Scientists Find Method To Reliably Teleport Data

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience say they've managed to reliably teleport quantum information stored in one bit of diamond to another sitting three meters away (abstract, pre-print) . Now, their goal is to extend the range over a distance of a kilometer. '[R]eliability of quantum teleportation has been elusive. For example, in 2009, University of Maryland physicists demonstrated the transfer of quantum information, but only one of every 100 million attempts succeeded, meaning that transferring a single bit of quantum information required roughly 10 minutes. In contrast, the scientists at Delft have achieved the ability "deterministically," meaning they can now teleport the quantum state of two entangled electrons accurately 100 percent of the time. They did so by producing qubits using electrons trapped in diamonds at extremely low temperatures. According to Dr. Hanson, the diamonds effectively create 'miniprisons' in which the electrons were held. The researchers were able to establish a spin, or value, for electrons, and then read the value reliably.'"

Comments

This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine the boner the high speed traders would have if someone figured out a way to communicate information from New York to Chicago or London instantaneously?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[TeknoHog]

You can't use quantum teleportation to transmit information faster than light. QT requires a classical information channel (like fiber optic cables) on the side to actually work. The point about QT is being able to transfer a quantum mechanical state, i.e. the wavefunction with its full phase information. You cannot do that with classical means, because you'd need to measure the state, thereby collapsing it into a classical state.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine the boner the high speed traders would have if someone figured out a way to communicate information from New York to Chicago or London instantaneously?

I doubt we could handle it. HFT hasn't exactly been stable today. I really don't think we need to keep feeding that beast.

Now porn on the other hand...

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At least poor Erwin can finally bring his cat with him when he travels.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

I realize you were making a joke based on a perception common in popular culture, but the truth is that the Schrodinger's Cat paradox has a simple resolution: the cat *cannot* be both alive and dead because the detector (which detects whether the decay has occurred and which triggers the release of the poison if the decay occurred) collapses the wave function of the particle. There's no such thing as a passive detector. So while a subatomic particle could indeed exist in a superposition of "decayed" vs. "not decayed," the second you go about asking the particle whether it's decayed (that is, when you set up the detector), the wave function collapses, and no superposition is possible.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think that that was more polite and informative than my fairly feeble joke deserved. My thanks.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget QT specifically and think of this as one step towards mastering entanglement in general. How about the possibility of generating weirdly correlated transactions across the globe that give traders an advantage?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[NotDrWho]

Anyone remember the movie "Mystery Men"? One of the characters in that movie summed up my feelings on modern quantum physics pretty nicely. He was "Invisible Boy." But he could only become invisible when no one was looking (not even himself), and no cameras were on him. The second that anything that could actually verify his ability tried to do so, he became visible again. This led to the obvious question "How do you know you have this power at all?" to which he relied "Well, I just feel it."

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

From outside the hypothetical quantum box, the detector's observation of the quantum state is equivalent to saying that the detector has become entangled with the particle. So from the outside non-observer's point of view, the particle, the detector, and the cat are all still in a superposition state.

Entangelment and observation are basically the same thing. Observing a system causes you to be entangled with that system from the standpoint of anyone who tries to observe you. If you and the quantum box were placed in a sealed quantum room, then after you opened it, anyone outside the room would consider you to be in a superposition of morning/feeding your dead/alive cat.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Mr0bvious]

Please excuse my absolute ignorance, but I was under the impression that classical information channel was only required to transmit one of the entangled photons. If one of the entangled photons (or what ever it is that is entangled) was transported elsewhere (truck, fiber optics, what-not) the two entangled would still maintain the same state (spin etc) and information could then be transmitted faster than light by changing the state of one and reading the state of the other.

I'm sure I just displayed my ignorance and lack of any understanding of QT, but there are sure to be others with this same understanding so it may be worth while pointing out where I've got this wrong.

Is your last sentence "You cannot do that with classical means, because you'd need to measure the state, thereby collapsing it into a classical state." the reason why this does not work?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[bondsbw]

QM is one of those things I never get around to fully grasping because 1) I use my time for learning many other things that more directly apply to my life, and 2) I have attempted to understand it and just don't get it.

So, could someone please explain why we think that the wave function of a particle is believed to exist in superposition until it is observed (which causes the wave function to collapse)? Why don't quantum physicists assume that the wave function was always collapsed and never in a superposition? What evidence is there that the superposition existed, considering that any observation of such evidence collapses it?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it's bullshit. For example photons in air constantly get absorbed and reemitted by air molecules without their wavefunction collapsing.

When the most prestigious place where his pet solution is published is Slashdot, you know something is wrong.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[skids]

The double slit experiment. Even when you slow down the rate of photons going through the slit so no two can possibly interfere, they still present a self-interference pattern. If the function was "already collapsed" it could not interact with itself.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

Basically, we know that superpositions exist because we can perform experiments in which, if a particle were always in one state or the other, the results would be different. See: double-slit experiment. If photons didn't exist in a superposition of states, then the distribution of light you'd get with the double slit would be the distribution you get from having one slit covered plus the one you'd get from covering the other one. But you don't--the distribution is completely different, which means that a single photon somehow travel though *both* slits and "interferes with itself." It's more than a little batshit.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't even know the state without collapsing the entanglement, so you obviously can't change the state of one of the entangled particles to a known state before disentangling them.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find the whole superposition idea as the option to have FILE_NOT_FOUND as a valid boolean value. A third state, a greyed out checkbox, an "I don't know" value so that you can make your math work out, but that doesn't make reality be that too. The cat will be dead, or it will be alive - not both, and it will put up a stench in the box, regardless of what your blackboard formulas say.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[skids]

It basically boils down to this: you have to send point B the data about what you did at point A for the reading you made at point B to be interpreted in any meaningful fashion. That data travels in a classical fashion so you don't know what your reading at point B actually means until after the light carrying the data from point A has arrived. Once the data are combined, they become actual information.

Not useful for exceedind the speed of light under currently accepted theory, but very useful for cryptography because only you have the reading from point B and both peices of data are needed to get the information, so someone stealing the classically transported data is still missing a part.

Re: This research should receive enormous funding.

[ewanm89]

'Ye cannae change the laws o' physics'

Classical information is still limited by the speed of light. Quantum teleportation can not be used for traditional communications.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[TheRaven64]

That's the second time today you've been moderated up for a highly misleading explanation of Schroedinger's cat.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Charliemopps]

I realize you were making a joke based on a perception common in popular culture, but the truth is that the Schrodinger's Cat paradox has a simple resolution: the cat *cannot* be both alive and dead because the detector (which detects whether the decay has occurred and which triggers the release of the poison if the decay occurred) collapses the wave function of the particle. There's no such thing as a passive detector. So while a subatomic particle could indeed exist in a superposition of "decayed" vs. "not decayed," the second you go about asking the particle whether it's decayed (that is, when you set up the detector), the wave function collapses, and no superposition is possible.

You're presenting your interpretation as fact, and it's not. It's a possible scenario, but this thought experiment is designed explicitly to show a paradox that we have yet to resolve. What you describe is the "Copenhagen interpretation" which was proposed by Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and others in 1924 to 1927. It states that quantum states are not fixed but probabilities. Just as you said, once any measurement is made the wave function collapses and the state is fixed in the classical sense. If this interpretation is true, then you are correct. But there are many other interpretations that have any equally valid chance of being correct.

In the "Many-Worlds" interpretation, the cat really is both alive and dead. When you open the box you become entangled with the cat (not literally, that would hurt) and one version of you perceives it as alive and another perceives it as dead. Both results occur, you experience both, but you remain unaware of your duplicate and he of you.

Einstein himself supported an entirely different interpretation called the "Ensemble interpretation" which basically just makes the entire thought experiment irrelevant. It's wacky and hard to explain so I'll just link to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Anyways, I recommend reading up on Schrödinger's cat via Wikipedia or some other source. You're only incorrect in that you thought your explanation was the only one.

Oh, and full disclosure, I'm not a scientist, I just find this stuff incredibly interesting. Also it makes me sound smart at parties. Actually I don't get invited to parties... they say I ramble on about nonsense. Thank God for the many worlds theory... at least I'm popular somewhere.

Re: This research should receive enormous funding.

[Chris Mattern]

Quantum teleportation can not be used for traditional communications.

Quantum teleportation can not be used for traditional communications *by itself*. It is possible to set up a situation where you combine QT with traditional transmission so that both the QT and the transmission are required to receive the data. Relativity is observed, as you don't have the data until you get the speed of light transmission. But you get QT's security, as intercepting just the tranmission won't yield anything.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[ortholattice]

What you can do is use quantum teleportation to "transmit" (in a manner of speaking) a real (or complex) number, i.e. a quantum superposition, which in theory could contain infinite information, by using only a couple of classical bits. This real number can't be observed directly - you can only tell whether it's less than or greater than a specified number by appropriately designing your observation - but until you observe it, it can be further processed in its full precision as a superposition at the receiver end using quantum operations. What you can do with this internal (uncollapsed) infinite information is up to you, e.g. as part of a quantum factoring or search algorithm, until you finally collapse it and read out some yes/no answer. All in theory of course; in practice you have noise and other sources of error.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it's bullshit. For example photons in air constantly get absorbed and reemitted by air molecules without their wavefunction collapsing.

When the most prestigious place where his pet solution is published is Slashdot, you know something is wrong.

No. Just no.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was watching an interview with a very prestigious theoretical physicist when he started talking about some research he's been closely watching where they are able to entangle two photons, send one several kilometers away, then somehow entangle the remaining photon with an already measured classical photon. Entangling the quantum photon with the classical photon causes the quantum photon to take on the opposite properties of the classical one, which in turn causes the other quantum photon to take on the opposite properties of that quantum photon, which means you now have the exact original properties of the classical photon.

