Teleportation

[KeyserXSoze]

Psychic Teleportation

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-11-05-teleportation_x.htm

Air Force report calls for .5M to study psychic teleportation
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation.
But scientists aren't so thrilled.

The Air Force Research Lab's August "Teleportation Physics Report," posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful military spending.

In the report, author Eric Davis says psychic teleportation, moving yourself from location to location through mind powers, is "quite real and can be controlled." The 88-page report also reviews a range of teleportation concepts and experiments:

•Quantum teleportation, a technique demonstrated in the last decade that shifts the characteristics, but not the location, of sub-atomic particles at great distances.

•Wormholes, a highly theoretical possibility whereby the intense gravitational field near black holes could rip open entrances to distant locales.

•Psychokinesis, or psychic teleportation. In support of the idea, the report cites UFO reports, Soviet and Chinese studies of psychics and U.S. military studies of spoon-bending phenomena.

"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek, a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."

Some experts have long criticized what they see as a military sweet tooth for junk science. A "remote viewing" project, for example, undertaken by defense intelligence services and declassified in 1994, sought to see whether psychic powers could be employed to spy on the Soviet Union. The teleportation report "raises questions of scientific quality control at the Air Force," the FAS' Steven Aftergood says.

Davis, a physicist with Warp Drive Metrics of Las Vegas, couldn't be reached for comment. The Air Force paid ,000 for the report, part of a .5 million advanced rocket and missile design contract. The report calls for .5 million to conduct psychic teleportation experiments.

"The views expressed in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Air Force, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government," says an Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) statement sent to USA TODAY. "There are no plans by the AFRL Propulsion Directorate for additional funding on this contract."

Explaining why the lab sponsored the study, AFRL spokesman Ranney Adams said, "If we don't turn over stones, we don't know if we have missed something."

:spinning

 

[Anonymous]

The author of this report, Eric W Davies, is linked with the NIDS fringe science group;
I think they have been mentioned before...

the .pdf, which I have perused, doesn't make much distinction between only marginally impossible things and what I can only describe as concentrated boswellox.

Nevertheless, this appears to be a real USAF sponsored study; if the fly-boys can make one of these teleportation techniques work good luck to them.

 

[mendhak]

Air Force to study Psychic Teleportation

Seriously hope this hasn't been posted before!

Crackpot science?

Source

(edit: removed the quote as it's identical to the one quoted just above. Jane)

 

[mendhak]

Er... ok, I know I'm late, but I've been away, y'know?

(Thanks Mod for moving it!)

 

[Anonymous]

Can people stop pasting huge chunks of pointless texts please?, if you have nothing to say just paste a link and people will read it if they fancy.

No need to take up bandwidth and space pasting entire articles that are just a click away.

 

[Yithian]

Can people stop pasting huge chunks of pointless texts please?, if you have nothing to say just paste a link and people will read it if they fancy.

No need to take up bandwidth and space pasting entire articles that are just a click away.

Bandwidth and space are not a concern. The reason texts get quoted in their entirety is that the internet, being what it is, is not a stable or permanent archive: pages disappear regularly. This way we have copies of whatever information posters deem valuable on our own Fortean Archive here.

Don't think of the place as purely discussion-orientated. You'd possibly be suprised by the numbers who read but never join or post.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Can people stop pasting huge chunks of pointless texts please?, if you have nothing to say just paste a link and people will read it if they fancy.

No need to take up bandwidth and space pasting entire articles that are just a click away.

Bandwidth and space are not a concern. The reason texts get quoted in their entirety is that the internet, being what it is, is not a stable or permanent archive: pages disappear regularly. This way we have copies of whatever information posters deem valuable on our own Fortean Archive here.

Don't think of the place as purely discussion-orientated. You'd possibly be suprised by the numbers who read but never join or post.

