Researchers Succeed at Quantum Teleportation Breakthrough

[Alexnader]

Wait what the crap? UNSW news was cited??? I'm fairly certain the students don't even look at that... so why is someone at the escapist/popsci???

 

[YawningAngel]

Not seeing the point here. I can already buy a computer that will boot an OS in five seconds and run a game that renders a ten-mile radius with reasonably faithful accuracy. What exactly will a consumer in 20 years/however long this technology takes to become available actually WANT from a quantum computer that conventional computing can't already provide?

Yeah... this science is not done just so you can have a faster computer at home. Not everything in science is done to benefit the consumer.

Which doesn't present a pressing case for why I much care about it.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Faster-than-Light communication a possibility?

For real?

No more Internet lag?

 

[Nimcha]

Not seeing the point here. I can already buy a computer that will boot an OS in five seconds and run a game that renders a ten-mile radius with reasonably faithful accuracy. What exactly will a consumer in 20 years/however long this technology takes to become available actually WANT from a quantum computer that conventional computing can't already provide?

Yeah... this science is not done just so you can have a faster computer at home. Not everything in science is done to benefit the consumer.

Which doesn't present a pressing case for why I much care about it.

Well you don't have to care about it, it probably won't affect you personally for the next few decades.

Still, it's pretty cool though right?

 

[YawningAngel]

Yeah, but it isn't much use.

 

[Funkysandwich]

So qbits can represent a 0 and a 1 at the same time. I may be a little short-sighted, but if this is the case then how does a quantum computer decide which is which?

This is very off topic here, but I am currently wearing the half life 2 shirt depicted in your avatar. Have an internet.


Also, I'm quite interested to see where this technology is going. Maybe they can use this to give Australia lower pings in online games...

I can only hope.

 

[Custard_Angel]

I just know people are going to believe that means they successfully teleported a hamster across the globe... Really they just teleported some data... Probably to a different sector of the same computer... Hooray.

 

[Hyperthetical]

Quantum Computing is something i'm terribly interested in, albeit quite a good bit over my head. I do believe that, since the two qbits are in an entangled state, it is not only FTL, but it is the instantaneous transmission of information.

From what I understand, when do things are entangled, they are bound by a fundamental property of the universe, the conservation of energy. The act of changing one of the spin states of one of the particles will instantaneously change the other. Einstein and some other people thought of it back in the 30s or 40s. It's famously called the "Spooky Action At A Distance."

Yes but you still have to send your friend half of an entangled state in order to perform the instant wave function collapse, making the communication as slow as the slowest part of this process.

Its also amusingly true that Einstein, Podolski and Rosen dreamed this up as a thought experiment in order to discredit QM in the Copenhagen interpretation, Einstein himself believed that this form of non-locality is unacceptable in a physical theory, since it appeared, to him, to violate Special Relativity.

And yes, I am a physicist, been trying to keep my language as un-technical as possible for maximal explanatory clarity. (I only made a forum account to clear up a misconception about Mr Schrodinger's paradoxical feline in an earlier post).

 

[Bookshelf]

Couldnt this be used for faster than light comunications?

I must admit I have only passing acquaintance with Quantum Info theories (I attended a conference on it at the end of under-grad and it was a little over my head at that stage), but I don't think you can use it for FTL communication, it's only the 'resurrection' of the information that is instantaneous, not the full propagation.

Quantum Computing is something i'm terribly interested in, albeit quite a good bit over my head. I do believe that, since the two qbits are in an entangled state, it is not only FTL, but it is the instantaneous transmission of information.

From what I understand, when do things are entangled, they are bound by a fundamental property of the universe, the conservation of energy. The act of changing one of the spin states of one of the particles will instantaneously change the other. Einstein and some other people thought of it back in the 30s or 40s. It's famously called the "Spooky Action At A Distance."

I believe your confusion comes from what quantum telportation actually does. Quantum teleportation can only transmit quantum information (that is, an entangled quantum pair). It cannot be used to transmit classical information such as a voice or a text message.

Actually, I do believe it can/will be able to in the future, in a more of a round-a-bout sort of way.

Let's say that you and a buddy take a bunch of pairs of entangled particles. One of you gets on a spaceship and the other says here on Earth. Let's say he end up getting 10 or so lightyears away.

If the two people had already decided that spin 'down' would be a 0 and spin 'up' would be a 1, could the person on earth then change the spin state of one of his particles from 'down' to 'up,' and thus transmit a classical bit? Could that not be done enough time to transmit a message of some sort?
I quite away manually doing it would be quite impractical, but if it can be done, it can be done.

 

[Bookshelf]

Quantum Computing is something i'm terribly interested in, albeit quite a good bit over my head. I do believe that, since the two qbits are in an entangled state, it is not only FTL, but it is the instantaneous transmission of information.

From what I understand, when do things are entangled, they are bound by a fundamental property of the universe, the conservation of energy. The act of changing one of the spin states of one of the particles will instantaneously change the other. Einstein and some other people thought of it back in the 30s or 40s. It's famously called the "Spooky Action At A Distance."

