Scientists Achieve First Ever Quantum Teleportation

[BlameTheWizards]

Scientists Achieve First Ever Quantum Teleportation

No, it won't let you beam straight from your house to work, but it's still really cool.

PolicyMic reports that scientists from the Netherlands have been able to successfully perform quantum teleportation, whereby two objects in remote locations can affect each other as though they were directly attached. Its a feat which Albert Einstein himself once dismissed as "spooky action at a distance."


In a new paper published in the journal Science, physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology said they were able to "reliably teleport information between two quantum bits separated by three meters, or about 10 feet." This goes against Einstein's notion of particle entanglement, and is a huge breakthrough for quantum mechanical theory - and information transmission as we know it.


The experiment in question sent quantum data on an electron's spin state to another electron about 10 feet away, with the information being sent as though the two electron's were directly connected. The scientists are hoping to increase the distance from 10 feet to a kilometer for their next attempt.

And before some of you write this off as a "boring" use of science, a few things to keep in mind: one, this science powers the "quantum entanglement" communication technology<a href=http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Technology#Communications> employed by Mass Effect's Normandy, and two a perfected version of this tech would allow for the almost instantaneous transmission of data across almost any length of distance. It would outrace even some of the fastest internet providers today, like Google Fiber.

PolicyMic also notes that a closed quantum network would make it much harder for an outside party to determine what content is being accessed.

And, of course, there's also the excitement of proving wrong one of the greatest scientific minds that ever lived.


"There is a big race going on between five or six groups to prove Einstein wrong," said Ronald Hanson, one of the lead researchers. "There is one very big fish."


Source: <a href=http://www.policymic.com/articles/90209/scientists-just-achieved-quantum-teleportation-for-the-first-time?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social>PolicyMic

Permalink

 

[evilnancyreagan]

near instantaneous communication that can reach across galaxies?

 

[Agayek]

near instantaneous communication that can reach across galaxies?

You're not thinking big enough. If perfected, this technology would be instantaneous communication across the entirety of the universe. It's kind of amazing.

What I want to know, more than anything else, is if they've found a way around the "entangled pair" restrictions, or even if it's theoretically possible to have malleable connections.

 

[J Tyran]

Hold your horses guys, while the distance issue is the main thing here don't expect it to have much difference for most communication here on Earth. To start with there is the fact that unless you had a such a device placed next to your computer and one next to the server you want to access you are still held up by the light speed barrier and the speed electrons can move down wires as well as the access speeds of both computers themselves, the amount of time saved would indistinguishable for the end user here on Earth.

The second aspect is that it wouldn't change a thing as far as unwillingness to upgrade infrastructure, there should be more than enough bandwidth from the tier 3(?) providers for just about everything but the companies that connect you to those backbones want to maximise profits and will avoiding giving you the service you pay for. There have even been reports from the ISPs that supply ISPs that they consistently report overloaded and congested services and get ignored, they simply don't want to buy more.

 

[evilnancyreagan]

You're not thinking big enough.

Actually I am thinking that it may be possible for some distant, macroscopic being to be remote controlling my every thought and action. I'm just waiting to find a plumbob above my head :X

 

[Pyrian]

*sigh*

Once again, no, quantum entanglement does not allow outside instantaneous communication at any distance. You get inverse results at each side, so each side will know what result the other side got, but there's no way to input information in such a way that the other side gets it. I read a 1, so I know that you read a 0. But if I want to transmit some information to you... Back to light speed or less.

It does allow encryption that can only be broken by the other side, so that's cool.

 

[Objectable]

And how did this all work?
Because Quantum.

 

[evilnancyreagan]

*sigh*

every party has a pooper

Well, I reject your reality and substitute it with my own!

It's a more fun place and it doesn't require me to do any fact-checking B]

 

[Scars Unseen]

Annnd it's time for today's thrilling edition of "There's an XKCD for that!"

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

big deal, for FTL communication we just need the astronomican

Spoiler

the emperor protects

...

on a more serious note, holy shit science is amazing

 

[Jadak]

*sigh*

Once again, no, quantum entanglement does not allow outside instantaneous communication at any distance. You get inverse results at each side, so each side will know what result the other side got, but there's no way to input information in such a way that the other side gets it. I read a 1, so I know that you read a 0. But if I want to transmit some information to you... Back to light speed or less.

It does allow encryption that can only be broken by the other side, so that's cool.