Yep - anyone who has nosed some of the older discussions can attest to the fact that whole threads have been rendered virtually meaningless because the links don't work (sometimes it is even impossible to work out what it was all about). The FTMB is here to stay and so the older the links get the more likely it is that links will break.

It also makes it easier to search for things.

The actual bandwidth used is low - its all text after all (if there were a lot images being dropped into the thread there might be a problem).

 

[mejane]

Yep, agreed. Unless the text is so long that it would take an age to scroll through it, then post the text and a link to the source.

There's no need to repeat stories though, so I've deleted frog's quote (we'll let him off this time as he hadn't seen the earlier post).

Jane.

 

[Anonymous]

Fair Enough

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

‘Beam me up, general!’

Could ‘Star Trek’ technology help transport troops?

By Tom Costello
Correspondent
NBC News

Updated: 7:31 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2005

To anyone who's ever watched "Star Trek," teleportation is as basic as warp drives and dilithium crystals. But could science fiction become science fact? Is it possible to beam tanks and troops across the globe or behind enemy lines?

To find out, the propulsion research lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio — the same cutting-edge lab that helped bring stealth technology and lasers to the Air Force — commissioned a study.

"We have to be looking well into the future, not just the needs of tomorrow or even next year," says Col. Mike Heil, who directs the laboratory. "We're looking at perhaps 30 years."

The Air Force paid $25,000 to a researcher at a company in Las Vegas called Warp Drive Metrics.

What they got back was 78 pagesof mathematical calculations and diagrams. And after much talk of "wormholes" and "parallel universes," came a conclusion: "We are still very far away from being able to entangle and teleport human beings and bulk inanimate objects," reads page 46 of the report (PDF file).

In other words, says Heil: "The concept of transporting any large amount of matter is highly impractical and looks to be highly impractical well into the future."

Not according to "Capt. Kirk."

"I could lead this whole thing!" jokes actor William Shatner.

Now retired from Star Fleet, he says a transporter, not teleporter, would have great practical use.

"From my house to these studios and avoid the traffic, it would be incredible," says Shatner.

Source

 

[Anonymous]

Funny that The Fly was mentioned, I started a thread about it in the culture forum recently.

Damn forum ate my post, but what I was going to say was that there is NO answer as to the effect teleportation would have on individual conscience because we don't yet understand much of anything about individual conscience itself.

But I did posit something interesting.
If our bodies are constantly changing via the sloughing off of dead skin, the absorbing of chemicals/water particles/air particles/etc, the changes of life(grey hair and the like), the scars left by injury or disease, etc etc, then aren't we in a perpetual state of shifting consciousness anyway? From one second to another my physical body is not identical. Where is the line between dying and simply moving from one point in existance to another?

Of course, if you, like me, believe in the afterlife, you consider dying to be a movement from one point to another. But it doesn't involve switching physical bodies, but switching planes of existance(plane being dimension, layer, vibration, however you want to put it). So it isn't really applicable, except for one thing; what if teleportation produces the effect of death, where your consciousness is split from your body, but in a weaker way. Instead of permanantly exiting the body you merely blink out of it long enough to enter another.

And as for something totally frivolous but related, there's a Japanese anime show and game series I like called Rockman.EXE(based on the Rockman Battle Network games, based in turn on the Rockman games, otherwise known as MegaMan in the US). In the first game, the story goes that in the future people have personal devices much like a palmpilot but with an artificial intelligence onboard used to manage the personal device. At the end it turns out that the way Rockman, the main AI character, was created, was that the twin brother of the main human character(The "Owner" of Rockman so to say) died as a baby, and his DNA was converted into computer data, which was edited somewhat to become Rockman. Kind of freaky-morbid-fortean for a mostly lighthearted game. But at any rate, they actually say that he IS the main character's brother, and not just a copy, but they never explain how it worked.
So they had a chance to maybe introduce something new to the theories in fiction about deconstruction of the human body and mind into some other format, but they really didn't do much with it. Everyone just pretty much goes "Oh well" and goes on their merry way...
As much as I love the game(and the show), I think I prefer the way DNA-conversion goes in The Fly better, it makes more sense even if it's much more disgusting.

