Teleporting a human with this method might be possible, but the amount of data that would need to be sent would be GIGANTIC. It would literally be faster to walk the distance to the nearest star than to be teleported.
I saw this on the news last night. Unfortunately, the news released is not of enough detail that you can tell exactly what is going on well enough to figure out if anything significant is going on.
As far as I can see, they're taking detailed information about the makeup of a stream of photons in a laser and then modulating another laser to attune it to the same polarization as the first.
Since this data is transmitted from one laser to another via radio (pretty conventional means), I'm not at all sure how this represents a revolution in data transmission that could be used by computers.
Anyway, cool stuff! I just wish they'd give a bit more data so that we could really understand what they're really up to.
Ever since the first version of it a few years back, I've been a tad skeptical. The potential is huge, but not really in its current form or the ones they seem to be exploring.
So researchers can make their measurements on a second laser beam that was entangled with the first. The measurements are then sent by radio waves to the receiving station, which exactly replicates the first beam that was destroyed in the process of entanglement.
How would this lead to faster computers? You could already make optical computers now, the problem is, the digital<->light<->digital bits are big [biggest problem], expensive [you need a LOT of them] and unpractical. Using this tehnique, it would just make the matters worse.
Matter tranfer? What kind of matter would be worth it? It would take you ages just to transfer something simple like water [and reconstructing matter is replicator technology. Something we don't realy have right now]. And why would oyu want to transfer it? The process would be made up of destroying one copy and rebuilding the next. Why not just store its shape in some hugeass storage device and make a copy instead?
I'm really hoping this turns out to be a break-through, but just like chaos theory and fractal it might just be a lot of noise and not much else [and personally, I'm waiting for holodecks, yeah baby ;].
Blaaah, I've become so cynical since starting university. :p
I'm afraid I have to agree with the skeptics-- they didn't give enough data. It sounds to me like they're just firing two identical lasers, one of which they gave some sort of end point. How did they destroy the laser? With a physical obstruction or did they pull it out of the air? How did they re-create it? Was there another laser, or did they, again, cause it to exist ex nihilo? How were the photons captured, and how did they use two separate lasers to overcome the Uncertainty Principle? There's too little explained here. It sounds like a gimick.
The data given in this article is sketchy. I am jamming on mundane writings at the moment, but will direct you to more details soon.
The effect is real, it is very interesting, and by coincidence it figures into my story. An offshoot and descendant of this (actually, the 1998 work) was in the Shuttle's cargo bay in "The Ride Down". It did not survive unscathed, but was the "official" reason for the trip.
Very briefly, it uses a combination of a sneak workaround of Heisenberg principle and the two slit experiment -- it is very clever indeed. Each photon is replicated individually with the exact characteristics of the original -- it is not simply tuning a pair of beams. The process necessarily destroys the original.
Matter?-- perhaps -- but the energy consumption and equipment requirements will be extraordinary.
Complex matter? I think not -- there is a complete difference in the way classical objects operate as opposed to particle physics-scale objects. A photon and a rock behave conceptually differently in the two-slit experiment -- a photon is not a "little rock".
I know it's confusing -- I'll have more time later.
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branchandroot
Neat!
Teleporting a human with this method might be possible, but the amount of data that would need to be sent would be GIGANTIC. It would literally be faster to walk the distance to the nearest star than to be teleported.
no subject
Unfortunately, the news released is not of enough detail that you can tell exactly what is going on well enough to figure out if anything significant is going on.
As far as I can see, they're taking detailed information about the makeup of a stream of photons in a laser and then modulating another laser to attune it to the same polarization as the first.
Since this data is transmitted from one laser to another via radio (pretty conventional means), I'm not at all sure how this represents a revolution in data transmission that could be used by computers.
Anyway, cool stuff! I just wish they'd give a bit more data so that we could really understand what they're really up to.
Scott
no subject
Date: 2002-06-18 08:50 am (UTC)So researchers can make their measurements on a second laser beam that was entangled with the first. The measurements are then sent by radio waves to the receiving station, which exactly replicates the first beam that was destroyed in the process of entanglement.
How would this lead to faster computers? You could already make optical computers now, the problem is, the digital<->light<->digital bits are big [biggest problem], expensive [you need a LOT of them] and unpractical. Using this tehnique, it would just make the matters worse.
Matter tranfer? What kind of matter would be worth it? It would take you ages just to transfer something simple like water [and reconstructing matter is replicator technology. Something we don't realy have right now]. And why would oyu want to transfer it? The process would be made up of destroying one copy and rebuilding the next. Why not just store its shape in some hugeass storage device and make a copy instead?
I'm really hoping this turns out to be a break-through, but just like chaos theory and fractal it might just be a lot of noise and not much else [and personally, I'm waiting for holodecks, yeah baby ;].
Blaaah, I've become so cynical since starting university. :p
no subject
Date: 2002-06-18 09:01 am (UTC)no subject
The effect is real, it is very interesting, and by coincidence it figures into my story. An offshoot and descendant of this (actually, the 1998 work) was in the Shuttle's cargo bay in "The Ride Down". It did not survive unscathed, but was the "official" reason for the trip.
Very briefly, it uses a combination of a sneak workaround of Heisenberg principle and the two slit experiment -- it is very clever indeed. Each photon is replicated individually with the exact characteristics of the original -- it is not simply tuning a pair of beams. The process necessarily destroys the original.
Matter?-- perhaps -- but the energy consumption and equipment requirements will be extraordinary.
Complex matter? I think not -- there is a complete difference in the way classical objects operate as opposed to particle physics-scale objects. A photon and a rock behave conceptually differently in the two-slit experiment -- a photon is not a "little rock".
I know it's confusing -- I'll have more time later.
===|==============/ Level Hea
no subject
Date: 2002-06-18 11:06 am (UTC)