I don't follow, if one side read a 0 and the other got a 1, don't you then have the foundation for communication via binary?

 

[Dragonbums]

I find it hilariously coincidental that the username of the author is "BlametheWizards" were you a part of it too OP?

I kid I kid.

I only wish we can live for 300 or so years. I can only think back to reading articles on the first invention of airplanes. What was once thought of as a silly science gimmick and a toy became (after a war of course) one of the fastest modes of transportation in a matter of years.

Obviously this is no where close to that level yet, but just IMAGINE how advanced this tech would be centuries right now.

 

[Dragonbums]

Whats this? Transmit data fast3r than google fiber, And We Cant Snoop Around It?

Both NSA, and big cable will activly lobby to prevent this from happening in the u.s. im sure of it

Well they are doing an excellent job blocking Google Fiber so it's not even an "I'm sure of it" kind of thing. It's a hard case definite. Unless of course those companies make the tech market standard first.

 

[GabeZhul]

*sigh*

Once again, no, quantum entanglement does not allow outside instantaneous communication at any distance. You get inverse results at each side, so each side will know what result the other side got, but there's no way to input information in such a way that the other side gets it. I read a 1, so I know that you read a 0. But if I want to transmit some information to you... Back to light speed or less.

It does allow encryption that can only be broken by the other side, so that's cool.

I don't follow, if one side read a 0 and the other got a 1, don't you then have the foundation for communication via binary?

No, because you do not decide what you have on your side, thus you cannot affect the one on the other side either.
To give a crude example on layman's terms (the real deal is a fair bit more complicated, you see): Imagine having two wooden boxes. One has a black stone in it while the other has a white stone in it, but you don't know which is which.
Now, if you open one of these boxes, and it's the white stone, you automatically know that the other box is the one with the black stone. The case of entangled particles is further complicated by that they exist in both states at once, so it would be like if you would have a grey stone that had a 50/50 chance to turn white or green upon opening the box and the other would automatically turn the opposite color.

And herein lies the problem: You cannot influence what "color" you get on your end. It's random, a 50/50 chance. It's not like you pick white and the other box would become black on the other end of the world instantaneously, you just get a random result with the guarantee that the other box/particle would be the exact opposite.

If you don't know what result you get, you cannot use it for communication, and if you "cheat" and take a peek inside the box to see what color the stone is, the two are no longer entangled and thus you cannot use them for communication. Really, this whole thing is nothing more than an experiment designed to further our understanding of the standard model drummed up by the media on a slow news week into something it is simply not. Kind of reminds me of last week's "Start Trek replicator" article...

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

Oh my god, that would make multiplayer gaming and porn on mars feasible!

 

[J Tyran]

big deal, for FTL communication we just need the astronomican


the emperor protects

...

on a more serious note, holy shit science is amazing

To be honest I don't think it will catch on, just think of all the paper work it would create every time daemons came rampaging out of the data centre.

 

[iseko]

snip

I don't follow, if one side read a 0 and the other got a 1, don't you then have the foundation for communication via binary?

No, because you do not decide what you have on your side, thus you cannot affect the one on the other side either.
To give a crude example on layman's terms (the real deal is a fair bit more complicated, you see): Imagine having two wooden boxes. One has a black stone in it while the other has a white stone in it, but you don't know which is which.
Now, if you open one of these boxes, and it's the white stone, you automatically know that the other box is the one with the black stone. The case of entangled particles is further complicated by that they exist in both states at once, so it would be like if you would have a grey stone that had a 50/50 chance to turn white or green upon opening the box and the other would automatically turn the opposite color.

And herein lies the problem: You cannot influence what "color" you get on your end. It's random, a 50/50 chance. It's not like you pick white and the other box would become black on the other end of the world instantaneously, you just get a random result with the guarantee that the other box/particle would be the exact opposite.

If you don't know what result you get, you cannot use it for communication, and if you "cheat" and take a peek inside the box to see what color the stone is, the two are no longer entangled and thus you cannot use them for communication. Really, this whole thing is nothing more than an experiment designed to further our understanding of the standard model drummed up by the media on a slow news week into something it is simply not. Kind of reminds me of last week's "Start Trek replicator" article...

Thanks, I actually learned something. I see this a lot as well with biology topics and pisses me off sometimes. I'm not as good with physics though. Still this is a nice 'breakthrough' isn't it? Could it have no real world applications?