 

[wembley8]

"and his DNA was converted into computer data, which was edited somewhat to become Rockman"

Sounds like a bad copy of the outrageously brilliant Max Headroom, software superstar, golfer ands scourge of evil...

 

[Anonymous]

Yep. Not an unusual idea, I just noted it because it was relevant and because it's another cultural item using the concept(There's not many relating to DNA conversion) with no explanation for why it happens.
I don't think it's ever even mentioned in any of the other games, except perhaps the one that's not translated into english yet. Frankly if my mini-human-in-a-palmpilot turned out to be my brother, I'd be a bit disturbed/shocked for longer than a few seconds. :lol:
I found it peculiar that it was even in a game like that anyway, it's more cute and serving as a diversional type thing than anything, certainly not where you'd expect to find some fortean tidbit. Hopefully it'll be used in the television show, maybe they can come up with something coherant theory-wise there. Yeah, I know, a tv show intended for teenage boys isn't exactly the most likely source of any brilliant ideas regarding quantum physics/the future state of the internet/the boundary between the physical and the spiritual, but dammit, they brought it up, they need to deliver.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Love the conclusion:

Biblical accounts of teleportation

Posted 00:06am (Mla time) Feb 15, 2005
By Jaime Licauco
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page D3 of the February 15, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

TELEPORTATION is a psychic power that is not very common. Yet, we found two examples in the Bible.

But first let's try to understand the term. Teleportation is the power to make one's self disappear from one physical location and appear immediately in another without any physical means. It may also refer to the process by which the phenomenon takes place.

The most famous example of teleportation in the history of paranormal phenomena is the Filipino guardia civil during the Spanish era, who suddenly disappeared from his post in the governor general's palace and appeared in Mexico City half way around the world. The bewildered soldier could not explain how he got there.

When asked by Mexican authorities, he told them he was a guard at the Philippine governor general's palace and said the governor was assassinated. He was brought before church authorities who concluded he must be possessed by the devil and promptly put him in jail.

Some weeks later, a galleon ship from the Philippines arrived with a Philippine official who identified the guardia civil and confirmed everything he said. The Filipino was released and sent home on a ship.

First biblical case

In the Bible, a case of teleportation can be found in Acts of the Apostles (8:38-40). The apostle Philip rode on the chariot of a eunuch. When they came upon a small body of water, the eunuch asked Philip to baptize him. Philip disappeared afterward and found himself in another place where he preached the good news.

Here's the Biblical account:

"He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesaria."

Second case

Another example of teleportation in the Bible can be found in John (6:16-21). Jesus and his disciples were out at sea, three to five miles from the shore. When Jesus stepped into the boat, they found themselves immediately at the shore. Here's the King James Bible's description of the incident:

"And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and 20 or 30 furlongs, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. But He saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. Then they willingly received Him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went."

A clue

How teleportation takes place is still not clear. Science has absolutely no explanation. However, the modern science of Quantum Physics seems to hold a clue. Quantum physicists discovered that the smallest or quantum particle of matter could disappear in one orbit and immediately appear in another. If this can happen at the quantum level, why can it not happen at the macro level?

The physicists also found that at the smallest level, thought or consciousness could affect behavior of matter.

This helps explain what happened to my friend. Benny and Nora and their teenaged daughter lived in San Juan, Metro Manila. One evening the couple went to the movies while their daughter spent the night at a friend's. When they got home, Benny discovered to his horror that he forgot the key to the front door, and nobody could open it for them.

Benny asked his wife to see if there was a partly open window at the back that they could use to get into the house. As his wife walked away, Benny stood in front of the main door angry at himself and wishing he could figure out a way to get inside.

All of a sudden, he blacked out, losing consciousness momentarily. When he opened his eyes, he was inside the house. He opened the door just as his wife returned to report she could find no opening at the back.