He said that this is real teleportion of real information. The problem is doing this destroys the state original classical photon, leaving it effectively random. But if you assume a given photon is its state, then you didn't destroy the photon, you teleported it. You still need to wait for the one quantum photon to travel to the destination via classic space time.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Gr8Apes]

I used to be called a tinfoil hatter. But Edward Snowden proved that even *I* wasn't paranoid enough.

You'll note that there has been a dearth on tinfoil hatter jokes since Snowden.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

I didn't come up with this.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except both you and barlevg are incorrect in this case. Barlevg incorrectly assumes that a detector within a closed system collapses the state when this runs counter to the very concepts used to create entangled states. Also the idea that a photon constantly gets absorbed and reemitted in air is an incorrect understand of how electromagnetic waves get delayed, both in the classical electromagnetic sense and quantum sense. There is a minute interaction between a photon propagating through air and the components of the air since the photon has electric and magnetic fields that induce slight currents and polarizations in air molecules. But the result most of the time is no change, no passing of information and no indication that the photon was there after it passes. This amounts to something analogous in quantum mechanics referred to a weak measurements, where the less information you get from an interaction, the less it affects the state being interacted with. In a weak enough case, you can pass most photons through unperturbed, although there will be occasional ones that do have a strong interaction, that do actually get absorbed and scatter off of molecules. But in general, that is not the process of light going through air (at least until you get to high energy x-rays and gamma rays, where the index of refraction gets less and less relevant, and they propagate through air like billiard balls on a scale you can measure in a undergrad lab class).

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

The double slit experiment. Even when you slow down the rate of photons going through the slit so no two can possibly interfere, they still present a self-interference pattern. If the function was "already collapsed" it could not interact with itself.

For me, at least, this indicates our understanding of QM is not complete. We just try to articulate our observations, but real explanations elude us.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[dywolf]

they would fight it because one of hte most popular HFT scams involves exploiting the lag time between different markets.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not a correct interpretation of objective collapse theory though, and is either overly simplified or a misinterpretation, assuming it is even an explicit example in the cited source. There are practical problems of setting up Schrodinger's cat in a real world experiment and having it properly isolated from outside environment, plus issues with cleanly defining a dead and alive state, but in principle it is no different than much simpler experiments which can be setup, and with which careful measurements can be done. Objective collapse is an interpretation of quantum mechanics, and can't disagree with the mathematical predictions and observations, which all allow for superpositions to be setup in even complex setups.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

What do you mean by "understand?" This result--that all particles have wave-like natures and can do things like "interfere" with themselves, makes perfect sense to me, because it doesn't contradict anything in my observable world (where most of these effects get washed out). I just accept that our universe is inherently quantum mechanical, just as I accept that my hand is made of molecules which are made of atoms which are made of quarks and electrons, even though I have no "experience" dealing with things on that scale.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

Also the idea that a photon constantly gets absorbed and reemitted in air is an incorrect understand of how electromagnetic waves get delayed, both in the classical electromagnetic sense and quantum sense.

Totally willing to admit that I'm wrong about this, but could you provide a citation? This interpretation of why light is slower in a medium was something I picked up in undergrad, and I never had it explicitly contradicted (my Ph.D was in a sub-field that required only the bare minimum quantum mechanics and solid state courses).

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've basically just described quantum teleportation, what the article is about, etc. Except you missed one important part. When you interact half of the entangled pair with the state/photon you want to teleport, the entangled photon doesn't adopt the opposite of the "classical" one, but instead adopts a random transformation of the state you want to teleport. You can't predict which transformation it chooses, but by measuring your half of the entangled system, you can figure out which one randomly resulted. You then classically tell the person with the other half of the entanglement which transformation happened, they can undo that, and get a copy of the state you were sending (at no point is a measurement of the state being sent made though). You can send the other half of the entangled pair ahead of time, ignoring practical constraints, and let it just sit somewhere far away until you need it. The waiting involve is waiting for the classical signal to get there so the other person knows what they need to do to get the teleported state back instead of just a random state.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

Except that the math there works out completely differently.

See: double-slit experiment. If photons didn't exist in a superposition of states, then the distribution of light you'd get with the double slit would be the distribution you get from having one slit covered plus the one you'd get from covering the other one. But you don't--the distribution is completely different, which means that a single photon somehow travel though *both* slits and "interferes with itself."

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

You're presenting this response as if the Copenhagen Interpretation were not still the standard interpretation of QMech nearly a century after its formulation. In all the academic circles in which I've run (I have a Ph.D in physics, although my field was pretty far from quantum mechanics), Many World is considered an interesting idea with little practical consequence, and almost everything Einstein said regarding Quantum Mechanics has turned out to be disproved (though I'm not familiar with this specific interpretation).

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I recall it right, the Invisible Boy used his power successfully, while only observed by a camera, at least I am pretty sure his power was used successfully!

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just consider the electromagnetic radiation solution to the Maxwell equations in a medium. It might seem more intuitive when considering this for radio waves that are way larger than electronic structure and have easier to picture current and polarization effects on the medium. The idea of photons doesn't really change this result except at the smallest scales, especially considering visible light photons still have wavelengths much larger than atoms. Also consider what process an atom can absorb and re-emit light, which would have no guaranteee of sending the light off in the same direction and energy for arbitrary energy photons. Look in to Compton scattering to see what happens when an atom does interact with light that way, and the result is a recoil in the atom and a change in the photon's momentum and energy.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

Yep. Sorry about that. I meant to link to the Niels Bohr answer above it (which I copy-pasted into a separate response below).

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[rgbatduke]

Please excuse my absolute ignorance, but I was under the impression that classical information channel was only required to transmit one of the entangled photons. If one of the entangled photons (or what ever it is that is entangled) was transported elsewhere (truck, fiber optics, what-not) the two entangled would still maintain the same state (spin etc) and information could then be transmitted faster than light by changing the state of one and reading the state of the other.

Information cannot be transmitted faster than light as far as we know in standard physics today (barring extreme relativistic things like white or black holes and I doubt even those unless/until experiment verifies any claim that they can).

Quantum theory doesn't get around it. You cannot choose the direction to "collapse" or "change the state" of one of the two entangled spins, because the instant you measure it, it "collapses". You might now be able to predict the state of the other end of the channel, but the person there can't because he doesn't know what you measured, so if he measures up or down when he tries (again, supposed "collapsing the wavefunction") he won't know what you measured at your end or (since the two spins are no longer entangled as soon as a measurement is made at either end) what you do to it subsequently.

But the real problem (the "paradox" bit of EPR) is much worse than that. Suppose the two "entangled" electrons are separated by some distance D. Non-relativistic naive stupid quantum theory states that when one of the two electrons is measured, the wavefunction of the whole thing collapses. But suppose that D is nice and large -- in gedanken experiments we can make it a light year, why not? In the "rest frame of the Universe" (the frame in which the cosmic microwave background has on average no directional doppler shift) experimenters on both ends simultaneously perform a measurement of the spin state of the two electrons. This (simultaneity) is a perfectly valid concept in any given frame but is not a frame invariant concept. Neither is temporal ordering a universally valid concept. But given a simultaneous measurement of the two spins, which measurement causes the wavefunction to collapse and determines the global final state, given that the entropy of their measuring apparatus (which is responsible for the random phase shifts that supposedly break the entanglement, see Nakajima-Zwanzig equation and the Generalized Master Equation) is supposedly completely separable and independent?

By making D nice and large, we have a further problem. I said that the measurements were simultaneous in "the rest frame" (and even gave you a prescription for determining what frame I mean), but that means that if we boost that coordinate frame along one direction or the other, we can make either measurement occur first! That is, suppose the spins are in a singlet spin state so that if one is measured up (along some axis) the other must be measured down. Suppose that in frame A, spin 1 interacts with its local measuring apparatus first and is filtered into spin down. This interaction with its local entropy pool -- exchanging information with it via strictly retarded e.g. electromagnetic interactions -- supposedly "transluminally", that is to say instantaneously in frame A -- "causes" (whatever you want that word to mean) spin 2 in frame A to collapse into a non-entangled quantum state in which the probability of measuring its spin up in that frame some time later than the time of measurement in frame A is unity. In frame B, however, it is spin 2's measurement that is performed first, and as the electron interacts with its entropy pool you have a serious problem. If you follow any of the quantum approaches to measurement -- most of them random phase approximation or master equation projections that assume that the filter forces a final state on the basis of its local entropy and unknown/unspecified state -- it cannot indep

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. They'll just allow placing quantum orders, and then when the classical information arrives, they can be fixed up on the fly. ;-)

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the exact opposite of the result of that experiment though. An explanation eluded us until quantum mechanics, which then produced a strongly predictive explanation of the situation. That is as "real" as an explanation as you get out of science.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what is the part in the detector (made out of quantum particles!) which selects exactly one of the outcomes? (And don't say "decoherence", because decoherence is only responsible for removing the interference, not for actually selecting a single output.)

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

One way to think of it is that on teleportation, the quantum information gets encrypted with a random classical key, and the classical key is handed to the sender. The receiver cannot decrypt the teleported state until he receives the classical key. Which cannot be sent faster than light.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

Right. Okay. So where I went wrong here was the "absorb" and "re-emitted" part, but the interpretation that stuck with me from undergrad was the question of, when interactions of this type occur, does it make sense to think of the photon as the same photon pre- and post- interaction? Or can we think about this as the photon destroyed and replaced with a new one that is travelling in roughly the same direction? If I recall correctly (it's been four years, so pardon me if I'm wrong), since [a,a^+]=0 for bosons, then the answer is, "sure, if you want," because you can create+annihilate a boson as many times as you want with no difference. So it's just an interpretation. But yeah, it doesn't sound like it's a good answer to why light travels slower in a medium.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Zaphod The 42nd]

The two maintain the same state but you cannot WHATSOEVER control that state, so all you have and all you can trasmit is ENTIRELY RANDOM DATA. The only value in transmitting random data instantly is that you can use it for security purposes in computer authentication schemes. That is all. You will NEVER be able to transmit classical information FTL (through this method anyways).

