Posted on 06/16/2004 1:54:18 PM PDT by vannrox
TED: 2:55 pm EDT June 16, 2004
UPDATED: 3:03 pm EDT June 16, 2004
In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon so bizarre that even Albert Einstein called it spooky.
Such "quantum teleportation" of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light.
The work with atoms is "a landmark advance," H.J. Kimble of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and S.J. van Enk of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., declare in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Two teams of scientists report similar results in that issue. One group was led by David J. Wineland of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., and the other by Rainer Blatt of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
Teleportation between atoms could someday lie at the heart of powerful quantum computers, which are probably at least a decade away from development, Wineland said. Although his work moved information about atomic characteristics only a tiny fraction of an inch, that's in the ballpark for what would be needed inside a computer, he said.
His work involved transmitting characteristics between pairs of beryllium atoms, while the Austrian work used pairs of calcium atoms. Each atom's "quantum state," a complex combination of traits, was transmitted to its counterpart.
Key to the process was a phenomenon called entanglement, which Einstein derided as "spooky action at a distance" before experiments showed it was real.
Basically, researchers can use lab techniques to create a weird relationship between pairs of tiny particles. After that, the fate of one particle instantly affects the other; if one particle is made to take on a certain set of properties, the other immediately takes on identical or opposite properties, no matter how far away it is and without any apparent physical connection to the first particle.
For instance, someone could send himself winning lottery numbers from the future...and I'm guessing that guy in West Virginia is not a physicist.
Put Sundog on it, Pat.
Thanks.
You might be, but then so am I.
After I'm dead and my spirit is on the way to Heaven (or Hell, but Heaven I hope) I sure don't want it it get infected with a virus some teenager created while he was playing with this "spooky action at a distance" teleporter thing.
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It IS ..SPOCK..!!!
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But superluminal transportation would not enable one to send messages from the future into the past. It would enable one only to send messages from the present into the future.
They are, in effect, the same thing.
As far as I can see, whether it's Star Trek or Cal Tech, the only difference between 'Beam me up!' and 'Tea, Earl Grey, hot', is in the first place the original item is destroyed as it's copied, and the second, the item is copied from a pattern previously saved.
Lots of questions to be asked and settled if this is truly real. It's the the effect of preverbal perpetual motion machine, even if the physics works. If you can copy the atoms of an object, then you can have unlimited objects. Unlimited Oil, unlimited gold, unlimited food. The entire economic base falls flat on it's face as everything valuable becomes worth only as much as the energy needed to copy it. Star Trek indeed!
That's before you consider the actual questions of teleportation by making a copy on the other end. If you were to step in, and they fail to complete the transfer, there really could be two of you! What if some judge is having a snarky day and rules that your wife is now a widow because your original body was physically destroyed in the move? How could you ever be sure it was really 'you' that stepped out, and not a saved copy days later to be manipulated into some nefarious act or experiment?
Paranoia comes easy when the possibilities are real. ;)
As a kid, I always wondered what it was like to have been born with barely a working telephone available, and see atomic power and computers and the internet... Not any more.
That's pretty neat, but it only seems to quantify just how corrupted a data message should be if it's transferred via entanglment. I suppose we have some good ECC from microprocessor technology that would help reconstruct the corrupted portions, but I wonder just how reliable such a transmission technology would be. Any thoughts on this?
While an interesting bit of science ( and one that merely confirms much of what is now called "modern" phsysics), your title is not only misleading it is out and out wrong. To transfer "state" information from one atom to another is NOT the same as making atoms move from one location to another....Don't get so excited...this is the natural progression from research that has been ongoing since the 80s ( that I am aware of)
I'm pretty sure superluminal communication would send messages from the future into the past. We can already send messages into the future. We're doing it right now.
But how is uncertainty relevant to the conjectured application? Why isn't this reply from Buggman adequate?
