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Chinese Physicists Achieve Quantum Teleportation Over 60 Miles
MrSeb writes "Chinese physicists are reporting that they've successfully teleported photonic qubits (quantum bits) over a distance of 97 kilometers (60mi). This means that quantum data has been transmitted from one point to another, without passing through the intervening space. It's important to note that the Chinese researchers haven't actually made a photon disappear and reappear 97 kilometers away; rather, they've used quantum entanglement to recreate the same qubit in a new location, with the same subatomic properties as the original qubit. The previous record for transmitting entangled qubits was 16 kilometers, performed by another Chinese team back in 2010 — and perhaps most excitingly, the researchers seem confident that their system will scale up from 97km to distances capable of reaching orbital satellites, at which point we'll actually be able to build a global quantum network for all of our cryptographic needs."
I hear the next step is transporting economic superpower status over 7,000 miles.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Lord... Whats a qubit?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Why would you involve satellites?
It is teleportation, so line-of-sight is not involved in this... Right?
So....how long until we have an Ansible?
Now we won't transfer our warez over any wires or IP numbers at all, and will just teleport the data all over the place.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
So it's replication, not teleportation?
Twinstiq, game news
In other news, another group of Chinese Scientists have announced that they have developed a method for filtering teleported qubits which contain information or ideas which are detrimental to the keeping of order of the society.
This is part of an international research effort, including schools like Carnegie-Mellon in the US. However, due to the lower costs of photonic qubits in China, it only makes sense to have the majority of experiments carried out over there.
Note that it's still limited by the speed of light. The key feature, however, is that it is secure: someone intercepting the photon can't copy or read its qbit state without breaking the quantum entanglement, or preventing it from reaching the destination. In either case, the receiver will immediately know that the channel has been broken. It then stops transmitting a response to the sender, and the sender perceives this as also a break in secure communications and stops transmitting. Both the sender and the receiver would then go into failure mode and send query/response polls periodically. When secure communications are re-established, they can resume transmitting data.
Queue starry-eyed 500 posts about Ender's game by people whose idea of being a nerd is playing WoW while they wait for "the singularity", FTL communications, and REAL perpetual motion machines.
at which point we'll actually be able to build a global quantum network for all of our cryptographic needs."
If you think things are bad in Europe with the cameras everywhere and in the USA with the Patriot act and whatnot, you'll find out how good you have it when China is in charge of your cryptographic needs.
Chinese scientists continue to make shit up, as always: http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2010/07/academic_fraud_china
and half a world away, another butterfly does too.
not nearly as exciting. boo, science!
If we have a 72-kg (158 lb.) person made mostly out of water, that's about 4,000 moles, or 2.4x10^27 molecules, which is about 7.2x10^27 atoms. The actual number might be different, but it's way more than a trillion.
>> ...their system will scale up...to distances capable of reaching orbital satellites, at which point CHINA actually be able to build a global quantum network for all of CHINA'S cryptographic needs.
There - fixed that for ya'. Human rights - so 20th century.
There is a long, long history in cryptography of systems that were provably secure in principle proving not to be so in practice.
I'll believe any quantum crypto system is secure after attackers have been pounding on it for a decade or so.
Why build a plane when you can TELEPORT the bomb?
and perhaps most excitingly, the researchers seem confident that their system will scale up from 97km to distances capable of reaching orbital satellites
Actually, what would be most exciting would be if they could scale up from qubits to about 86.6 kilograms of organized mass...
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Once you have the know-how and the hardware to do this, how is 97 km different from 16 km different from across the room?
Part of this is getting photons from point A to point B. But with fibre optics, couldn't they do 1000 or even 10,000 km with the same effort as 97?
yeah like those guys who went to the moon. what a bunch of assholes!
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Sounds Great!
I'm not sure I get why this method is thought to be any more secure than a conventional line-of-sight laser link.
It seems as though a line of sight laser that had conventionally encoded data in it would be pretty secure. Well, you'd have to get close to the laser light to observe it, and maybe use some super-fancy optics to couple to it and make a copy of the data. Highly unlikely but possible. But if the (assumed full-duplex) beams were obstructed, the link would be assumed compromised and sending could be halted.
In the case of the quantum version, it is said that the photons are entangled, so if an adversary inspected them, he'd "collapse the wave function" and it would be obvious to both the receiver and the sender, is that right? But, because its an optical beam, some amount of those entangled photons diverge, go astray, and are not ever received (at the receiver.) How does the sender distinguish between those that are legitimately received and those that go astray? Between those that are intercepted by an adversary and those that go astray? Could not then an adversary just choose to inspect those photons that weren't going to make it to the receiver anyway? And then, by 'collapsing the wavefunction' him or herself, be privy to (some portion of) the message?