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Charliemopps]

But why is it standard? There's no reason to believe its explanation is any more valid than the others other than, its the one that is most psychologically appealing because it most resembles our classical macroscopic world.

The best way to think of why it could be wrong is that, in order for you to make your argument, you are treating the observer and the act of measurement device classically, in a deterministic way... But treating the quantum state as a probability in a non-deterministic way. So which is it? Your non-deterministic theory is itself deterministic, so it is its' own paradox!

There may very well be an explanation for this, we do not know enough yet. But the issue is certainly not settled.

And with regards to Einstein being wrong about about quantum physics... his biggest mistake was second guessing himself. It's looking more and more like his Cosmological Constant is the real deal. ;-)

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[barlevg]

made out of quantum particles!

Everything is made out of quantum particles, so this is rather a moronic reply. That being said, I'm quite satisfied with the "entanglement" arguments made by others (the photon detector needn't decohere/collapse the waveform--it could simply entangle with it, in which case, if you really did have a box with a cat completely isolated from the outside universe, then the paradox would still hold). I probably won't be making this response in the future, or at least not without the caveat of "from a practical perspective" or "I prefer Bohr's resolution to the paradox wherein..."

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there is some subtlety to it and one can start waxing philosophically about it. Do you want to think of it as a single slowed wave, or a wave traveling at c with another wave created by the medium partially canceling out the wave? Is the light going through an etalon, antireflective coating, etc., just interfering with itself, or two waves on top of each other interfering? In the end there isn't any observable difference and it becomes interpretation in that regard. Either case though, the wave front isn't alternating between c and stopped, but has a smooth propagation, which is part of how you get stuff like Cerenkov radiation.

Anyway, it is an interaction nonetheless, but quantum mechanics does allow for types of interactions that don't cause decoherence, or do so with very low probability. These actually have a use as "weak measurements", where if you don't actually exchange information, or a very little amount of information, then no change or very unlikely change happens to the original state. You can get into such effects with non-linear optics where effectively two photons can interact via the medium they are traveling through, although in some cases if there is no second photon, there is no memory of the first photon passing through, so it goes through unperturbed (disregarding noise).

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[mwvdlee]

He just doesn't get the concept of a "thought experiment".
The point of the cat in the box is not the mechanism inside the box, but the inability of somebody outside the box to know the state inside the box.
The whole box and everything in it is a metaphore, it was never meant to be an actual reproducable experiment subject to literal interpretation.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is incorrect. If the cat is isolated, and you can set up an experiment where the dead and live versions of the cat interfere with each other on a quantum level (similar to the double slit experiment) then you will see that the dead and live cat existed simultaneously prior to interaction with the outside environment.

An observer, upon observing the collapse, can essentially enters superimposed state (of observing and reacting to both scenarios) to anyone outside a larger box.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait....your feelings on quantum physics are that the claims are based on "Well, I just fell it" rather than objective observation and recreation?

The claim that he is invisible only when no means of checking his visibility means the claim is non-falsifiable. Are you saying that the claims of quantum mechanics are also non-falsifiable, and hence no better than superstition?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[dinfinity]

IANAP, but I've hypothesized that you could also say that the slits influence the individual particle at the same time. I.e. the particle isn't interfering with itself, but is rather 'interfered' (I know) with by both slits.

If the particles that comprise the edges of the slits (or lack of those particles in the slits) have an influence on the trajectory of the fired particle that varies in a wave-like manner, the notion of 'interferes with itself' wouldn't be required to explain the resulting patterns. Again, IANAP; I'm just visualizing the elements of the slits as having some varying attraction/repulsion on the particle and am looking for reasons (preferably experimental results) why that visualization should be dismissed.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[nospam007]

"These actually have a use as "weak measurements", where if you don't actually exchange information, or a very little amount of information, .."

Very little, like a bit? And it's not totally reliable so we'd need a checksum?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[wonkey_monkey]

One of the characters in that movie summed up my feelings on modern quantum physics pretty nicely.

Which are what? The rest of your post, relating the shenanigans of Invisible Boy, don't tell us what your feelings are.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[wonkey_monkey]

He wasn't seriously suggesting that the experiment as described would actually work. It's a thought experiment, meant to give you a better grasp of the kind of weird things that happen at microscopic scales by scaling them to everyday experience.

Besides which, the idea is that the entire system - including the detector and the poison bottle - remains in an indeterminate state until observed.

There's no way it'd ever actually work as described. But that isn't, and was never, the point.

There's also no paradox. We know this is how the universe works. It's weird, it's counter-intuitive, but it's not paradoxical.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Tyler Durden]

It's true that the GP is just representing one interpretation. Just thought I'd throw out my favorite "interpretation", (objective collapse theory) as it doesn't seem to get much love. No multiple worlds. No living-dead cats.

Also, instead of thinking of things being fundamentally composed of objects that are sort of both waves and particles I find it easier to picture them all as waves that only occasionally act as particles under the right conditions. This seems counter-intuitive since most of the world we experience is a result of these interactions that make them appear as particles. But it makes it a lot easier when picturing how things work with QFT and the difference between virtual and non-virtual "particles".

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

The way it was described when I watched it is the physicist explicitly stated that no classical channels were used. The state of the original was "teleported" via the two quantum pairs in a way that required only having one of the entangled photons, no other side channels required. While I can appreciate them dumbing stuff down, he made it quite clear that this was true teleportation, no waiting for the speed of light except in exchanging the entangled particles.

They went on to give an example of those this was different than Star Trek style teleportion. Say something was 100ly away. You would need to wait at least 100ly for the first bunch of entangled stuff to get there, but once it got there, you could immediately start teleporting current data, assuming you still had the other pair and nothing went wrong.

He reiterated several times that this was real useful teleportation. At the time, they were in the process of instruction other labs on what they were doing to see if they could replicate it. He did mention that it was very expensive and time consuming to setup, so it may be several years before other labs are able to reproduce the results. That time is coming up soon, so hopefully we hear more if it was reproducible.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[fahrbot-bot]

QM is one of those things I never get around to fully grasping because 1) I use my time for learning many other things that more directly apply to my life, and 2) I have attempted to understand it and just don't get it.

That's the thing. You can (a) understand QM or (b) try to learn more about QM, but one precludes the other.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[fahrbot-bot]

...just as I accept that my hand is made of molecules which are made of atoms which are made of quarks and electrons...

And mostly empty space.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

The state of the original was "teleported" via the two quantum pairs in a way that required only having one of the entangled photons, no other side channels required. While I can appreciate them dumbing stuff down, he made it quite clear that this was true teleportation, no waiting for the speed of light except in exchanging the entangled particles.

Either something is being misremembered, the physicist was flat out wrong, or he was talking about what would be one of the largest discoveries in QM in recent years that somehow went unnoticed. Quantum teleportation requires a classical channel. If you just want to exchange entangled particles, that is a simpler case than quantum teleportation which involves performing operations after separating the entangled pair. But you do not get to chose the state of each half of the entangled pair. You would not be able to make sure someone else gets a copy of a state versus some other variation (e.g. the opposite state).

Otherwise what you describe sounds exactly like quantum entanglement, except you most definitely need a classical channel for that if you want to reproduce the original states and not just get a stream of random states out the other end. That also comes back to the idea you can't force entangled particles into a particular state in their superposition, that there is a random element to it that negates direct use of the collapse of the entanglement.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're new around here, but are you seriously so obtuse?

"How do you know you have this power at all?" to which he relied "Well, I just feel it."

How do we know what we think we know about quantum physics?

He's suggesting it's as much faith as real science, they just 'feel it'

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[micahraleigh]

Didn't someone recently win the Nobel for building a passive detector using a laser?

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to reject quantum phenomenon off hand too. It's weird and unintuitive, but scientists aren't just basing their view of the quantum world on "feelings." They are basing their views on the most beautiful experiments ever conducted by man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
I'm gonna do my best to explain this because I believe that it is the most amazing thing that our species has ever discovered. I literally think about this every day.

It goes like this:
Throw an electron through a slit and towards a special screen where it will leave an imprint showing where it hit. Do this again, and again, and again, etc., one electron at a time. Their imprints will leave a pattern on the screen, and the pattern will be one (relatively) broad line; the shape of the slit they've been traveling through.

Now, we set up two slits but we keep one closed every time we fire an electron, and we alternate between the two. If the slit on the left is open this time we fire, the slit on the right will be open next time. This changes the pattern, and we now see two lines on the screen.

If we open both slits up, and fire an electron through each, we get a very different pattern. The electrons are exerting forces on each other (gravity, electromagnetism) as they travel, which changes their flight path. So instead of just seeing two lines of imprints, we see bands that stretch outside of the normal range you would expect to be available shooting electrons through the slits one at a time. Here's a good visual representation: http://mikijueda.edublogs.org/files/2011/10/Youngs_double-slit_experiment-263i4zj.jpg

Here's where shit get's weird. We now open both slits up, but fire the electrons one at a time. The electron can go through either slit, and we don't know which until we check the screen to see which of the two line patterns it falls into. The problem is, it goes through both slits. If we fire a series of electrons at the screen one at a time, they form an interference patterns instead of two lines. Even though only one electron hits the screen each time, the overall distribution of the imprints is in the shape you would expect if there were two electrons interfering with each. It's as if the electron has gone through both slits, interfered with itself, and then hit the screen once.

