Straight out of Star Trek

[Faithless]

Bizarre is right.

Remember Star Trek's communicator. Today's cell phones remind me of it.

Now --
'Teleported' atom features may speed up computers

Thursday, June 17, 2004

By Malcolm Ritter, The Associated Press

In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon so bizarre that even Albert Einstein called it spooky.

Such "quantum teleportation" of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light.

The work with atoms is "a landmark advance," H.J. Kimble of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and S.J. van Enk of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., declare in today's issue of the journal Nature.

Two teams of scientists report similar results in that issue. One group was led by David J. Wineland of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., and the other by Rainer Blatt of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Teleportation between atoms could someday lie at the heart of powerful quantum computers, which are probably at least a decade away from development, Wineland said. Although his work moved information about atomic characteristics only a tiny fraction of an inch, that's in the ballpark for what would be needed inside a computer, he said.

His work involved transmitting characteristics between pairs of beryllium atoms, while the Austrian work used pairs of calcium atoms. Each atom's "quantum state," a complex combination of traits, was transmitted to its counterpart.

Key to the process was a phenomenon called entanglement, which Einstein derided as "spooky action at a distance" before experiments showed it was real.

Basically, researchers can use lab techniques to create a weird relationship between pairs of tiny particles. After that, the fate of one particle instantly affects the other; if one particle is made to take on a certain set of properties, the other immediately takes on identical or opposite properties, no matter how far away it is and without any apparent physical connection to the first particle.

[lena99]

Yeah!!!
That makes me so thrilled, and I barely even understand the science behind it.

[Faithless]

Come to think of it, it is exciting.

I might be thinking way beyond its use, but transportation of basic elements like oxygen and water, across space to space colonies might be a possibility.

By the way, any mod:

The title should read "Straight out of Star Trek"

[mr. x]

meh, star trek never really impressed me all thta much

id much rather be in a more star warsy universe

no currency? puhleeze

[Kuchana]

I'm just waiting until we get to teleport! Now that's the exciting part.

[Faithless]

Originally Posted by Kuchana

I'm just waiting until we get to teleport! Now that's the exciting part.

Not to sound like a geek killjoy, I doubt that would ever be successful.

My thinking is that the best we can hope for is teleporting elements and compounds and maybe inanimate objects.

But I think the human body and mind is too complex for this stuff.

[TB4000]

This title reminds me of that NWA song, Straight Outta Compton. Now I have images of Shatner, Nimoy, and Doohan busting mad flows while Nichelle Nichols aka Uhura is in the background as a video ho. And can't forget to add in Sulu as the trademark asian dude that's so prominent in hip hop videos these days. And those phones frighten me.

[Faithless]

Originally Posted by TB4000

This title reminds me of that NWA song, Straight Outta Compton. Now I have images of Shatner, Nimoy, and Doohan busting mad flows while Nichelle Nichols aka Uhura is in the background as a video ho. And can't forget to add in Sulu as the trademark asian dude that's so prominent in hip hop videos these days. And those phones frighten me.

Hmmm. How's this:

When I'm teleported, I get sort of deported
Flip the switch, and bodies get transported
You too, boy, if ya fuck with me
The Federation is gonna hafta come and get me
Phaser for yo ass, that's how I'm goin out
For the punk motherfuckers that's showin out
Romulans start to mumble, they gonna stumble
Torch alien bitches before they start to rumble

[rice cracker]

Originally Posted by ChottoMatte

Hmmm. How's this:

When I'm teleported, I get sort of deported
Flip the switch, and bodies get transported
You too, boy, if ya fuck with me
The Federation is gonna hafta come and get me
Phaser for yo ass, that's how I'm goin out
For the punk motherfuckers that's showin out
Romulans start to mumble, they gonna stumble
Torch alien bitches before they start to rumble

You. Are such. A freaking. Nerd.

[Kuchana]

Originally Posted by ChottoMatte

Not to sound like a geek killjoy, I doubt that would ever be successful.

My thinking is that the best we can hope for is teleporting elements and compounds and maybe inanimate objects.

But I think the human body and mind is too complex for this stuff.

Well a girl can't help but hope right??

[kitty]

that is exceptionally cool. how do they connect them?

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Orson Scott Card predicted this one in "Speaker for the Dead", but he figured it would be a long distance communications device, rather than being used to overcome the limit of the speed of electrical propagation over micrometer-scale distances.

[onnihs]

Basically, researchers can use lab techniques to create a weird relationship between pairs of tiny particles. After that, the fate of one particle instantly affects the other; if one particle is made to take on a certain set of properties, the other immediately takes on identical or opposite properties, no matter how far away it is and without any apparent physical connection to the first particle.

O_O I want to research THAT a bit more... sounds intruiging as hell.

[mr. x]

Originally Posted by KuroBishounen

Well, I don't mind the miniskirts and go-go boots....

speaking of which

ive always figured the first thing trekkies would want is not the teleporters or phasers but the holodeck, u know with the illusions and stuff

and not so they can go in and shake ghandi's hand

[Faithless]

From nature.com itself:

Nature 429, 734 - 737 (17 June 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02570



Deterministic quantum teleportation with atoms

M. RIEBE1, H. HÄFFNER1, C. F. ROOS1, W. HÄNSEL1, J. BENHELM1, G. P. T. LANCASTER1, T. W. KÖRBER1, C. BECHER1, F. SCHMIDT-KALER1, D. F. V. JAMES2 & R. BLATT1,3

1 Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstrae 25, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
2 Theoretical Division T-4, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM 87545, USA
3 Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Technikerstrae 25, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria


Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to R.B. (Rainer.Blatt@uibk.ac.at)




Teleportation of a quantum state encompasses the complete transfer of information from one particle to another. The complete specification of the quantum state of a system generally requires an infinite amount of information, even for simple two-level systems (qubits). Moreover, the principles of quantum mechanics dictate that any measurement on a system immediately alters its state, while yielding at most one bit of information. The transfer of a state from one system to another (by performing measurements on the first and operations on the second) might therefore appear impossible. However, it has been shown that the entangling properties of quantum mechanics, in combination with classical communication, allow quantum-state teleportation to be performed. Teleportation using pairs of entangled photons has been demonstrated, but such techniques are probabilistic, requiring post-selection of measured photons. Here, we report deterministic quantum-state teleportation between a pair of trapped calcium ions. Following closely the original proposal, we create a highly entangled pair of ions and perform a complete Bell-state measurement involving one ion from this pair and a third source ion. State reconstruction conditioned on this measurement is then performed on the other half of the entangled pair. The measured fidelity is 75%, demonstrating unequivocally the quantum nature of the process.