Scientists Teleport Atomic Properties For The First Time

[LaMerVipere]

LONDON – It is not quite the "Beam me up Scotty" teleportation of Star Trek, but teams of scientists said Wednesday they had made properties jump from one atom to another without using any physical link.

Physicists in the United States and Austria for the first time have teleported "quantum states" between separate atoms.

The breakthrough may not yet make it possible for people to disappear and reappear somewhere else, like actors in a science fiction television show. But it could help lead to "quantum computing" technology that would make superfast computers.

Quantum states include physical properties such as energy, motion and magnetic field.

"We've done it for the first time with massive particles, with atoms," Rainer Blatt, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Quantum computing requires manipulation of information contained in the quantum states of the atoms.

"Using teleportation as we've reported could allow logic operations to be performed much more quickly," physicist David Wineland, the leader of the NIST team, explained in a statement.

click here for full Yahoo! News article

 

[MongoTheGeek]

LONDON – It is not quite the "Beam me up Scotty" teleportation of Star Trek, but teams of scientists said Wednesday they had made properties jump from one atom to another without using any physical link.

Physicists in the United States and Austria for the first time have teleported "quantum states" between separate atoms.

The breakthrough may not yet make it possible for people to disappear and reappear somewhere else, like actors in a science fiction television show. But it could help lead to "quantum computing" technology that would make superfast computers.

Quantum states include physical properties such as energy, motion and magnetic field.

"We've done it for the first time with massive particles, with atoms," Rainer Blatt, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Quantum computing requires manipulation of information contained in the quantum states of the atoms.

"Using teleportation as we've reported could allow logic operations to be performed much more quickly," physicist David Wineland, the leader of the NIST team, explained in a statement.

click here for full Yahoo! News article

I wonder how they did it. There was work done that disassembled matter, changed it to light and the reassembled it. If they combined that with the light teleporting it would be one thing, If they just up and teleported matter it would be something different.

So who figures we'll have teleporters before we have warp drive. I would say smart money is on phasers. We seem to have surpassed StarTrek in terms of computers, and are catching up quick in terms of medicine.

 

[Savage Henry]

We seem to have surpassed StarTrek in terms of computers, and are catching up quick in terms of medicine.

Yeah, but we are still well behind Seth Brundle

 

[takao]

man and yesterday i wondered what the small camera crew was doing at the university when i was going upstairs (boring lesson called "software development II"...)

at least some professors are doing something (sadly not the ones from computer science)

 

[Abstract]

I wonder how they know that they teleported "quantum properties"? Once they teleport these properties and observe the result, they change the atomic properties of the particle, so unless they teleported the properties and didn't bother checking to see that it worked, I'm not so sure about this.

On the other hand, the NIST website is a great source of info for me, and they're probably much smarter, so I'll shut up.

 

[takao]

http://heart-c704.uibk.ac.at/RecentResults/QuantumTeleportationE.html

if anybody is interested in pictures of the experimental setup (man that looks difficult) and scientists

 

[leftbanke7]

I wonder how they know that they teleported "quantum properties"? Once they teleport these properties and observe the result, they change the atomic properties of the particle, so unless they teleported the properties and didn't bother checking to see that it worked, I'm not so sure about this.

On the other hand, the NIST website is a great source of info for me, and they're probably much smarter, so I'll shut up.

Great question. I had forgotton that observing quantum activity makes it no longer quantum.

 

[agreenster]

I think it might be possible for scientists to one day "teleport" matter, but never humans. Once their particles were reassembled, wouldn't they be dead?

Quantum computing sounds cool. I have no idea what it is.

 

[MongoTheGeek]

I think it might be possible for scientists to one day "teleport" matter, but never humans. Once their particles were reassembled, wouldn't they be dead?

Quantum computing sounds cool. I have no idea what it is.

Not if reassembled in a quantumly identical state.

You wouldn't even have to get it perfect. Does it really matter that the spin in a hydrogen atom in your left big toe is up or down?