Wait, what?

So the physicists are like, "no, fuck that shit, which slit did you go through Electron? Somebody get a camera!"
And they set up a camera so that they can record which slit the electron goes through, and the electron only goes through one slit. The distribution of imprints on the screen fits nicely into two lines again, no interference at all. Nothing to see here, physicists.

Here's what's going on: the rules of the universe are relative. When matter is separated from other matter, it exists in multiple states* at once relative to the other matter. When we try to measure the electron, it is no longer separated from us and therefore it takes a definite state. There is no "why," and nobody knows the "how." They're working on it. Some folks think that the universe settles on one state when it interacts with other matter, others favor the opinion that interactions cause the universe to split into different versions that each keep running on their own, a multiverse with a seemingly infinite number of strands all coming from the big bang. If this latter view seems absurd to you, you're in good company - there are plenty of other modern anti-Copernicans running about. But know that there is no evidence either way, and it could very well function in a third way nobody has conceived of yet. For the record, this Anonymous coward is in the multiverse camp. I think it's always good to bet on the universe being weirder, larger, and less human-centric than previously thought.

*Every possible state, actually, which means that galaxies that are moving away from us faster that the speed of light due the inflation of space (which, having no mass, is not subject to the universal speed limit of C) should exist in every possible state relative to us, and the matter in this patch of space should exist in every possible state relative to them - crazy, I know.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[NotDrWho]

I'm going to write a full explanation of my thoughts on the subject with special ink on this piece of paper. But if you try to observe or measure the ink in any way, it will disappear. But the explanation is there. Trust me.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Your.Master]

Paradox doesn't mean it's contrary to the way the universe works. Weird and counter-intuitive is a near synonym to paradox.

Some definitions:

a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.

a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[pitchpipe]

entangled with the cat (not literally, that would hurt)

I'm thinking that you are correct!

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[njnnja]

And here this post is modded +5 Informative but somewhere else it's modded +5 Funny

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Charliemopps]

ooo, neat. I love wikipedia. I've not read up on the collapse theories directly but after reading what you linked to I can see this is where some of the more recent theories that propose the universe operates much like a collapsing sand dune got their start. The idea being that there is some critical point where a wave will collapse, like a sand dune having a landslide. It's impossible to know when it will collapse but as more sand builds up the chances become more and more likely.

Particularly I like the penrose version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Though I'm still hoping for many-worlds because it means we're practically immortal. Though some might consider that a bad thing.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Charliemopps]

And here this post is modded +5 Informative but somewhere else it's modded +5 Funny

Right? I've no idea why people think Physics is dull. There's no movie, no music, no book, or even theological work (The Bible) that proposes anything nearly as insane as what reality actually is. God would be a hell of a lot easier to explain than this stuff. lol

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like less than a bit. To get the information you need to average over many measurements. It would be like trying to measure the number ones and zeros in a serial transmission using measurements with more jitter than the clock rate, or some sort of message multibit value sent by randomly dithering between a one and zero.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

The person observes the box. The box observes the cat.

Come on geniuses it aren't that hard. Even if someone left the room and drove to the beach: The person observes the beach, the ground observes the house, the house observes the box, and box observes the cat.

The only way the cat could ever be both alive and dead is if you could completely separate one universe from another. However, where is the energy to encode an infinite amount of alternate universes coming from? No, you'd have to admit that there were just slices though a multidimensional matrix, and predetermination is resumed.

Don't worry, we can still have free will: No one can be sure exactly which slice of the multi-dimensional pie we're observing. In fact, we exist along all of them at once in some form or another, but we're not sure exactly which because time doesn't stop for us to find out. There are some fools who think determinism rules out free will but consider that if the universal creation event spawned an infinite number of possibilities at its genesis, and we don't know which one we're in, then all the determinism in the universe won't prevent free will: We are "observing" our minds and thus changing them ourselves in ways no external observer can know.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[TeknoHog]

Forget QT specifically and think of this as one step towards mastering entanglement in general. How about the possibility of generating weirdly correlated transactions across the globe that give traders an advantage?

Interesting. I usually stay away from physics discussions on /. as the pop-sci babble is just too much, but this is actually a fresh point of view. Of course, like any technology, this will soon be used by everyone so there will only be a time-limited edge for the first mover.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, this Anonymous coward is in the multiverse camp. I think it's always good to bet on the universe being weirder, larger, and less human-centric than previously thought.

You posted that through a wormhole from the future, didn't you...

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I learned long ago in school was that the whole thought experiment was mostly a 'political' move intended to make the pro-Copenhagen crowd look like lunatics. Schrodinger was well aware of the flaws in his thought experiment as an actual representation of what was going on. The confusion it still generates to this day is there because the experiment was designed exactly to spread that sort of confusion, and not to demonstrate anything substantial about quantum mechanics. It's essentially science propaganda. I've read many different interpretations since, but to this day that is still the one that rings the most true to me. I just can't help thinking that coming up with killing kittens to demonstrate a scientific principle means there has to be a hidden agenda.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way the cat could ever be both alive and dead is if you could completely separate one universe from another.

Which is why quantum mechanics has never been observed in a lab, because they never separate two universes and prevent the lab from observing an experiment in it... more maybe you don't know how decohernce is prevented in experiments.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do agree with Dinfinity on this one as well as you Barlevg , curious as am in a state of an invisible coward. What a real mystery. Perhaps this question needs a newer perspective than the old double slit. I do know a few researchers that recently had a shock when "photo" experiments on ''flickr' of all places seemed to call into question the entire double slit results due to what is being defined as 'optical properties' not a true quantum result at all. Fine wormholes for all. New photo review is concerning something that has been known for centuries; that of the pinhole box or what became known as the pinhole camera. 1 tiny hole not 1 or 2 slits and all optics are reversed, not unlike a lens. Does seem like the photons are being influenced by the matter itself that they are passing in very close proximity with, and perhaps at the same time causing interactions with each other. If so, double slit experiment has always been a misinterpretation of data.(1/0.)

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pin hole cameras display the same wave properties and interference you find in slit experiments, and you can easily get an interference pattern at home using a laser and small aperture. That isn't some obscure topic, but a regular engineering effect that is dealt with in any diffraction limited or physical optics based work. And of course the same effects come up in optics as does quantum effects on particles, as does in any form of waves that support linear superposition.

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the particles that comprise the edges of the slits (or lack of those particles in the slits) have an influence on the trajectory of the fired particle that varies in a wave-like manner,

Influence the particles or photons in a way that can be canceled out by further stuff interacting with the photon beyond the slits...

Re:This research should receive enormous funding.

[cmdr_klarg]

But he could only become invisible when no one was looking (not even himself), and no cameras were on him."

/quote

His power would only fail if someone was looking at him. Cameras did not count. In the movie he successfully used his power to bypass a sentry gun.

magic?

[Anonymous Coward]

teleportation sounds like magic to me. can anybody explain?

Re:magic?

[Victor_0x53h]

Like I'm 5, please.

Re:magic?

[barlevg]

So this isn't really my field, but as I understand it (lol at their definition of "non-technical") the idea is that you have two "entangled" particles, separated by some arbitrary distance. If you change something about the first particle, and then send a signal to the second particle (this signal being composed of "classical" information, basically 1s and 0s), then you can make it so that the second particle is an exact copy of the first. Right now they're just at the "qubit" level, but presumably if this scales, you could take a large physical object (a person) and copy them on a quantum level to a distant location by sending a signal of "classical" data. I'm not sure how you go about creating the "entangled you," though.

Re:magic?

[MRe_nl]

The whole universe is local. It turns out all spells are actually ranged touch attacks. This will cause a massive disruption in the Unseen University at about lunch-time.

Re:magic?

[giltwist]

Like I'm 5, please.

Oh my god, where are your parents?

Re:magic?

[wonkey_monkey]

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

I think this was reported the other day

[jareth-0205]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id...

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[barlevg]

Quantum teleportation isn't "simultaneous." It appears to require the transmission of classical "bits" of information, which is limited to the speed of light. No causality- or Eisenstein-breaking paradoxes here.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[neilo_1701D]

You utter bastard.

As if I didn't have enough keeping up with XKCD, now you bring this rather funny comic to take my attention.

May the fleas of a kilocamel infest your armpits.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Quantum teleportation isn't "simultaneous." It appears to require the transmission of classical "bits" of information, which is limited to the speed of light. No causality- or Eisenstein-breaking paradoxes here.

True, but we've achieved great strides with multiplexing/channeling. Who knows if this could give birth to a new form in which we could push traditional "bits" in a different way.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

No causality- or Eisenstein-breaking paradoxes here.

Only Einstein can be disproven. Causality is a fundamental part of science.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[abies]

I liked Terry Pratchett version more. It was about reign - when king dies, his successor becomes a king immediately. Idea of modulating the waves by torturing kings at near-death state was also mentioned.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

And may the comments in your code always be one word too long to fit on a single line.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Causality is a fundamental part of science.

We'll see about that. I predict that notion of causality will have to change, or ... well, entangle, like absolute space and absolute time had. I have a hunch that causality and information are two sides of a same coin, and that this is exactly what makes apparent paradoxes.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Causality is a hypothesis, unfortunately while we have evidence for causality, it is not a testable hypothesis.

The other hypothesis, the quantum erasure hypothesis, posits that entropy reducing and entropy increasing state changes happen with equal probability, but entropy reducing state transitions erase information about the higher entropy state, and thus we have no evidence and are logically forbidden from having evidence of entropy reducing. This too is an untestable hypothesis.