As he opened the door from the inside, she exclaimed, "How did you get in? Did you find the key?" When he told her what happened, she, of course, couldn't believe it. But both were relieved they did not have to destroy the lock of their rented house at such late hour.

I have heard several other interesting stories of teleportation but do not have the space for them.

As the Bible itself attests to the phenomenon's existence, I suppose there is no reason to doubt its reality.

Source

 

[Dingo667]

Has anyone read the shortstory by Stephen King (can't remember what it was called), about this family which is about to be teleported to Mars to start a new life and as they sit on their chairs, a nice stewardess comes and gives everyone a pill to knock them out. The little boy who is with them keeps asking questions and the dad explains that it is necessary to be unconscious but nobody knows why. So when they "arrive" on the other side, their little boy has grey hair and apart from drooling and pulling his skin off his face (ahh I love old Stephen), they can just about understand him mumbling: "It takes so long, it takes an eternity"... or something like that. Which was nice...
Imagine teleportation in the sense of disassembly-assembly and lets say your "soul" can travel too, what would you feel/ think in those moments?

Furthermore I think that kind of teleportation is a dead herring (not red), there is no way...but as others have mentioned there are many other ways to do it. I believe we could sent someone somehow through a wormhole or a fold in space. :goof:

 

[Anonymous]

Has anyone read the shortstory by Stephen King (can't remember what it was called), about this family which is about to be teleported to Mars...

The Jaunt. "It's forever in there!" - says the hideous wizened child with the rheumy, insane eyes. Good story

 

[Dingo667]

Thats the one, thanks!

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Teleportation: Express Lane Space Travel

Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
SPACE.comFri Jul 8,12:06 PM ET

Think Star Trek: You are here. You want to go there. It's just a matter of teleportation.

Thanks to lab experiments, there is growth in the number of "beam me up" believers, but there is an equal amount of disbelief, too.

Over the last few years, however, researchers have successfully teleported beams of light across a laboratory bench. Also, the quantum state of a trapped calcium ion to another calcium ion has been teleported in a controlled way.

These and other experiments all make for heady and heavy reading in scientific journals. The reports would have surely found a spot on Einstein's night table. For the most part, it's an exotic amalgam of things like quantum this and quantum that, wave function, qubits and polarization, as well as uncertainty principle, excited states and entanglement.

Seemingly, milking all this highbrow physics to flesh out point-to-point human teleportation is a long, long way off.

Well, maybe...maybe not.

A trillion trillion atoms

In his new book, Teleportation - The Impossible Leap, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., writer David Darling contends that ""One way or another, teleportation is going to play a major role in all our futures. It will be a fundamental process at the heart of quantum computers, which will themselves radically change the world."

Darling suggests that some form of classical teleportation and replication for inanimate objects also seems inevitable. But whether humans can make the leap, well, that remains to be seen.

Teleporting a person would require a machine that isolates, appraises, and keeps track of over a trillion trillion atoms that constitute the human body, then sends that data to another locale for reassembly--and hopefully without mussing up your physical and mental makeup.

"One thing is certain: if that impossible leap turns out to be merely difficult--a question of simply overcoming technical challenges--it will someday be accomplished," Darling predicts.

In this regard, Darling writes that the quantum computer "is the joker in the deck, the factor that changes the rules of what is and isn't possible."

Just last month, in fact, scientists at Hewlett Packard announced that they've hammered out a new tactic for a creating a quantum computer—using switches of light beams rather than today's run of the mill, transistor-laden devices. What's in the offing is hardware capable of making calculations billions of times faster than any silicon-based computer.

Given quantum computers and the networking of these devices, Darling senses the day may not be far off for routine teleportation of individual atoms and molecules. That would lead to teleportation of macromolecules and microbeswith, perhaps, human teleportation to follow.

Space teleportation

What could teleportation do for future space endeavors?

