not via quantum entanglement.
The breakthrough the article is talking about is moving energy from one place to another "instantly" by means of performing the right pair of measurements on both end; but the communication between ends about what measurements to make still happens at light speed or less.
For example, say I have a bunch of particles here on Earth and my colleagues on Mars have another bunch of particles entangled with mine. Mars is at the moment ten light-minutes away from each. On my end, I perform a measurement on (i.e. I interact with) my particles in a way which raises their energy from X joules to Y joules; I then send a radio transmission (with said transmission using less than Y-X joules) to my colleagues on Mars giving them instructions for what measurements to make on their end, i.e. I transmit information, in normal ways, at the speed of light or less.
Ten minutes later, my colleagues on Mars get my message, perform the measurement, and BAM, the energy of their particles jumps up to Y joules. The most efficient classical alternative for transmitting that (Y-X) joules of energy would be to beam a signal of said energy between the two points, but that requires a clear line of sight between them, or some set of relays capable of carrying that signal, each of which adds inefficiency to the transmission. An even less efficient, even more classical method would be to take whatever the energy is stored in here on Earth and physically move it to its destination, which is both much slower and much less energy-efficient.
With this method, my colleagues could be buried deep underground in a sealed lab with no way of getting anything in or out except for a limited range of radio signals carried by equipment incapable of carrying high-power signals... and still I can "beam" them arbitrary amounts of energy straight into their lab just beaming energy into some particles in my lab and then telling them over the radio what to do in their lab to receive it.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Please, someone come up with an automotive explanation, Quick!
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Last time I checked (walked outside after dawn), solar energy transmitted itself to the ground just fine without our help.
fedex
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.
Using time sequencing you can now transfer binary data. Energy at this time code (i) no energy at this time code (0).
So you can now have real time control of distant space craft and rovers.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Editors, I love ya, but if anyone on earth really did discover "how to teleport" anything, I'm pretty sure I'd be seeing it scroll by on the CNN news ticker right now. It wouldn't be the first time /. has scooped the media complex, but so far its been 2 hours since the story was posted, and I don't see any breaking news on Channel 6. Seriously, enough with the sensationalist headlines. Call me when you have my flying car or jet pack ready.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
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?
From the abstract of the article:
Protocols of quantum energy teleportation (QET), while retaining causality and local energy conservation, enable the transportation of energy from a subsystem of a many-body quantum system to a distant subsystem by local operations and classical communication through ground-state entanglement.
There's an important line in there: while retaining [...] local energy conservation. What lies at the heart of the proposal is that the measurement devices add or remove energy from the system that they are measuring. The energy is in no way removed from one location and given to another, spatially distant, location. What happens, is that a measurement device at one location gains energy from the quantum system and, based on the outcome of that measurement, the measurement device at the second location can be configured to lose energy into the quantum system at that location.
The thing to take away is that no energy is lost or gained at either location. Instead, the measurement devices at each location gain or lose energy to compensate changes in the energy of the system. This proposal is in no way a method to teleport energy in the intuitive sense; the total energy of the quantum system and measurement device at each end is conserved. The notion that measuring a system changes the energy of the state is very fundamental in quantum mechanics and is well understood. Honestly, there's nothing particularly new about it and the paper doesn't appear to be written to be submitted to a major journal.
This reinforces my opinion that people need to stop submitting papers they find on arXiv, especially single-author papers.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
So the idea here is apparently that the energy itself can be transmitted instantly, but you can't actually transmit information this way. Just energy
... which would immediately violate the principle of the conservation of energy.
The problem here is that energy == matter (via e=mc^2) and the system of matter/energy together in space-time yields information. Beckenstein shows that the total information in a volume of space is described by the area of the volume which encloses it. See "Bekenstein Bound" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound/
So in order for this new theory to work, the energy that is instantly transfered to another point in space-time must not be useful until we know what we can do with it through the classical channel. Otherwise you violate the conservation of energy.