"Forgive me if I'm wrong, but Heisenburg simply states that you can't know both the location and the velocity of a given subatomic particle at the same time--the more accurately you pin down one, the "fuzzier" the other gets. We can still accurately detect spin just fine, so how would this affect ansible communication?
Why and how? I'm unaware of any speculated property of superluminal communication that would support such a statement.
We can already send messages into the future. We're doing it right now.
Yes, obviously, but I hope you know what I meant without my having to spell it out..
OK...now I'm really confused. Wouldn't a faster than light transfer of information arrive before it was sent? That would imply to me that the information would go from the future into the past.
Here's something I've posted a time or two before, which I will repeat here in pretty much the original wording. "Physicist" has much more to say on this topic, so I'm pinging him in case he has any input.
Here's why an instant communications system creates time paradoxes:Let's say you take off from earth in a ship that travels around 99% of lightspeed, fast enough for you to experience the effects of time dilation. And before you take off, you synchronize clocks with your buddy back home (synchronized clocks are a standard bit of equipment in these thought experiments). You've also got that mythical "subspace radio" which keeps you in instantaneous contact with earth. In due course, I shall demonstrate the impossibility of that device.
Okay, as you accelerate to 99% of lightspeed, less time is passing on ship than back home. You're not aging as rapidly as you would if you stayed home. This is apparent only in comparison with earth, however. On the ship you notice nothing odd. But your once-synchronized clocks are no longer in sync. Yours is now showing less time passing than the clock on earth (from earth's point of view). This is standard stuff, plain old special relativity.
After a while, let's say your ship clock is a day behind the earth clock (never earlier than launch date, however, as that would be quite impossible. The divergence commences after that point). Now you receive a message from earth: "Terrible news! President Hillary Clinton assasinated! USA in mourning." This message comes over your "subspace radio," so it's an instantaneous communication. However ... you have accelerated away from earth, so your clocks now register an earlier time than that on earth. If the message is sent on earth's July 4th, you receive it on your ships's July 3d. Okay. You're still with me, right? Get this next point, because it'll make your brain ache. Because of the relative velocity between the two reference frames, the sender's clock is later than the receiver's clock. This is always going to be true -- in all reference frames.
Now you get on the supspace radio and send your condolences back to earth: "So sorry to learn of the July 4th assasination of President Hillary Clinton." Ah, but here comes the catch. You are sending this message on your July 3d. Because of your acceleration away from earth, from your point of view -- which is just as valid as earth's viewpoint -- it's earlier on earth than it is on your ship. So your message travels instantly and gets to earth on July 2nd. Earth's July 2nd. And they now know of the event before it happened.
No, you say. Why would it get to earth earlier? Why? Because earth's message got to you earlier than it was sent, and it always gets where it's going earlier than it was sent. There are no privileged reference frames. From the point of view of your ship, earth accelerated away from you and is experiencing its own time dilation effect. It works both ways.
So your subspace radio allows messages to be sent into the past, which generates all kinds of paradoxes; and it is generally accepted that no such contrivance is possible. One of the advantages of a lightspeed limit is that it keeps the universe from going crazy.
But note that it takes large distances for this to have any significant "back in time" effect. So if there is a technique for exceeding lightspeed over a small distance, there's no major problem. We won't be receiving any messages from tomorrow.
If you're troubled by having Earth in the scenario, then consider two ships out in space somewhere, at rest relative to each other. They synchronize their clocks. Then they each accelerate in opposite directions, each moving very close to lightspeed, better than 99.5% of c, fast enough for each ship to experience significant time dilation. And they communicate with each other instantaneously. (In Heinlein's novel, he used twins who were telepathic for this.) Each ship has its clock slowed down with respect to the other (I think this is the result), so each one is sending messages "into the past," and they will be received at the other ship "earlier" than they were sent. As they exchange messages back and forth, each ship is receiving messages from the "future." Same paradox, but we leave earth out of it.
Thanks. Yes, that's how I thought it worked.
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