"We can see the first glimmerings of teleportation in space exploration today," said Darling, responding to questions sent via e-mail by SPACE.com to his home office near Dundee, Scotland.

"Strictly speaking, teleportation is about getting from A to B without passing through the points between A and B. In other words, something dematerializes in one place, then simply rematerializes somewhere else," Darling said.

Darling pointed out that the Spirit and Opportunity rovers had to get to Mars by conventional means. However, their mission and actions are controlled by commands sent from Earth.

"So by beaming up instructions, we effectively complete the configuration of the spacecraft. Also, the camera eyes and other equipment of the rovers serve as vicarious extensions of our own senses. So you might say the effect is as if we had personally teleported to the Martian surface," Darling said.

Spooky action at a distance

In the future it might be possible to assemble spacecraft "on-the-spot" using local materials. "That would be a further step along the road to true teleportation," Darling added.

To take this idea to its logical endpoint, Darling continued, that's when nanotechnology enters the scene.

When nanotechnology is mature, an automated assembly unit could be sent to a destination. On arrival, it would build the required robot explorer from the molecular level up.

"Bona fide quantum teleportation, as applied to space travel, would mean sending a supply of entangled particles to the target world then use what Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance' to make these particles assume the exact state of another collection of entangled particles back on Earth," Darling speculated.

Doing so opens the prospect for genuinely teleporting a robot vehicle--or even an entire human crew--across interplanetary or, in the long run, across interstellar distances, Darling said.

"Certainly, if it becomes possible to teleport humans," Darling said, "you can envisage people hopping to the Moon or to other parts of the solar system, as quickly and as easily as we move data around the Internet today."

UFO connection?

If indeed we are to become a space teleporting civilization, what about other advanced civilizations circling distant stars? Perhaps they have already mastered mass transportation via teleportation?

One might even be drawn to consider that mode of travel in connection with purported UFO visitation of Earth.

"Any strange comings and goings are candidates for teleportation, although you would obviously have to eliminate all mundane explanations first," Darling responded. "According to reports, some UFOs do appear and disappear quite abruptly, which would fit in with the basic idea of teleportation," he said.

Darling said that interstellar teleportation would be one way to circumvent the light barrier, "although, as we understand the process now, you would need to make a sub-light trip first to set up the teleportation receiver and assembler at the destination."

Quantum teleportation, Darling pointed out is the kind we can do at the subatomic level in the lab today. And that requires equipment at both ends to be able to work.

"Extraterrestrial intelligence that is thousands or millions of years ahead of us will certainly be teleportation experts," Darling advised, "if the technology can be implemented at the macroscopic biological level."

What possible outcome, then, from ET successfully tinkering with teleportation?

"We might expect advanced aliens to be occasionally beaming in to check on our progress as a species," Darling concluded.

------
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[Anonymous]

I must start reading David Darling's books; his website is excellent
http://www.daviddarling.info/
especially the encyclopedia
see this page for an example
http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... ation.html

I did join his now defunct forum; perhaps he will start it up again.

Full quantum teleportation of a human could take 10e30 bits of quantum information; an unfeasible large number of bits which would take thousands or millions of years to send to a distant star. So perhaps not very practical.
That is why I would opt for the non-quantum teleportation, which does allow multiple copies as well (while quantum copying does not).

 

[Anonymous]

Teleporting a person would require a machine that isolates, appraises, and keeps track of over a trillion trillion atoms that constitute the human body, then sends that data to another locale for reassembly—and hopefully without mussing up your physical and mental makeup.

I disagree - it is not necessary (theoretically) to do all that with each particle of a person or thing.

I suggest that it would be possible for the computer to analyse and remember a metaphysical box, and inside the box, a series of patterns that make a whole. Once remembered, moved from A to B - one box to another if you like.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

:miaow:

 

[badotaku]

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Or indeed a human... or is that what we're trying to avoid?