Too much has become real from science fiction, and it's scary. One little ferinstance, Jules Verne had "electric bullets" that were mocked for over a century, of course you couldn't put enough charge into a projectile to make a foe fall "as if struck by a thunderbolt", right? http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/taser-shotgun-shell1.htm
So that makes this The Prestige... Anyone else get the vision of the amazing Tesla machine that Hugh Jackman commissioned to achieve "The Real Transported Man"?
Sigh. What happened to the days when nerds would read science fiction without believing that someday it would all be real?
When was that? My dad still complains about not having a flying car or being able to take a flight to the moon.
at which point we'll actually be able to build a global quantum network for all of our cryptographic needs.
Are you a member of the Chinese Army?
Have gnu, will travel.
unfortunately this is beyond most 5th graders. any analogy for laymen will always fall short. analogies for those familiar with QM are tough enough as it is. but here's a classic bob and alice example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation#Motivation
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
It shows a complete lack of understanding of science.
And of course the actual distance will have been 100km which someone who does understand significant figures converted to 60 miles for Americans. Followed by a moron deciding to convert it to 97 km because they are scientifically illiterate.
What the fuck is being talked about here?
If that's the entirety of discourse you bring to the site, you just might as well go back to 4chan with the rest of the invertebrates.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
or being able to take a flight to the moon.
Yes yes, working on it, give us about nine years.
Under certain circumstances, two particles like electrons or photons (that's light) get related in such a way that, if you look at a certain characteristic on one particle, you'll know for sure not only the value for your particle, but also which value the other particle has. Thing is, most scientists, but not all, think these characteristics are random and don't have a "real" value until they are measured, so they say that, when you know the value on one particle, it "teleports" the result to the other particle, so it can know which value should have. There's another problem: this teleportation is faster than the speed of light, something that physicists don't like.
Let's say that you have bunnies that can be GOOD or EVIL, and behave like those particles. Let's say they are in a box and, before you see them, they can be either GOOD or EVIL. Once you open the box and check them, you can say "This bunny is a GOOD one!" or the EVIL bunny jumps at your face. Now, let's say that two twin bunnies are born and put in separated boxes, and you know that one is the GOOD one and the other is the EVIL one. They have become "entangled". You keep one and give another one to a friend. Now, when each is on their houses, you open your cage and check your bunny. Let's say is the GOOD one. Now, you know for sure that your poor friend has the EVIL one: it has "teleported" that knowledge.
If you are thinking the bunny knew all along whether it was GOOD and EVIL, well, a few scientists also think that way, but for that to work out (there's some heavy math behind it), information *must* be able to travel faster than light, so we can't solve the problem this way (who knows, maybe Einstein was wrong!).
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
What you say doesn't make any sense, as one European mole has a mass of about 100 grams. If one human consisted of 4000 moles, said human would have a mass of about 400kg! Turning it the other way around, one out of 4000 moles making a 72-kg-human would have a mass of just 18g. That must be some significantly smaller species than the European mole!
Dude! Did you use our fine, European, metric mole or did you calculate everything in imperial moles?!
Aww
I still don't really understand entanglement. Any time I hear it explained it sounds like it's really nothing like instantaneous anything. It seems like it's no different than putting two numbers in a hat, pulling one out at random, and then sending the hat to someone and say . . . when I look at mine and send you that info, we both know what yours is!
Tautological tautology is tautological!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Is the a photon equivalent to a superconducting magnet?
As in creating two synchronized rings on entangled photos that will persist for 3 years, giving you a buffer of photons and a buffer size for communications.
Electricity does not travel at the speed of light.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
How do we know they didn't just pirate the qubit?
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
So... Is doing a bunch of these in parallel on the horizon? I mean, perhaps they could use it to produce an explosive material at a distant location without having to traverse there.. Or perhaps just something else that would be damaging...
They'd really help with comms to/from future robotic spacecraft, mars bases, etc. :-)
"... at which point *we'll* actually be able to build a global quantum network for all of our cryptographic needs."
What do you mean "we" wide-eyes?
The above says "performed by another Chinese team back in 2010" but it 16km feat was first demonstrated by the same team
ok how about this analogy. the qubit is a piece of information, not a physical entity that can physically move. this is why they say it does not move through space. compare a qubit to a meme. let's say you and i are like an entangled pair of photons. a meme resides inside my head: it's a state of my perception, equivalent to a qubit. i speak my idea out loud, and phonons carry the vibration across air-filled space to your ears (like the laser beaming the 2 classical bits of info) where it is decoded and reinterpreted by your brain to be the same meme. during that action it's important to consider the phonons as not the same thing as the idea. the idea never left my head even though i transmitted it. then let's say you agree with the meme, and now we're of like mind. in the experiment, the one photon essentially received information via classical means (the laser) from the other photon and decided to agree with it because it was entangled.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT