Slashdot Mirror
First Teleportation of Multiple Quantum Properties of a Single Photon
KentuckyFC writes Photons have many properties, such as their frequency, momentum, spin and orbital angular momentum. But when it comes to quantum teleportation, physicists have only ever been able to to transmit one of these properties at a time. So the possibility of teleporting a complete quantum object has always seemed a distant dream. Now a team of Chinese physicists has worked out how to teleport more than one quantum property. The team has demonstrated it by teleporting both the spin and orbital angular momentum of single photons simultaneously. They point out that there is no reason in principle why the technique cannot be generalized to include other properties as well, such as a photon's frequency, momentum and so on. That's an important step towards teleporting complex quantum objects in their entirety, such as atoms, molecules and perhaps even small viruses.
Why is the mention of teleporting a virus immediately taken as something bad? I read it and immediately took it to be the next step beyond a simple molecule - a virus can be not much larger than a molecule, but at the same time can be many times more complex and would also demonstrate
that teleportation wouldn't have any adverse effects on such things as DNA or RNA strands.
Basically, a virus is the step between a simple molecule and an actual living organism.
To me it would be the logical step after molecules.