Posted on 05/29/2014 5:34:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Albert Einstein once told a friend that quantum mechanics doesn't hold water in his scientific world view because "physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." That spooky action at a distance is entanglement, a quantum phenomenon in which two particles, separated by any amount of distance, can instantaneously affect one another as if part of a unified system.
Now, scientists have successfully hijacked that quantum weirdness -- doing so reliably for the first time -- to produce what many sci-fi fans have long dreamt up: teleportation. No, not beaming humans aboard the USS Enterprise, but the teleportation of data.
Physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, part of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, report that they sent quantum data concerning the spin state of an electron to another electron about 10 feet away. The results can be replicated accurately 100 percent of the time, the team said.
Thanks to the strange properties of entanglement, this allows for that data -- only quantum data, not classical information like messages or even simple bits -- to be teleported seemingly faster than the speed of light. The news was reported first by The New York Times on Thursday, following the publication of a paper in the journal Science.
Proving Einstein wrong about the purview and completeness of quantum mechanics is not just an academic boasting contest. Proving the existence of entanglement and teleportation -- and getting experiments to work efficiently, in larger systems and at greater distances -- holds the key to translating quantum mechanics to practical applications, like quantum computing. For instance, quantum computers could utilize that speed to unlock a whole new generation of unprecedented computing power.
Quantum teleportation is not teleportation in the sense one might think. It involves achieving a certain set of parameters that then allow properties of one quantum system to get tangled up with another so that observations are reflected simultaneously, thereby "teleporting" the information from one place to another.
To do this, researchers at Delft first had to create qubits out of classical bits, in this case electrons trapped in diamonds at extremely low temperatures that allow their quantum properties, like spin, to be observed.
A qubit is a unit of quantum data that can hold multiple values simultaneously thanks to an equally integral quantum phenomenon called superposition, a term fans of the field will accurately associate with Heisenberg's uncertainty principal that says something exists in all possible states until it is observed. It's the same way quantum computing may one day surpass the speeds of classical computing by allowing calculations to spread bit values between 0, 1 or any probabilistic value between the two numbers -- in other words, a superposition of both figures.
With quibits separated by a distance of three meters, the researchers were able to observe and record the spin of one electron and see that reflected in the other qubit instantly. It's an admittedly wonky conception of data teleportation that requires a little head scratching before it begins to clear up.
Still, its effects could be far reaching. The researchers are attempting to increase that distance to more than a kilometer, which would be ample leeway to test whether or not entanglement was a consistent phenomenon and that the information was traveling faster than the speed of light. Such experiments would more definitively knock down Einstein's disqualification of entanglement due to its violation of classical mechanics.
"There is a big race going on between five or six groups to prove Einstein wrong," Ronald Hanson, a physicist leading the research at Delft, told The New York Times. "There is one very big fish."
You wouldn’t want to be telaported anyway. You die on the telaportation pad when the machine rips all your atoms apart. The “you” that gets reconstructed has to be a different you, each time.
This is a quantum system. It is meaningless to talk about an electron on "one side of the room" and an "electron on the other side of the room," because there is no such thing. There is a system composed of two electrons, which are not distinguishable from each other. The experimenters cannot do any experiment that verifies that the qubits they have on "one side of the room" are not the same qubits that they think are "on the other side of the room." [Or indeed -- what is more correct -- are actually both sets, on both sides of the room at the same time.]
The multi-particle state has a particular spin, which when affected by experiment must affect the entire system.
The article, like most of its kind, is a careless mixing of classical, relativistic, and quantum concepts. It's a conceptual mess.
“With quibits separated by a distance of three meters, the researchers were able to observe and record the spin of one electron and see that reflected in the other qubit instantly.”
The distance was three meters (or “about 10 feet”). This article is written for an American audience, which is why the standard feet distance is given.
NFP
There is no communication, as there was no data sent from A to B. The article explains the experiment:
If you read this here qubit A, you may get 0 or 1. You don't know what it is because you never looked before. However if later you read the qubit B that is over there, you will get the same answer as at A.
As you can see, this does not transfer information, as you have no way to input it into the system. It's a set of two black boxes with the same content inside. You do not know what it is beforehand.
There is no FTL violation either - not any more than if you deal with two matchboxes that contain the same, unopened message. They "synchronize" instantly, but you still need to transport one of them from A to B - and even then it doesn't buy you much, as the message is a total surprise on both ends of the link.
“Quantum teleportation is not teleportation in the sense one might think”
Yes, let me redefine the terms then sure, it’s teleportation.
I call BS on this article. Also, there isn’t any way for them to measure if something happened faster than the speed of light.
No transporters, but could be used for sub-space radio.
You are dying and getting resurrected all the time due to quantum foam. "You" now and "you" 1 picosecond later are not the same. Of course, there are processes that act similarly on slower time scale. For example, most cells of your body die and get replaced, from once every few days to once in a year.
The "self" should be associated with consciousness. Or, as ancients used to call it, "soul." It persists even as hardware that runs it is changed, replaced or partially destroyed. These changes do not matter - not any more than a computer's OS depends on the exact USB port where you plug the mouse, or the brand of the mouse.
“No, not beaming humans aboard the USS Enterprise”
What’s that?
Looking at it another way, I think every individual electron exists on it's own, just as humans and planets exist on their own.
From Edward Frenkel, we have "... there are two kinds of elementary particles; fermions and bosons. The former are the building blocks of matter (electrons, quarks, etc), and the latter are the particles that carry forces (such as photons). The elusive Higgs particle, discovered recently at the Large Hadron Collider under Geneva, is also a bison."
Words. Intended to communicate. But sometimes they seem to get in the way instead. Like in articles I’d greatly like to understand. Alas. ( and no, I didn’t have “sex” with that woman, miss Lewinsky....)
Yup! Will find billions in sales by transporting a beer from the fridge into my hand.
It doesn't, though. In a Uranium atom, for example, there are 92 electrons, but there really are not 92 individual electrons at all. In fact, there is NO individual electron in that system. There is simply a system composed of 92 electrons but no single identifiable negative charge entity exists...
Wow! This could replace plastic surgery. Think of the old stars who could be TOTALLY reconstructed into younger and perhaps even talented stars.
“No, not beaming humans aboard the USS Enterprise”
What’s that?
Paragraph 2 of the article.
Poor explanation on my part, but that's the way I see it.
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