Teleportation for the foreseeable future (as a method of useful transportation) is a pipe-dream, but boy would I not like to be the first human to step inside. "One small step for man... one argghhhhhhhhhh!" -zap- No thank you!

Perhaps it would be more possible to digitise and replace the brain and consciousness with a computer that can subsequently be downloaded to a new body in another location... a la Ghost in the Shell: Man Machine Interface, or several other sci-fi films.

To be honest, I'd still not want to be the first test subject

 

[Anome]

The chief problem with most ideas for teleportation is that we don't really know what makes one individual that particular individual. If we do a complete scan of a person's body, brain, etc, on whatever scale and build it back up from a pile of components on the other side of the room, is that second person the same individual.

On current theories, we would guess not. The scale of how we do it isn't important. The only way we can guarantee to transport an individual is to actually transport that individual. Whether one molecule at a time, or as a complete person.

I also don't want to be first. Come to think of it, I don't know that I would ever want to go through that thing.

 

[Anonymous]

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Or indeed a human... or is that what we're trying to avoid?

Teleportation for the foreseeable future (as a method of useful transportation) is a pipe-dream, but boy would I not like to be the first human to step inside. "One small step for man... one argghhhhhhhhhh!" -zap- No thank you!

Perhaps it would be more possible to digitise and replace the brain and consciousness with a computer that can subsequently be downloaded to a new body in another location... a la Ghost in the Shell: Man Machine Interface, or several other sci-fi films.

To be honest, I'd still not want to be the first test subject

Have you heard about "claytronics"?

You can read about it at www.newscientist.com

They take some nano dust, and tell it to get together to form a 3D copy of you that moves in realtime, as if you were really there!

Apparently it would replace video calling.

 

[badotaku]

Have you heard about "claytronics"?

You can read about it at www.newscientist.com

Unfortunately you need a subscription to read more than a few paragraphs, but I got the gist... An incredible idea, although one might question how close we are to having intelligent dust

But does this mean we'd all look like Morph?

 

[CygnusRex]

Report: Scientists 'teleport' two photons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scientists in Germany say they have successfully teleported the combined quantum state of two photons.

That achievement is said to be the first for a composite system, and the researchers say their approach could lead to new ways to harness quantum effects for communication and computational purposes.

A quantum-mechanical system is characterized by a set of properties that can exist in certain possible states. For example, one property of a photon is polarization, the state of which can be horizontal, vertical or a mixture of the two. Quantum teleportation transfers the state -- in this case of the polarization -- of one object to another, which can be an arbitrary distance away.

Teleportation does not transfer energy or matter, the scientists noted.

Teleportation of quantum states involving more than one particle -- as now shown by Qiang Zhang and colleagues in the Physics Institute at the University of Heidelberg -- promise secure information exchange and the ability to solve certain tasks faster than any classical computer.

The authors' experiment lasted several days, but with further improvements they say their process might become of more practical value.

The research is reported in the current issue of the journal Nature Physics.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Source

If I am reading this correctly, by the application of a bit of tangential (and frankly ridiculous) thinking, you could copy an object to another location whilst still leaving the original where it was. Intergalactic photocopying.

 

[ramonmercado]

Quantum Teleportation Between Distant Matter Qubits: First Between Atoms 1 Meter Apart
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 141137.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2009) — For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.

Teleportation may be nature's most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.

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.

"Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale 'quantum repeater' that can network quantum memories over vast distances," says group leader Christopher Monroe of JQI and UMD. "Moreover, our methods can be used in conjunction with quantum bit operations to create a key component needed for quantum computation." A quantum computer could perform certain tasks, such as encryption-related calculations and searches of giant databases, considerably faster than conventional machines. The effort to devise a working model is a matter of intense interest worldwide.

Teleportation works because of a remarkable quantum phenomenon, called "entanglement," which only occurs on the atomic and subatomic scale. Once two objects are put in an entangled state, their properties are inextricably entwined. Although those properties are inherently unknowable until a measurement is made, measuring either one of the objects instantly determines the characteristics of the other, no matter how far apart they are.