The quantum erasure hypothesis is appealing, as it makes some of the stranger effects we observe in quantum confined systems more readily explainable. It's unappealing because it disagrees immensely with out own memories and intuition, and our sense that we are progressing linearly through time and never "backing up", but it's important to consider that our memories and intuition, and our senses are part of the state of this quantum system and cannot progress without the entropy gradient that we observe.

There is a third hypothesis, a sort of combination between the two extremes, in which some quantum operations are reversible (for an arithmetic example A+B -> B' is reversible by B'-A -> B) where-as others are not (keeping with arithmetic examples A*B -> B' is not reversible when either A or B is zero), and thus the reversible operations are applied in equal probability to their inversions, but irreversible operations are applied occasionally which freeze us into a higher entropy state. Unfortunately while appealing, and having a nice analogy in Von Neumann arithmetic, I'm not aware of any experiment that demonstrates these two classes of quantum operations or any quantum theory that formalises this arrangement.

Thus we have evidence for causality that is equally well explained by quantum erasure, we cannot have evidence for quantum erasure and observed causality does not falsify quantum erasure, and we have no evidence for the third theory, let's call it finalisation, even though it ought to exist.

There are however subtle differences, a quantum computer ought not to be feasible in causal reality and as of yet we have no evidence of feasible quantum computation (by this I mean a quantum computer than can calculate faster than relativistic limits dictate). So if we manage to build a hyper-relativistic quantum computer (my money's on not), we either have to rule out relativity or rule out causality.

-puddingpimp

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Einstein can be disproven.

Yeah, but he said Eisenstein. That dude is so easily broken it's not even funny.

Re:I think this was reported the other day

[micahraleigh]

Causality can't be observed. Only correlations can.

The causality is inferred by an agent.

Headline

[slapout]

"Scientists Find Method To Reliably Teleport Data"

Scientist found the internet?

Re:Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

They said "reliably" ! Can't be the internet

Re:Headline

[barlevg]

The key is that it's not classical data, as in 1s and 0s, it's "quantum" data, as in, the very fuzzy states of physical particles.

Re:Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing UDP with TCP.

Re:Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fuzzy state of physical particles! Physical particles and fuzz everywhere!

Re:Headline

[slapout]

Ok, so they switched from Comcast...

Re:Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They specifically mentioned "reliably". So not the internet, no.

Teleportation is misleading, random numbers better

[Anonymous Coward]

Teleportation is misleading because in practice (for applications) they just created two random number generators that has been seeded with same value.

Meaning simply: they now have two things that spews same random numbers each time they ask.

As with any other random number generator, in order to use the duplicate randomness you have to have "classical connection" meaning normal data link.

Evil high frequency traders everywhere are salivat

[Anonymous Coward]

And calling up their techie accomplices to find out how to be first to bat on this.

I want to teleport instead of download.

[martiniturbide]

That will make our internet faster and will end the Comcast/Netflix deal.

Re:I want to teleport instead of download.

[jellomizer]

Well if you can get a point to point communication without the need of a middle man ISP. Yes you could end the comcast/nextflix deal. Heck Comcast itself will be gone.

Good news all around.

Re:I want to teleport instead of download.

[geekmux]

That will make our internet faster and will end the Comcast/Netflix deal.

I'd be careful with wild cards. You could fill hard drives in seconds with that.

And whatever you do, do NOT teleport at work. It would be a bitch to explain to the boss why the corporate file server became instantly full of porn.

Re:Teleportation is misleading, random numbers bet

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Hmm, sounds like the NSA's next proposal for a 'totally secure, like for realz guys!' RNG standard...

Even I can beat the old way

[stewsters]

only one of every 100 million attempts succeeded

I can beat that in software.

bool getMessage() {
return rand() % 2 == 1;
}

Re:Even I can beat the old way

[barlevg]

The information being transmitted isn't binary 1s and 0s but full quantum states. See: qubit.

Is quantum computing a fad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still not sold on why we need to do all this stuff with quantum computers. Sounds like a big waste of money to me.

How fast is the data transmitted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, is it faster than the speed of light?

I thought it was impossible to transmit information using entangled particles? (Because if you try to set the spin, or another property, on the first particle, it breaks the entanglement).

Re:How fast is the data transmitted?

[selectspec]

The problem with the articles is that they use a misleading term "information". The quantum information is transmitted instantaneously. However, quantum information is not the same as classical information. Classical observers at either end of the experiment cannot set the quantum information that is transmitted. Therefore the no-communication theorem is not violated. Superluminal communication of classical information (what you and I think of as data) is not possible. The best way to think of this (as another slashdot user pointed out) is that you have a random number generator at two points separated by a distance. Both points generate the same random number regardless of how far away from each other they happen to be in space.

The practical application of this is not transmitting classical data faster than the speed of light (as that is not possible.) However, it could be used for an encryption mechanism that is unbreakable. This is done by taking the random numbers generated and using them to encrypt classical data, which is then transmitted by conventional means (radio etc) and then decrypting on the other end with the same set of random numbers. Nobody can decrypt the data unless they have the other entangled particle of which there can only be one.

Why not 1000 km?

[NotDrWho]

If it's real "quantum entanglement," that should be not different than 3m or 1km.

Re:Why not 1000 km?

[abies]

How difficult is it to drop a rock? Easy. Can you please drop a rock from 50km high? After all, dropping a rock is not different if it is 1m or 50km high.

They need to entangle both sides of the communication from single place and this is quite hard longer the distance. Moving it afterwards is also quite difficult, it is not a small, robust device you can carry in your pocket.

Re:Why not 1000 km?

[aicrules]

If they were 100% sure how to use quantum entanglement, then yes. But they're still trying to figure it out, including whether anything they try is ACTUALLY that or some other thing happening.

Re:Why not 1000 km?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you please drop a rock from 50km high?

I'll give Virgin Galactic a ring to see if they can accommodate this when I take my flight to space.

And... proving that you can't fool Mother Nature..

[Miamicanes]

Quantum data transfer will probably end up succumbing to the same kind of catch-22/gotcha that plagues realtime digital filtering of analog waveforms...

a) Analog filtering introduces phase changes due to delays. When digitally-filtering a waveform, the length of time you have to sample it to get enough to analyze and transform ends up introducing basically the same phase shift an analog filter would have caused.

b) Quantum data transfer has "1 in 100 million" odds of actually working for any particular attempt. Obviously , lots of forward error correction will be needed to both detect and fix errors. My prediction is that the time the required error-correction overhead adds to the transmission time will end up being basically equal to the time it would have taken to transmit the data at the speed of light.

c) In both cases, the limit will apply primarily to realtime uses. Using the audio example, if you try to apply a digital high-pass/low-pass filter to audio for something like a subwoofer, you'll basically create the same phase shift you would have had anyway... but if you have the luxury of buffering playback so that you have time to completely analyze the signal & can delay the OTHER signals to bring them back into temporal alignment with the filtered signal, you can enjoy the best of both worlds... infinite-slope filtering with zero induced phase shift. In the context of quantum data transfer, it will fail at the goal of "faster than light" throughput, but might nevertheless find utility as a way to transport data in non-realtime under circumstances that would render "normal" electromagnetic radio modulation schemes unusable.

Could the soul survive?

[Rik Sweeney]

I still don't think teleporting would leave the soul intact. To the observer, the result may act and behave in the same way before the teleportation took place, but I wonder if it would be the same person?

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Primate Pete]

I'm pretty sure electrons don't have souls. I'm fairly confident that I don't, either.

So maybe this is on physics/engineering problem we can ignore.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[skids]

That philisophical debate hinges around whether the essence of the object being teleported must be destroyed.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not our fault you're a ginger.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

That question depends on what the soul really is. Right now we have no idea. We deduce that it's a meta-component of us, of our organic robot bodies, but we don't know what it is, where it is, how to measure it if we ever stumble upon it. We're no even sure our bodies would be anything more than meat vegetables should our soul be separated from our bodies. Is consciousness our soul? Is it a derived property from us having a soul?

Now, on the bright side, if we do ever teleport living things, this question that bothered people since they discovered thought, we may get closer to finding an answer. If everything we teleport ends up dead even though we know with 100% certainty that we teleported every particle and its state from A to B, with no misalignment, no alteration, no extra or missing electrons or atoms, then it might be clear: the soul got detached. If the result does bark the same as the source did, then the soul is either linked to some sort of hash (in which case one should really try to make two identical copies and see what happens), or the question will remain unanswered (if no matter how many clones you make, they will start identical and then diverge as independent individuals). Cloning could still unlink the original soul and link new ones into each clone. Would anybody, including the clones, even perceive anything like that?

Maybe one should clone Guinan, because she was the only one to feel something different when the Enterprise C decided to make an unannounced visit. Maybe the sole is just the pilot, and its only perception is through memories and sensors. Like a CPU, if you put it to sleep and change the memory banks underneath it with ones that contain completely different information, one might not realise that this has happened when awaken again.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Herder Of Code]

Or how about this crazy thought? There's no detachment and re attachment of souls because we don't have a magical out of body spirit presence where our mind is stored :).

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

We're not anywhere near that yet. We won't be able to teleport matter for a very long time / or ever. Breaking an object into information and then re-creating it would obviously destroy it.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Soul? This is a joke right?

Re:Could the soul survive?

[oodaloop]

Good thing there's no such thing as a soul then.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yarg!! Abomination! Burn him!

Electrons do so have souls!

Re:Could the soul survive?

