Ok, if you were impressed when scientists claimed they could teleport certain sub-atomic particles a foot or so, you have to be jumping up and down with the newest news release that says that photons can be teleported 10 miles.
Now to be honest we are talking quantum physics that says photons can, in some ways, occupy two places at once. When one photon gets entangled with another, whatever happens to one of those particles also happens to it's "entangled partner". So in truth we are not really talking about physical teleportation but instant transferring of information concerning the state of the first photon to that of the second in the entangled pair. So it's the information making the jump. (Sorry Kirk)
This is what we have been talking about for years now starting to become a reality. The Ansible or whatever you want to call it, is becoming a very real possibility. Instant communication anywhere no matter how far, due to photon entanglement.
Does this mean that something like StarTrek's transporter is impossible? In theory, not totally. The transporter scans, then turns those scans into information. Now that information has to be received by an entangled photon array of some sort, so this showing up where-ever they want to on planet...would be impossible.
But we are also talking about a whole magnitude of greater density. At present they are using two entangled photons. Each sub atomic particle can have 4 states..(not sure about photons though) which leaves us with a four bit data stream. Even for computers, no matter how fast, four bits isn't going far. But that's another conversation.
The article is here, but there really isn't much more HERE
However IO9 has a piece here
Now to be honest we are talking quantum physics that says photons can, in some ways, occupy two places at once. When one photon gets entangled with another, whatever happens to one of those particles also happens to it's "entangled partner". So in truth we are not really talking about physical teleportation but instant transferring of information concerning the state of the first photon to that of the second in the entangled pair. So it's the information making the jump. (Sorry Kirk)
This is what we have been talking about for years now starting to become a reality. The Ansible or whatever you want to call it, is becoming a very real possibility. Instant communication anywhere no matter how far, due to photon entanglement.
Does this mean that something like StarTrek's transporter is impossible? In theory, not totally. The transporter scans, then turns those scans into information. Now that information has to be received by an entangled photon array of some sort, so this showing up where-ever they want to on planet...would be impossible.
But we are also talking about a whole magnitude of greater density. At present they are using two entangled photons. Each sub atomic particle can have 4 states..(not sure about photons though) which leaves us with a four bit data stream. Even for computers, no matter how fast, four bits isn't going far. But that's another conversation.
The article is here, but there really isn't much more HERE
However IO9 has a piece here
2 comments:
and 2 bits won't even get you a cup of coffee anymore....
Been awhile since you could get anything decent to drink for that price.
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