The JQI team set out to entangle the quantum states of two individual ytterbium ions so that information embodied in the condition of one could be teleported to the other. Each ion was isolated in a separate high-vacuum trap, suspended in an invisible cage of electromagnetic fields and surrounded by metal electrodes. [See illustrations.] The researchers identified two readily discernible ground (lowest energy) states of the ions that would serve as the alternative "bit" values of an atomic quantum bit, or qubit.

Conventional electronic bits (short for binary digits), such as those in a personal computer, are always in one of two states: off or on, 0 or 1, high or low voltage, etc. Quantum bits, however, can be in some combination, called a "superposition," of both states at the same time, like a coin that is simultaneously heads and tails – until a measurement is made. It is this phenomenon that gives quantum computation its extraordinary power.

At the start of the experimental process, each ion (designated A and B) is initialized in a given ground state. Then ion A is irradiated with a specially tailored microwave burst from one of its cage electrodes, placing the ion in some desired superposition of the two qubit states – in effect writing into memory the information to be teleported.

Immediately thereafter, both ions are excited by a picosecond (one trillionth of a second) laser pulse. The pulse duration is so short that each ion emits only a single photon as it sheds the energy gained from the laser pulse and falls back to one or the other of the two qubit ground states. Depending on which one it falls into, each ion emits a photon whose color (designated red and blue) is perfectly correlated with the two atomic qubit states. It is this entanglement between each atomic qubit and its photon that will eventually allow the atoms themselves to become entangled.

The emitted photons are captured by lenses, routed to separate strands of fiber-optic cable, and carried into opposite sides of a 50-50 beamsplitter where it is equally probable for either photon to pass straight through the splitter or to be reflected. On either side of the beamsplitter output are detectors that can record the arrival of a single photon.

Before reaching the beamsplitter, each photon is in a superposition of states. After encountering the beamsplitter, four color combinations are possible: blue-blue, red-red, blue-red and red-blue. In nearly all of those variations, the photons cancel each other out on one side and both end up in the same detector on the other side. But there is one – and only one – combination in which both detectors will record a photon at exactly the same time.

In that case, however, it is physically impossible to tell which ion produced which photon because it cannot be known whether the photon arriving at a detector passed through the beamsplitter or was reflected by it.

Thanks to the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics, that inherent uncertainty projects the ions into an entangled state. That is, each ion is in a correlated superposition of the two possible qubit states. The simultaneous detection of photons at the detectors does not occur often, so the laser stimulus and photon emission process has to be repeated many thousands of times per second. But when a photon appears in each detector, it is an unambiguous signature of entanglement between the ions.

When an entangled condition is identified, the scientists immediately take a measurement of ion A. The act of measurement forces it out of superposition and into a definite condition: one of the two qubit states. But because ion A's state is irreversibly tied to ion B's, the measurement of A also forces B into a complementary state. Depending on which state ion A is found in, the researchers now know precisely what kind of microwave pulse to apply to ion B in order to recover the exact information that had originally been stored in ion A. Doing so results in the accurate teleportation of the information.

What distinguishes this outcome as teleportation, rather than any other form of communication, is that no information pertaining to the original memory actually passes between ion A and ion B. Instead, the information disappears when ion A is measured and reappears when the microwave pulse is applied to ion B.

"One particularly attractive aspect of our method is that it combines the unique advantages of both photons and atoms," says Monroe. "Photons are ideal for transferring information fast over long distances, whereas atoms offer a valuable medium for long-lived quantum memory. The combination represents an attractive architecture for a 'quantum repeater,' that would allow quantum information to be communicated over much larger distances than can be done with just photons. Also, the teleportation of quantum information in this way could form the basis of a new type of quantum internet that could outperform any conventional type of classical network for certain tasks."