[leonardluen]

a soul i still an important concept and good area of debate if we ever develop star trek style teleportation. if you strip away all the various religious crap, your "soul" is basically whatever makes you, "you". it is what is controlling your body, thinking your thoughts. there doesn't need to be any magical spirit involved in this concept.

when you come out of a star trek style teleporter is it actually you that comes out complete with your stream of consciousness? or is it just a really detailed copy that looks like you acts like you and thinks it is you and the previous you was destroyed and no longer exists? i don't know about you, but i definitely wouldn't ever voluntarily use a teleporter, except as a last resort. either it transfers the "soul" and everything is fine or what comes out is a very detailed duplicate that looks and thinks exactly like you. this duplicate since it has all your memories would think it had worked even if the original you ceased to exist. i am not really afraid of death but that also doesn't mean i want to cease existing. teleportation just seems too risky.

i think it is more clear if someone were to make an exact clone of you including your memories. this duplicate isn't you, you don't control it you don't hear it's thoughts. it may look like you and think like you but it isn't you.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you strip away all the various religious crap, your "soul" is basically whatever makes you, "you". it is what is controlling your body, thinking your thoughts.

That would be your brain. And no, the brain isn't "just meat", despite what Cuba Gooding Jr told you.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[BitZtream]

Theres strong evidence to indicate that your mind works with and has a sizable bit of quantum state information ... your soul in effect.

Just because you don't believe in a God doesn't mean you don't have a soul, according to the modern dictionary definition anyway.

http://dictionary.reference.co...

Re: Could the soul survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the quantum state separate from the physical part of the brain, per the definition you linked?

Re:Could the soul survive?

[david_thornley]

Tell me what a soul is, and how it relates to the body, and we can figure that out. Or, if you prefer, how we can tell if somebody has a soul. It can't be behavior, since you've just posited that the behavior is the same before and after.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[MrBigInThePants]

Every major evolution of technology comes with its superstitious Luddite-style objections. This current thread on "souls" is pleasantly amusing in a "advanced species looking on primitives" sort of way. Although this discussion is rather premature since we are very far away from teleporting anything substantial let alone an entire human being.

I would just love for you to list your citations on the existence of and what comprises the "soul". Perhaps then expand upon why said research enables you to form such substantive sounding arguments and conclusions about why you would or would not do something based on your apparent extensive knowledge of this all important yet ethereal entity.

Because from where I am sitting this entire thread smacks of quackery and medieval-sounding superstition - albeit dressed up with a veneer of rational sounding thought processes.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[leonardluen]

yes so if you make an atom by atom copy of your brain does your consciousness transfer.

Re:Could the soul survive?

[leonardluen]

you don't like the word soul, fine, i guess what i am trying to get at, is does your consciousness transfer? or were you destroyed and a clone that thinks its you and acts like you created.

The real problem is there isn't any evidence to cite on either side of this argument. and defining the "soul" is heavily philosophical and often religious. for the purposes of this argument i guess i am mostly saying it is your thought stream/consciousness. if you stop it on your original body does it resume after you are teleported, or is that just a copy?

i would say this is all related to the ship of theseus even if teleportation of real objects isn't really feasible today, this topic has been debated for centuries.

i know being a TV show this isn't really a good source but Sheldon on Big Bang Theoryunderstands the issue.
i had already formed my opinion long before seeing this.

the discourse must have been riveting

[nimbius]

scientific journal: earlier tests unsuccessful as we've managed to teleport ryans carbonara pasta lunch into the aegean sea (could not recover.)
Update: telimetry meeting at 2:00 to discuss experimental teleportation of a cat 8 miles above the research chamber. projects will no longer be colloquially referred to as 'operation cat splat'
informational: research staff will immediately discontinue teleportation of chicken vindaloo from the west end of town. building maintenance will be on site this afternoon to correct the eleven pounds of vindaloo in the break room water cooler

Where is the money

[EngineeringStudent]

I think they are working to answer a good question, but not necessarily a high value question. Why does distance matter? Scientific inquiry is good, but the goal is return of value to humanity. If you worked on making computer parts that could transmit information faster and more reliably over a very short distance, somewhere between a meter and a millimeter, then you could plausibly improve the lives of most of the folks on the planet, or at least enable them to check slashdot or facebook more cheaply.

Re:Where is the money

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to be able to teleport quantum information over non-trivial distances for Quantum Cryptography to be practical.

eat it

[slashmydots]

I've been having morons reply to my posts for years about how information can't travel faster than the speed of light. It can with quantum technology. If the particles are technically the same particle, they're synced and information isn't "traveling" and "distance" necessarily. In fact, you're all so incorrect that even NASA believes you're wrong and tried to do a quantum entanglement experiment between Earth and the ISS recently. So take this article, shove it up your ass, and stop saying I'm wrong.

Re:eat it

[oneandoneis2]

You're wrong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q... - second sentence

HTH

Re:eat it

[bluefoxlucid]

This looks like something out of Sci-Fi. In The Gap Cycle, there's the use of specifically harmonized crystals that can resonate across a limited distance. In one instance, that distance is 3.4 light years due to inability to make the crystals more perfect than that with current technology. It's so hard to do that they just use gap courier drones, which drop into tach and make several consecutive multi-light-year jumps over the course of a few hours to send messages thousands of light years.

Re:eat it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not FTL communication. If you want us to stop saying you're wrong, stop being wrong.

Re:eat it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been having morons reply to my posts for years about how information can't travel faster than the speed of light

No, you've been having objectively correct people humiliate you by proving you to be completely full of shit

This is not the day you get your revenge. That day will never come. You will always be a loser, and everyone will always know it.

And now you run away sobbing, as always.

Re:eat it

[slashmydots]

That entire article is wrong. The first sentence is wrong. "can be transmitted (exactly, in principle) from one location to another" is not how it works. It's not transmitted. There is no transmission. No energy waves between them. No matter passed between them. In one way, they're the same particle. You don't "transmit" data if one particle is in two places at the same time. I know that's only half true but the half that's true is why it can communicate data faster than light.

Re:eat it

[Anonymous Coward]

It certainly does involve transmission and exchange of energy, considering the process involves a classical communication channel. Otherwise no useful information is sent, and the holder of one half of a entangled pair will always measure get the same distribution of measurements on his half regardless of what the other person does to their half. The only way to see or utilize the correlation is to have one research make a measurement and then send that information to the other half classically.

Re:eat it

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, you're all so incorrect that even NASA believes you're wrong and tried to do a quantum entanglement experiment between Earth and the ISS recently. So take this article, shove it up your ass, and stop saying I'm wrong.

I believe HIV doesn't give people AIDS, but instead causes them to grow birds wings out of their back and allows them to fly. If you disagree with me, then you're wrong, and even the CDC and NIH say you're wrong because they are busy research HIV right now.

In other words, the fact that NASA and others are researching a phenomena says nothing about whether your interpretation is correct. Yes, a bunch of people are researching quantum entanglement, and it has applications in quantum encryption and quantum computing, but none of that is research into FTL communication schemes. The inability of entangled pairs to communicate information without additional measurements and classical communication channels falls out of rather basic algebra from quantum mechanics. If you are arguing that entanglement allows for FTL communication, then you are arguing that quantum mechanics is wrong on a very fundamental level and can no longer say that quantum mechanics supports your position unless you want to contradict yourself.

Re:eat it

[slashmydots]

You're an idiot. So it uses classical transmission methods? Gee, is it emitting radio waves, gamma rays, or just traveling down copper as electronics? OH THAT'S RIGHT, it's not transmitting any particles or energy whatsoever in any way between the two. Fucking moron.

Re:eat it

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the damn process behind quantum teleportation, it is pretty specifically defined:
1.) Distribute entangled pair to destination and source
2.) Perform Bell measurement on the source half of the pair and the state to be transmitted
3.) Send results of measurement to destination
4.) Use measurement result to apply the proper Pauli matrix transformation on the destination half of the pair to get the transmitted state
It is right there in step #3, it doesn't matter how you send that information, but it will be classically and can be done by copper, radio waves, or gamma rays if you want to be stupidly esoteric. This is basic definition stuff you would get in a 5 minute introduction in a sophomore quantum mechanics class (once you have basic bra-ket notation down, it is really easy and quick to explain...).

Sorry, but that is just incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately this got modded up to +5 quickly, but is completely wrong.

. There's no such thing as a passive detector.

A larger part of quantum mechanics is there is no such thing as any interaction being passive. You're detector could consist of a photon bouncing off of a particle or the interaction between two particles. Until you make a measurement on that second particle, or it interacts with the environment, then you've created an entanglement between the detecting particle and the thing being measured. Any dependent interaction within a sealed system, whether called a detector or not, results in an entanglement of states, not breaking the superposition.

If instead we accepted what is said in the parent post as true, then entanglement could not exist, and you could go as far as to undermine all of quantum mechanics by finding issues with Bell's inequality, etc.

Re:Sorry, but that is just incorrect

[barlevg]

It's true, I might have glossed over some of the subtleties, but my point with that line is that people think of observation and detection as a passive event when it's anything but, and not for any sort of mysterious "the mind makes it so" bullshit but because when you're looking at the wall in front of you what's actually happening is that photons are hitting the wall, bouncing off (or being absorbed and re-emitted--though I got chided for saying something similar about this earlier) and being collected in your eye. Without the stream of photons hitting the wall, you'd have no way of knowing it was there (extend photons to other force-mediating particles).

Re:Sorry, but that is just incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but as with a lot of QM stuff, you just have to be careful not to go too far with explanations, otherwise you overemphasize something that least to wrong conclusions. There is a lot of junk that comes from misunderstanding what an "observer" is in QM when it just referring to an interaction. But a key point is that it is an interaction with the outside of the system under consideration, whereas interactions within a system are being accounted for.

