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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsQuantum teleportation achieved over ten miles of free space
Quantum teleportation has achieved a new milestone or, should we say, a new ten-milestone: scientists have recently had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles, an unprecedented length. The researchers who have accomplished this feat note that this brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal, and that the ten miles they have reached could span the distance between the surface of the earth and space.
As we've explained before, "quantum teleportation" is quite different from how many people imagine teleportation to work. Rather than picking one thing up and placing it somewhere else, quantum teleportation involves entangling two things, like photons or ions, so their states are dependent on one another and each can be affected by the measurement of the other's state.
When one of the items is sent a distance away, entanglement ensures that changing the state of one causes the other to change as well, allowing the teleportation of quantum information, if not matter. However, the distance particles can be from each other has been limited so far to a number of meters.
Teleportation over distances of a few hundred meters has previously only been accomplished with the photons traveling in fiber channels to help preserve their state. In this particular experiment, researchers maximally entangled two photons using both spatial and polarization modes and sent the one with higher energy through a ten-mile-long free space channel. They found that the distant photon was still able to respond to changes in state of the photon they held onto even at this unprecedented distance.
However, the long-distance teleportation of a photon is only a small step towards developing applications for the procedure. While photons are good at transmitting information, they are not as good as ions at allowing manipulation, an advancement we'd need for encryption. Researchers were also able to maintain the fidelity of the long-distance teleportation at 89 percent decent enough for information, but still dangerous for the whole-body human teleportation that we're all looking forward to.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/quantum-teleportation-achieved-over-ten-miles-of-free-space.ars
Poll: Is teleportation possible for humans ?
7 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited | |
Yeppers, beam me up scotty... | |
3 (43%) |
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Nope you dope, that stuff is for science fiction novels.... | |
2 (29%) |
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Could be, platypuses are mammals aren't they, anything is possible.... | |
2 (29%) |
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1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided. | |
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Zalatix
(8,994 posts)That's the first time I ever heard of this concept, lol.
MindMover
(5,016 posts)seriously....
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)nilram
(2,893 posts)(for eating disorders?) or for the name of an evil space alien in a sci-fi series. Either way, you and your lawyer will be rich.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)a lot of the science was worked up with NASA at the time. Why WARP is theoretically possible... as soon as El Cubierre solves the little problem with energy...
dimbear
(6,271 posts)ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)MindMover
(5,016 posts)saras
(6,670 posts)Seems to me that a six-foot skin mite would be scarier than a fly anyways.
Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)Neato
brettdale
(12,383 posts)The doco thing, when he said, physics allows you to travel into the future.
If you build a train track around the globe, and put people in the train, and have them go at
a speed just under the speed of light, if they stay on the train for a week and then get off, it
will be 150 years into the future.
You just need to build a train to go that fast, so its a engineering and economic issue, not a physics one.
It is technically possible to go to the future.
Great Scott!
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)Hm.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)The entangled particles contain information about each other but the receiver of one has to know the initial state and transformations of the other... and that knowledge has to be sent at light speed tops.
The universe knows... which is creepy enough.
2on2u
(1,843 posts)Faster-than-light (also superluminal or FTL) communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light. Under the special theory of relativity, a particle (that has rest mass) with subluminal velocity needs infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, although special relativity does not forbid the existence of particles that travel faster than light at all times (tachyons).
On the other hand, what some physicists refer to as "apparent" or "effective" FTL[1][2][3][4] depends on the hypothesis that unusually distorted regions of spacetime might permit matter to reach distant locations in less time than light could in normal or undistorted spacetime. Although according to current theories matter is still required to travel subluminally with respect to the locally distorted spacetime region, apparent FTL is not excluded by general relativity.
Examples of FTL proposals are changing the "frequency" of mass to a higher state by applying high-frequency waves of energy, the Alcubierre drive, and the traversable wormhole, although the physical plausibility of some of these solutions is uncertain.
longship
(40,416 posts)I can hardly wait.
BTW, Simon Pegg was brilliantly cast as Montgomery Scott in Star Trek XI (except for the cartoonish, kids' toys to follow, alien companion). A definitive Scotty of which Doohan would be justly proud.
Just sayin'