Consider for example a mass at height in a gravitational field. To hold the mass stationary at height without any means of support other than using some of the mass itself for the creation of thrust, you would neccessarily run out of mass eventually (time). But if this theory were true, you'd have a loophole where you could take the energy expended for thrust and send it instantaneously back to the point in space above the mass where it could thusly be re-utilized. You would then have your first anti-gravity machine, which can't exist. A mass at height can be used to create energy in free-fall, and which is only equal to the potential difference in height. See http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/gpot.html
Btw, this is why theoretical wormholes can only exist along gravitationally equal field vectors. If a wormhole were to connect two different locations in space that don't exist with the same gravitational potential, you could generate an almost infinite amount of energy. Consider two ends of a wormhole, one end at 1000 meters height above the earth, the other at the ground. Throw a very large mass in at the ground hole. The mass then appears at 1000 meters, and starts falling. You could then make energy from it indefinitely. (What's that video game? Portal?) I would assume, in such a scenario, that the two ends of the wormhole would neccessarily begin to edge closer and closer to each other until they "evaporate" from existance altogether. This might be similar to black hole evaporation.
My question is, what actually is the total amount of energy required to actually hold any object at height, indefinitely, in a gravitational field?
I can see it now:
AT&T and Apple partner to offer the first remotely-charged cellphone. AT&T has exclusive rights on the self-charging iPhone 6G S SC until 2022. Mandatory selection of "UNLIMITED CHARGING" is required with the two-year contract at time of purchase.
Six months later:
AT&T has been sending cancellation notices to iPhone 6G S SC users who are heavy power users. Heavy gamers have been a drain on the charging network, so when a user reaches 200W the user will receive a courtesy call the first time, and the second time the user exceeds 200W the user's account will be shut off. Subscribers are outraged, since they expected "UNLIMITED CHARGING" means what it says.
AT&T did not respond to our request for comment.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It would be great to be able to beam your molecules across space and then reassemble them. The only problem is that you have to trust your co-worker to operate the transporter. These are the same people who won't add paper to the photocopier or make a new pot of coffee after taking the last drop. I don't think they'll be double-checking the transporter coordinates. They'll be accidentally beaming people into walls, pets, and furniture. People will spend all their time apologizing for having inanimate objects protruding from parts of their bodies.
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/treklife.html
Sorry to burst your bubble but you can't transmit information faster than light.
Period.
How do you know that?
We only know the laws of physics, well - as little as we DO know about it.
Maybe there's something faster than light - that we don't know yet?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The important part is this:
In the delayed choice quantum eraser discussed here, the pattern reappears even if the which-path information is erased shortly after, in time, the signal photons hit the primary detector. However, the interference pattern can only be seen retroactively once the idler photons have already been detected and the experimenter has obtained information about them, with the interference pattern being seen when the experimenter looks at particular subsets of signal photons that were matched with idlers that went to particular detectors.
The total pattern of signal photons at the primary detector never shows interference, [...]
You see, the past is not changed. What changes is that after we get the which-way information, we can identify subsets which show the interference patterns. There are no signals magically disappearing or moving after the fact. Basically the detectors D3 and D4 also convey information, just a different information than detectors 1 and 2: D3 and D4 reveal the information to which of the two overlayed interference patters the particular hit belongs. If the photon hits D1 or D2, that information is missing (just as the which-way information is missing if the photon hits D3 or D4). It still holds that you can only get one of the two types of information (complementarity), however saying that the past is modified is IMHO as reasonable as saying I'm modifying the past when I destroy an one-time pad previously used to encrypt a message, because as soon as I destroy it, the encrypted message disappears.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
1.) You have 2 Rubick's Cubes.
2.) You "entagle" them by making the faces of each Cube exactly identical to the other.
3.) You separate them physically into different geological locations.
4.) You "measure" Cube A by turning one of its sides.
5.) You call a handler at Cube B using a "common channel" (phone).
6.) Cube B is "measured" by having its identical face turned exactly replicating Step 4, per the instructions received by step 5.
7.) Repeat steps 4 through 6 until your heart is content.
8.) Bring the Cubes together, and marvel that their faces are still identical to each other.
Except that isn't how it works.
Here's a neat page which goes to some lengths to explain why people are excited and mystified by this particular feature of reality.
It is a high school science level presentation, but frankly, that's my level and with something as peculiar as Quantum Entanglement, it helps to go through the steps as a refresher. If you want to skip ahead, then the goods can be found on this page.
-FL