Yes but you still have to send your friend half of an entangled state in order to perform the instant wave function collapse, making the communication as slow as the slowest part of this process.

Oh, of course, of course. Once they are, 'set up' you can begin to transfer information, bit by bit. Hopefully as time goes on entangled states and qbits will become more and more stable.

And yes, I am a physicist, been trying to keep my language as un-technical as possible for maximal explanatory clarity. (I only made a forum account to clear up a misconception about Mr Schrodinger's paradoxical feline in an earlier post).

I'm actually currently getting a minor in physics. Thinking about picking up a degree when i'm in grad school for computer science.

 

[kane.malakos]

Basic electronic computers are supposed to slow down in advancement by about 2020 according to moores law.

And that's probably not a bad estimate.

We're already using wires an atom wide in some computers. How efficient can we keep making them?

Quantum computers could be the answer.

Yeah, we're already hitting walls in efficiency with circuits. There are several predictions about which paradigm we'll adopt next. Ray Kurzweil has been proposing 3-D nano-molecular circuits, but with all of these advances I think quantum computing will be practical fairly soon.

 

[kane.malakos]

I've never heard of

3-D nano-molecular circuits

What's the basic idea behind that?

But yea, if they keep working on this, hopefully it'll be viable alternative to traditional electronic tech.

It would essentially be like re-designing the wheel. But it worked pretty well for Dunlop.

I don't really understand it fully, but I know some stuff about it. Basically, processors at the moment are 2-dimensional. By pushing into the third dimension, there are ways to allow shorter routes along the wires, which increases efficiency. They're also looking at stuff like programmable matter, where circuits can basically be "grown" inside of your computer. It's all pretty theoretical though, and like I said, we might just go with quantum computing instead.

 

[A Curious Fellow]

Now they're thinking with portals.

 

[matrix3509]

Couldnt this be used for faster than light comunications?

I must admit I have only passing acquaintance with Quantum Info theories (I attended a conference on it at the end of under-grad and it was a little over my head at that stage), but I don't think you can use it for FTL communication, it's only the 'resurrection' of the information that is instantaneous, not the full propagation.

Quantum Computing is something i'm terribly interested in, albeit quite a good bit over my head. I do believe that, since the two qbits are in an entangled state, it is not only FTL, but it is the instantaneous transmission of information.

From what I understand, when do things are entangled, they are bound by a fundamental property of the universe, the conservation of energy. The act of changing one of the spin states of one of the particles will instantaneously change the other. Einstein and some other people thought of it back in the 30s or 40s. It's famously called the "Spooky Action At A Distance."

I believe your confusion comes from what quantum telportation actually does. Quantum teleportation can only transmit quantum information (that is, an entangled quantum pair). It cannot be used to transmit classical information such as a voice or a text message.

Is the only discrepancy here what the information can be encoded to represent.

Surely with time, we could develop a way to make a certain pattern of 'entangled quantum pairs' represent something such as a voice to a specialized machine. Just like we managed to do for electricity?

I mean, isn't that a possibility?

I'm not super informed regarding all of the qualities of entanglement, but from what I know, you can't actually encode classical information into a quantum state. Part of the reason for this is that it is impossible to know the state of an entangled pair until it is measured. Measuring the entangled pair yourself defeats the purpose of the entanglement to begin with, as is trying to change its state after being measured. Suffice it to say that people much smarter than me have spent their entire lives studying quantum phenomena, and if that say that superluminal communication using entanglement is impossible, I'm inclined to trust them.

 

[matrix3509]

Couldnt this be used for faster than light comunications?

I must admit I have only passing acquaintance with Quantum Info theories (I attended a conference on it at the end of under-grad and it was a little over my head at that stage), but I don't think you can use it for FTL communication, it's only the 'resurrection' of the information that is instantaneous, not the full propagation.

Quantum Computing is something i'm terribly interested in, albeit quite a good bit over my head. I do believe that, since the two qbits are in an entangled state, it is not only FTL, but it is the instantaneous transmission of information.

From what I understand, when do things are entangled, they are bound by a fundamental property of the universe, the conservation of energy. The act of changing one of the spin states of one of the particles will instantaneously change the other. Einstein and some other people thought of it back in the 30s or 40s. It's famously called the "Spooky Action At A Distance."

I believe your confusion comes from what quantum telportation actually does. Quantum teleportation can only transmit quantum information (that is, an entangled quantum pair). It cannot be used to transmit classical information such as a voice or a text message.

If the two people had already decided that spin 'down' would be a 0 and spin 'up' would be a 1, could the person on earth then change the spin state of one of his particles from 'down' to 'up,' and thus transmit a classical bit? Could that not be done enough time to transmit a message of some sort?
I quite away manually doing it would be quite impractical, but if it can be done, it can be done.

The problem with your idea is that it is impossible to actually affect the state of a quantum pair before you measure it.