One small step for a man, one giant leap for teleportation

A cool development.


By Dong Ngo, CNET News
We've still got a long way to go before human beings can be beamed from one place to another "Star Trek"-style, but a team of scientists at the University of Maryland has achieved, nonetheless, a milestone in teleportation.

According to the Web site LiveScience, the university's Joint Quantum Institute for the first time was able to teleport information between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter -- about one step for an adult.

Generally, teleportation works thanks to a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement, which occurs only on the atomic and subatomic scale. Once two objects are put in an entangled state, their properties are inextricably entwined. In layman's terms, if they are in entangled mode, what you "see" on one is what you get on the other.

The JQI team set out to entangle the quantum states of two individual ytterbium ions so information embodied in 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.

After that, the experiment worked like this: Single photons from each of the two ions in separate traps interacted at a beam splitter. When both detectors recorded a photon simultaneously, the ions were entangled. At that point, ion A was measured, revealing exactly what operation had to be performed on ion B to teleport ion A's information (see illustration above).

It's important to note that the achievement is not any form of conventional communication. This is because in teleportation no information pertaining to the original object actually travels to the other. Instead, the information measured from the first object appears on the second object.

The research was supported in part by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity program under U.S. Army Research Office contract.

Interesting, though I'm not sure I understand it!

Steve, last year I read "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil. He touches on the subject of teleportation. It's hard to explain his ideas outside the context of his book, but essentially he considers everything information. His idea is to transport the data defining the subject of teleportation at the speed of light to another location at which it can be built. I think you would find this book interesting.

Beam me up, Scotty.

Once more a reminder of how many discoveries have been made by following up on an idea from the fertile imagination of a fiction writer. How many items from the old 'Star Trek' are now in everyday usage?

Rod H. Wrote:

OldBloke Wrote:

i did that once but used unobtainium that i extracted from boranni wheels