I'm sure there is some software analogy that amounts to interaction with the outside allows for GIGO scenarios to be analogous to decoherence in the case of noise, or for collapse in specific cases where interactions are "sanitized" like proper access to a database. It comes down to not being able to know or have limited control over interactions with the outside world, and some interpretations try to quantify this a little better in terms of how messy something has to be before it isn't a well described or understood system.

Re: Sorry, but that is just incorrect

[girlsplease]

Whitebox versus Blackbox testing methods may be the easiest term to broadly describe what you're getting at. Just throwing it out

Finally a decent use for diamonds

[Anonymous Coward]

About time someone made diamonds into computers, now those useless lumps of expensive glass have a use.
Until now diamonds have only been an expensive way to take advantage of your girlfriend, or as a way to cut into really hard surfaces.

1 (presumably small) diamond per Qbit, from memory we need at least 8 Qbits to make anything useful.

Your move De Beers.

Ignore previous reply

[barlevg]

Sorry. Linked to the wrong section. This is the relevant answer, and it's as old as the paradox itself:

However, one of the main scientists associated with the Copenhagen interpretation, Niels Bohr, never had in mind the observer-induced collapse of the wave function, so that Schrödinger's cat did not pose any riddle to him. The cat would be either dead or alive long before the box is opened by a conscious observer.[6] Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement.[7] The view that the "observation" is taken when a particle from the nucleus hits the detector can be developed into objective collapse theories. The thought experiment requires an "unconscious observation" by the detector in order for magnification to occur. In contrast, the many worlds approach denies that collapse ever occurs.

Re:Ignore previous reply

[Anonymous Coward]

But a Gieger counter sitting on some table is well coupled to the lab and environment around it and would allow for coherence as with any other interaction outside the closed system under consideration. If you could construct a way of isolating a cat from the environment, you could use the same method on a gieger counter, and then the effects of "unconscious observation" would go away in a closed system. Things like this have been tested on a smaller scale using detection methods that can be isolated or not, and in the isolated cases superposition returns.

Re:Ignore previous reply

[Anonymous Coward]

But a Gieger counter sitting on some table is well coupled to the lab and environment around it and would allow for decoherence as with any other interaction outside the closed system under consideration.

Missed a rather important "negative sign."

Re:Ignore previous reply

[TubeSteak]

Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement

Haven't scientists been making progress with weak measurements of quantum states?
This comes to mind

If we can create a reliable "weak" geiger counter, would that allow the particle to remain superposed?

Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[Anonymous Coward]

And at the atomic and subatomic level, quantum entanglement does allow for information (in this case information about the atom's state) to be transferred superluminally. It seems nature has been doing that since at least the beginning of the universe. That mankind can't figure out how to use it to transmit information FTL isn't relevant.

Eventually though we'll figure out how to do it and our understanding of physics will be broadened beyond its currently primitive state.

And on the subject it appears that the speed of light, c, only exists because photons are absorbed and remitted as light passes through the quantum vacuum where virtual particles come into and go out of existence. Recent research indicates that here

Furthermore based on such research it appears that without the "traffic" of virtual particles as light travels from point A to point B there wouldn't be any delay in transmission at all, that one would have instantaneous transmission of information. Which is exactly what one sees with quantum entanglement.

Re:Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[Anonymous Coward]

And at the atomic and subatomic level, quantum entanglement does allow for information (in this case information about the atom's state) to be transferred superluminally. It seems nature has been doing that since at least the beginning of the universe.

Have any actual examples of experiments that have shown this?

That mankind can't figure out how to use it to transmit information FTL isn't relevant.

But in your case, mankind never having observed it transmit information which goes hand and hand with figuring out how to use it is relevant. Unless you are talking about the instantaneous correlation in measurements allowed for by entanglement, which is not the same as transmitting information.

Re:Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[bzipitidoo]

I agreee, and don't see Relativity as reason why FTL travel cannot happen. The idea that FTL violates causality is based on an extrapolation of Relativity.

Suppose you are holding a flashlight. You accelerate. No matter how fast you go, the light from your flashlight still seems to you to move away from yourself at light speed. You can be going nearly lightspeed, let's say 1000 kph slower than light, relative to other observers, and they will see the light from your flashlight moving only a little faster than you, and certainly not away from you at lightspeed. To them, it will appear to be moving at lightspeed relative to them, and you will appear to be moving at slightly less than lightspeed. Yet even as the observer sees the light from your flashlight moving away from you only 1000 kph faster than you, you see the light from your flashlight moving away from yourself at lightspeed. This inconsistency is resolved by time. You experience time more slowly than the observer. Your experience of time is slowed so that both you and the observer see the light from your flashlight moving at lightspeed.

The extrapolation is that to go faster than light, an object would have to experience time going backwards so that light still appears to move away at light speed. Experiencing time going backwards violates causality, causing all kinds of time travel paradoxes.

Why shouldn't it be possible to travel faster than light and not violate causality, not have to travel backwards in time? An object could go faster than light and still not arrive before it left. Maybe FTL can't be done with rocket motors, even hypothetical super rockets that don't have fuel problems, but warp drive could do it. Seems to me more likely that Relativity is not a complete explanation of the universe than that FTL travel is impossible.

Re:Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[wonkey_monkey]

An object could go faster than light and still not arrive before it left.

No, it can't - not in all reference frames. There will be some where it did arrive before it left.

Re:Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[TeknoHog]

To the parent and the GP, these are good points. I wonder why the notion of causality is such a holy scripture -- it's just a part of the "common sense" which we know to be wrong in so many cases. For example, Igor Novikov argues that temporal loops are OK as long as they are self-consistent. In such a loop, you cannot order two events in a before/after fashion (aka causality) but the whole can nevertheless be physically consistent.

Re:Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[david_thornley]

If Special Relativity holds, FTL travel is equivalent to time travel, and Special Relativity is one of the most basic and tested theories around.

Assuming an object goes FTL, you can find a frame of reference where it went backwards in time. Consider a photon, for example: it's basically frozen in time, so if it were an actual observer, it would track everywhere it went as the exact same time. Therefore, planet A is two light-years from planet B. The spaceship goes FTL with a burst of light, and travels from A to B at twice the speed of light. Therefore, from the point of view of one of the photons from the burst, it went back in time by a year. Naturally, we're not going to put an observer on a photon, but we can in principle send an observer at close to light-speed and get the same effect.

Assuming that Special Relativity holds, and there is no preferred inertial reference frame, we can send the spaceship back to A, and it will go back in time by a year according to the photons of its second jump to hyperspace, and it's just gone back another year.

It might make more sense to bring in an instantaneous communicator (which I'll call an ansible in deference to Ursula K. LeGuin). You are in a spaceship going at such a speed that the time dilation factor is 2, so that I perceive that you age half an hour while I age one hour. You pass by my planet and I quick toss you my other ansible so we can communicate.

One hour later, I send you the results of the big horse race that just finished. You receive it half an hour after passing my planet. Now, you repeat them back. Since it's half an hour after passing my planet, it appears to you that I've aged only fifteen minutes, so I receive the reply forty-five minutes before I sent the message, in plenty of time to place a large bet.

Actually Faster than light travel does occur

[Anonymous Coward]

So, remove virtual particles and let light rip.

How?

Erroneous actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because at the atomic and subatomic level, quantum entanglement does allow for information (in this case information about the atom's state) to be transferred superluminally. It seems nature has been doing that since at least the beginning of the universe. That mankind can't figure out how to use it to transmit information FTL isn't relevant.

Furthermore, on the subject of casuality, if one can observe information being transmitted at the atomic/subatomic level FTL then there wouldn't be any causality violations as one would be able to see the cause/effect phenomenon (whatever it happened to be) occur from start to finish superluminally.

The nonsense about causality violations only arises when one limits their thought experiment to viewing something as part luminally (light speed) and part superluminally. If you have a different perspective (i.e., seeing the experiment in its totality) you'll realize there are no causality violations.

I'm a bit surprised theoretical physicists don't realize something that basic.

Re:Erroneous actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because at the atomic and subatomic level, quantum entanglement does allow for information (in this case information about the atom's state) to be transferred superluminally. It seems nature has been doing that since at least the beginning of the universe. That mankind can't figure out how to use it to transmit information FTL isn't relevant.

Just because you post this more than once doesn't mean it is correct... any part of that paragraph.

Re:Erroneous actually...

[david_thornley]

Hint: If a large number of highly educated people who have studied a subject all their lives don't realize something in their field, it is almost certainly not basic.

If information can't be sent faster than C.....

[mark-t]

.... then I'm not sure what the real difference is between teleporting data and simply sending it. Can somebody please explain?

Re:If information can't be sent faster than C.....

[Zalbik]

IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist), but as I understand it, the information is sent instantaneously (teleported), but can only be "read" via the use of a measurement taken at the source location & sent (via classical channels) to the target.

i.e.:
2 entangled particles exist. One at A and one at B
Measurement is take an A. This results in a change of state to both particles
Unfortunately, due to quantum funkiness, the state at B cannot be determined without the measurement from A.
Measurement is sent from A to B (via classical channels)
B can then determine the state of their particle (which matches the state at A)

Please excuse any butchering of the science that may of occurred due to my ignorance :-)

Re:If information can't be sent faster than C.....

[4wdloop]

More like this:
2 entangled particles exist. One at A and one at B
Measurement is taken an A. This results in a change of state to both particles (ie makes state of B the same of just measured of A) but the result of the measurement is random.
Measurement is taken on B.
Measurement is sent from A to B (via classical channels)
Now B can then determine that the state of B matches the state at A which proves A&B where quantum-coupled.

Re:If information can't be sent faster than C.....

