Teleportation Real?

[Tuckerfan]

Or has the journalist reporting the story simply latched onto the concept, while the experiment demonstrates something else? (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141137.htm)Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance. That capability is necessary for workable quantum information systems because they will require memory storage at both the sending and receiving ends of the transmission.

In the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Science, the scientists report that, by using their protocol, atom-to-atom teleported information can be recovered with perfect accuracy about 90% of the time – and that figure can be improved.Color me :dubious:, but interested.

[UTejas]

perfect accuracy about 90% of the time

90% of the time it works...... every time

[Nicolas Bourbaki]

Well, in your own quote, they state they have not moved any atoms anywhere. I'm not an expert in quantum dealies by any means, but it seems like the reporter explained it very rigorously and in pretty much the same way as Greene or Penrose would. I really don't think the problem is on their end at all; in the bit of the article you quoted directly, the reporter specifically says they "teleported information", which will be a useful step for constructing quantum information systems.

Recap: Yes, teleportation is absolutely real, in the sense relayed by the article. That much has been known since the 1930s, when Einstein tried his little reductio ad absurdum on Bohr. The television show Star Trek, OTOH, is a work of fiction, not a documentary: it contains people, places, and things which serve to advance a 47-minute narrative, but are actually not factual.

[Tuckerfan]

Related technology, it seems. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141148.htm)A team of physicists and engineers has demonstrated an optical device that filters two particles of light (or photons) based on the correlations between their polarisation that are only allowed in the seemingly bizarre quantum world. This so called "entanglement filter" passes the pair of photons only if they inhabit the same quantum state, without the user (or anything else) ever knowing what that state is.

[Gukumatz]

As always, XKCD precedes public talk by about half a year.

http://xkcd.com/465/

[Half Man Half Wit]

Quantum teleportation isn't really all that new a concept -- as Nicolas Bourbaki above correctly states, it's been around in principle since the discovery of entanglement, though the protocol that achieves actual information transfer has only been developed in 1993 in this paper (http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/teleportation.html). The first successful experiments with photons were conducted a couple of years later, and the first atom teleportations sometime around 2004. The term 'teleportation' is somewhat misleading, as there is no actual matter or energy transference, rather it refers to the indistinguishability of two quantum mechanical particles in an identical state; since that state is in principle what is being transferred, we end up with an identical copy of what was sent at the receivers end, while the exact state is destroyed at the sender's end, hence 'teleportation'. As a note, since you need both the quantum-entanglement channel and a classical channel to meaningfully transport information, there's no possibility of faster than light information transmitting.

[Acid Lamp]

Quantum teleportation isn't really all that new a concept -- as Nicolas Bourbaki above correctly states, it's been around in principle since the discovery of entanglement, though the protocol that achieves actual information transfer has only been developed in 1993 in this paper (http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/teleportation.html). The first successful experiments with photons were conducted a couple of years later, and the first atom teleportations sometime around 2004. The term 'teleportation' is somewhat misleading, as there is no actual matter or energy transference, rather it refers to the indistinguishability of two quantum mechanical particles in an identical state; since that state is in principle what is being transferred, we end up with an identical copy of what was sent at the receivers end, while the exact state is destroyed at the sender's end, hence 'teleportation'. As a note, since you need both the quantum-entanglement channel and a classical channel to meaningfully transport information, there's no possibility of faster than light information transmitting.

If I understand this correctly, that would mean that to teleport myself to Iceland, I would step into a booth that would destroy AcidLamp USA, and I would be copied in Iceland without any distinguishable difference? That's kinda scary!

[Half Man Half Wit]

If I understand this correctly, that would mean that to teleport myself to Iceland, I would step into a booth that would destroy AcidLamp USA, and I would be copied in Iceland without any distinguishable difference? That's kinda scary!
Also note how the teleportation scheme only has a 90% success rate, so you might come out all evil and with goatee about every tenth time. Generally, though, you're probably just not coherent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoherence)* enough to attempt quantum teleportation.
Plus, Iceland doesn't really have the financial strength right now to invest in such cutting-edge technology.

*I love how that article starts with a tag saying 'All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear'. It's like they aren't even sure what's uncertain anymore!

[Acid Lamp]

Also note how the teleportation scheme only has a 90% success rate, so you might come out all evil and with goatee about every tenth time. Generally, though, you're probably just not coherent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoherence)* enough to attempt quantum teleportation.
Plus, Iceland doesn't really have the financial strength right now to invest in such cutting-edge technology.

*I love how that article starts with a tag saying 'All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear'. It's like they aren't even sure what's uncertain anymore!

At first I thought you were just insulting me:D, but if I understand any of that correctly it means that a human is not uniform enough to undergo teleportation without becoming entangled with the environment?

[Half Man Half Wit]

At first I thought you were just insulting me:D, but if I understand any of that correctly it means that a human is not uniform enough to undergo teleportation without becoming entangled with the environment?
It's more that a human -- due to inevitable interaction with the environment -- doesn't really have a well-defined quantum state to transmit, which is kind of why our macroscopic world is so nicely classical, and nobody does any funny stuff like walking through walls, or being both dead and alive simultaneously (this only sounds cool unless it actually happens to you). Basically, (superposed) quantum states are really fickle things, and even looking at them can cause them to collapse, so they don't really exist in the macroscopic world, hypothetical animal experiments of questionable ethics notwithstanding.

[Acid Lamp]

Ignorance fought, thanks. :)

[billfish678]

If I understand this correctly, that would mean that to teleport myself to Iceland, I would step into a booth that would destroy AcidLamp USA, and I would be copied in Iceland without any distinguishable difference? That's kinda scary!

Years ago, I used to run around asking everybody this question. The milkman, the preacher, the lady at the grocery store, co-workers, EVERYBODY. Well not really.

Lets say we have transporter. It literally tears you apart. All indications are its about akin to being pushed slowly through a woodchipper, except you don't even get to die or pass out before its over.

A literal copy is made of you somewhere else. Its not even made of the same atoms you orignally were. But it works about as perfectly as something mechanical possibly can, and the copy is damn near perfect.

But they are able to erase the memory of the woodchipping part.

Would you go through it?

[Acid Lamp]

It depends on whether there is pain or not. If it isn't painful, and has been shown to be safe for other animals then I'd use it. I can imagine a spiritual quandary with people if we ever get to that point. Considering it destroys your entire physical form and reassembles it from local atoms or whatever, that would either mean that the soul does not exist or exists outside of all of quantum... gah, that makes my brain hurt.

[billfish678]

It depends on whether there is pain or not.

.

Uhhh, I think that the woodchipper, dieing, and passing out parts all might be subtle clues as to whether there is any pain or not :)

[Leaffan]

Having a hard time Googling this, but I'm sure I read that NASA was planning to "transport" a water molecule to the moon as part of the next moon landing foray.

Any help?