 

[ramonmercado]

Tuning up for teleportation
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37770

A new technique for controlling the speed of “teleportation” in quantum systems has been created by physicists in the US and the UK. The researchers have demonstrated a way of “tuning” beams of light to distribute quantum information to specific points in space and time. Manipulating and storing data in this way is an important step towards developing new communication devices and eventually a quantum computer, say the researchers.

In quantum teleportation, the sender (Alice) instantaneously transfers the quantum state of a particle to a receiver (Bob). In 1997 physicists captured public attention by teleporting quantum states between “entangled” photons for the first time. Entanglement is a feature of quantum mechanics that allows particles with two distinct quantum states to share a much closer relationship than classical physics allows.

Over the intervening 12 years teleportation has been demonstrated over increasing distances and between larger particles.

Now, Alberto Marino and colleagues have addressed a different challenge of quantum computing – the need to control the flow of quantum information. In the experiment, two beams of light were “entangled” then slowed down in a controlled manner as they passed through a cloud of hot rubidium vapour (Nature:2009.10.1038).

“In classic computing, information needs to arrive at the processor just at the right time. In quantum computing, exactly the same is true,” says Marino, a quantum-information researcher at the University of Maryland.

Harnessing the random
Until now researchers have sought to develop quantum memory for long-term data storage. Unfortunately, these systems have been highly inefficient, losing at least 80 % of the data. By slowing the speed of quantum data flow, Marino and colleagues have created a short-term memory device that is, according to the researchers, significantly more reliable.

Firstly the team split a laser beam into two before firing the it at a cloud of hot rubidium gas. Rubidium atoms have just one loosely bound electron in the outer shell, leading to a gas that is highly nonlinear in the way it interacts with light. Within the gas the incoming laser beams become entangled in a process known as “four-wave mixing”.

Quantum information is then carried in the form of fluctuations in the phase and intensity of the beams. Initially, the information travels at the speed of light but is then slowed in a controlled way in the atomic vapour.

“This type of delay will be essential for the realization of quantum networks,” says Hans-Albert Bachor, a quantum-computing researcher at the Australian National University.

Applications?
Using this mechanism, detection of quantum information was delayed for up to 27 nanoseconds. “Our quantum ‘images’ are the equivalent of the data buses in digital computers,” says Marino. The reason this delay could not be even longer is that the longer data are stored, the more noise is introduced. “Our next challenge is to preserve the quantum correlations while maintaining their quality,” said Vincent Boyer, also at the University of Maryland.

In Bachor's opinion, it is too early to consider applications for this system, but this is "limited only by our imagination”.

“Short term applications might include quantum sensors; these could work with only short fractional delays,” said Boris Blinov, a quantum systems researcher at the University of Washington.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Heard about this on Dutch Radio 1 news, today. Bit of a first for the Netherlands.

http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/05/30/tu-delft-scientists-teleport-data/

Delft scientists first to teleport data

NLTimes.nl. Posted by Marvin Hokstam, May, 2014


Scientists at TU Delft have achieved teleportation of data between two unconnected computers.

Research published in scientific journal Science yesterday says the scientists moved the data over a three-meter distance using quantum entanglement without the information straying into intervening space.

Quantum entanglement says that two separate elements become connected with a shared identity. Entangled elements behave as one, even when they are taken apart. One of the researchers involved, Ronald Hanson, called quantum entanglement as “maybe the strangest and most intriguing result of the laws of quantum mechanics.”

The data the scientists teleported was placed in quantumbits of diamond that could be used for a future quantum computer, and perhaps even a new concept for the internet. The advantage of such a quantum network is that it transports information securely, making eavesdropping difficult.

The scientists hope to repeat the experiment in the summer, sending data over 1,300 meters.

Will be interesting to see how this story develops.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Fancy that! The Dutch invent a new use for diamonds.

 

[Vardoger]

Teleportations recorded on video. A few of them might be explained easily.