[Cabriel]

Intervening obstacles would be my number 1 assumption. Also, not having to run a wire through the planet, and not having to aim a laser with 0.000000000001 arc-seconds of precision (for intrastellar).

The data does not get transmitted across distances

[0x537461746943]

After reading a bunch of articles on this it seems like the general public really doesn't understand that the data does not get transmitted across distances. The encoding of the data was done at entanglement time.

You take 2 envelopes. Write the word UP and DOWN on two separate pieces of paper, mix them up and put them in an envelope. Send them to two different locations. Open one envelope and you will have the opposite reading in the other envelope which could be miles or light years away. As far as transmitting data this is more inline with what is happening.

To be fair...

[frank_adrian314159]

They only put the black electrons in the prisons.

Teleport Data?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is human-android discrimination. At least, consider teleporting Mr. Worf.

Additional funding

[PsyMan]

DeBeers have announced additional funding as long as they can't do it with artificial diamonds.

causality or GTFO

[globaljustin]

No causality- or Eisenstein-breaking paradoxes here.

exactly...this is about **non-local** entanglement...which is terminology that means actual "spooky action at a distance" which would be instantaneous not bound by c

otherwise it's multiplexing....really, really fancy multiplexing...something we've done since computing began

TFA is hype...good research sure...but still hype

why do we have to exaggerate when it's already awesome?

Re:causality or GTFO

[barlevg]

Surprised you didn't link to the oblig.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[dcollins]

That's always what it seems like to me, too. I haven't yet heard a coherent explanation why quantum entanglement is any different from that.

(My own metaphor involved two differently-colored hamsters in an opaque tube, yours is probably better.)

A poor choice of words

[wonkey_monkey]

Scientists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience say they've managed to reliably teleport quantum information stored in one bit of diamond to another

When you're writing an article about the transmission of information, using the word "bit" in that sense probably isn't a great idea.

These stories disgust me!

[Anonymous Coward]

These stories disgust me! So they did this teleportation experiment over 3 meters and now they want to try it over a whole kilometer....

Immediately after reading accurate results at the destination, I would have had my team take that damn thing hundreds of miles away and repeat the experiment (THE SAME DAY). Is there any reason why they couldn't have already tested 1 km before making this claim??? Right, because we are being fed garbage.

Re:These stories disgust me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if they didn't do it exactly the way you would have done it, then obviously it has to be fake, right?

Re:These stories disgust me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have had my team take that damn thing hundreds of miles away and repeat the experiment (THE SAME DAY)

Do you even know what "that damn thing" is? No? So why do you assume it's trivial to move it several hundred miles?

eliminate subluminal classic channel

[HighOrbit]

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I really want my Ansible. So the classic channel is required to report observed measurements at the origin to compare against, but they say they can deterministically set the state? Sooo..... why not do this to eliminate the need for the sub-luminal classic channel, if they can deterministically set the state at the origin. Operate on a clock cycle and deterministically set the state to an expected ground state at a certain point in the cycle. When a read operation measures something other than the expected value, that counts as an information transmission. In otherwords anything not 0/blue is read as a 1/red. Say 4 ticks per cycle. First tick, zero state/0/blue. Second Tick, origin flips a bit (or not). Third Tick, destination reads the bit knowing anything not 0/blue is a bit flip. Fourth Tick both sites reset to zero. The key is that on the third tick, the destination will always expect to read 0/blue, so anything else is a transmission.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[wonkey_monkey]

The encoding of the data was done at entanglement time.

Well, sort of, but the "data" is a quantum state. It's not UP or DOWN as written on your envelopes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Hmmmm, exactly the speed of light, then?

[JasonGoatcher]

Even if you can't transmit faster than the speed of light, imagine being able to transmit stuff AT the speed of light. So if a transmitter were in Australia and a receiver were in the US it would be like it was going right through the planet. (I think, might be wrong, not an expert)

nice oblig.

[globaljustin]

i missed that one!

oh, xkcd...at least some things in this world work properly

nice job AC

[globaljustin]

AC's explanation above is the best I've read yet.

here's an xkcd that hits it, another person on this topic posted it for me: http://xkcd.com/465/

i think the tech is cool, sure, but the hype kills it for me...it's just not quantum teleportation at all...it's a cheap knockoff...like one of those chinsese Iphone rip-off's that have virtually the same case but the software is rudimentary & essentially a flip phone with a big screen

i just don't know how we, /. readers, can fix it...is there someone on /. who has the exposure to change the nomenclature on this?

let's call it "quantum cryptography"...it still sounds super cool and futuristic! you can still have headlines that talk about "overturning Einstien" and "teleportation"...you can say it's use now is cryptography but "one day could pave the way for *true quantum computing*"

quantum cryptography? anyone?

Confusing things about quantum teleportation

[JonathanHart]

I don't usually write comments that just ask a bunch questions about a technology, but what is the deal with this supposed quantum teleportation? If you've got an entangled pair, and you change the state on one side, then how does the other side know to measure it? Furthermore, how does the sending side know that the message was read before sending the next bit? It's hard to imagine a means by which to use thus effect alone as a method of communication. One thing that could work is a specific time schedule, e.g. Message will be sent at this time, and read at this other time, and will repeat after this delay. But that can suffer from synchronization problems, especially when Einstein gets involved.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[dcollins]

Thank you for that link to an 8,000-word article which doesn't initially seem related to your comment. Can the point be addressed in a key quote or summary paragraph?

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[Anonymous Coward]

The encoding of the data was done at entanglement time.

Sorry, but this is a flat out wrong interpretation of quantum entanglement and only matches the effects in the most simplest of examples. If you consider polarization of two photons, which can be up and down, or left and right too, you get a more interesting example. If you had an up photon, and measured if it was left or right, you have a 50/50 chance of each result. If you measure a down photon, the same 50/50 chance. If you had just an up photon and a down photon, regardless of which was which, apply a left vs. right test would get LL, LR, RL, and RR each with 25% chance. Except if you have an entangled pair of photons in the UD+DU state, you will get only LR and RL, each with 50% chance. This is not possible if you were given up and down photons that were determined from the start, and requires either superposition, or that the photons knew ahead of time to be left and right polarized instead of up and down, based on a measurement you have not yet made yet.

Teleportation is even more interesting, because you entangle and separate the pair before you even have the state you want to teleport, then you interact one half of the pair with the state to be sent, creating a correlation between the pair and the state. Without measuring the state you want to send or the particular state of the entangled pair, you instead get a different measurement out of the interaction you just performed that tells you how to transform the other half into the to be transmitted state. This works with quantum states that you can't determine from a single measurement or arbitrarily reproduce otherwise.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[wonkey_monkey]

There are things about entanglement that can't be explained by assuming that entangled particles have the contents of their "envelopes" set to definite values when they get entangled.

Not really...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the early 19th Century the Germ theory of disease wasn't accepted by most medical professionals yet it's considered a basic fact now.

In the late 19th Century powered flight wasn't accepted as possible by most physicists yet it's basic.

In the early 20th Century most geologists didn't accept that the continents moved yet it's now considered a basic fact

In the mid 20th Century most doctors didn't accept that ulcers were caused by bacteria yet that's basic.

In the late 20th Century most biologists didn't accept the heritability of genetic changes not dependent on gene sequences, now we know it's true as epigenetics. So it's considered basic now.

What's considered impossible in an earlier era, is considered possible in another, and finally in a later era it's accepted as a basic fact. And based on the evidence it's inevitable with faster than light travel and communication.

Re:Not really...

[david_thornley]

I'm a bit surprised theoretical physicists don't realize something that basic.

And you proceed to list scientific beliefs, which were well supported at the time, which we now realize were mistaken, based on more advanced theory and understanding. This doesn't fit with your idea that current theoretical physicists don't realize something basic. Moreover, they're right and you're wrong, based on some very well-supported theories.

I'm not saying FTL is completely impossible. I'm saying that (a) there is no sound scientific reason to believe it definitely possible (there are possible discoveries that would allow it without too much revision of current theories, and that's about it), (b) entangled particles do not transmit any information FTL, and (c) FTL is, according to Special Relativity (an extremely well-tested theory), equivalent to time travel.

Zero ping multiplayer...

[mutherhacker]

...all across the globe :) Awesome!

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[dcollins]

Thanks again for telling us how it can't be explained.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[wonkey_monkey]

The Overview section of the Wikipedia page I linked to above covers why; failing that, try Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Not sure why I'm being expected to explain it.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Everytime I read about quantum teleportation I have the following question:

Particles AB are separated by some distance, then a measurement is made at particle A collapsing to certain quantum state and only then
you can read that state at particle B and verify that it holds the same state of particle B.

How can u tell if, before even separating them, both A and B were already at that quantum state and no information was teleported at all?

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[dcollins]

Citation needed, like this:

"Generally the combination of both the in-body citation and the bibliographic entry constitutes what is commonly thought of as a citation (whereas bibliographic entries by themselves are not)." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation]

You need a short on-point quote, plus the reference. Simply naming an article or book (bibliographic entry) does not count. You've still said absolutely nothing that actually relates to the gggggp post. Tends to make one think of those people who go on about quantum stuff without really knowing anything about it.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[wonkey_monkey]

Citation needed, like this:

I'm not here to dish out citations. What am I, Captain Citation?

You need a short on-point quote, plus the reference.

You might need it, but I don't need to provide it. I'm not beholden to you to explain quantum mechanics.

You've still said absolutely nothing that actually relates to the gggggp post.

I've stated that the UP/DOWN envelope analogy is insufficient to explain observations, which is what I wanted to state. I provided a place to start to anyone who wanted to read further. After that, do your own homework.

Re:The data does not get transmitted across distan

[dcollins]

[Citation needed.]