3 ms·

So what's the meaning here? I've been reading similar (to a non quantum physicist) stories for years and RTFA. What will this change about my life?

jerf 16y ago
It sounds to me like it's an incremental improvement on existing technique, which the researchers are justifiably excited about, and through the Mighty Power of Mass-Market Science Journalism (TM) it becomes something that has never been done before, instead of it "merely" being done better than ever before. Photons have definitely been "teleported" before, as have individual atoms [1]. Though I scare-quote the word because it doesn't really precisely correspond to what people think of when they hear the term. It's interesting, but it's not a breakthrough, nor does it herald any sort of advance in anything resembling Star Trek transporters, though to its credit I think this is the first Mass Market Science Journalism (TM) article on quantum teleportation I've seen that managed to avoid that faulty comparison, so points for that I guess. [1]: http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achi... (which I would note fails the Star Trek test)
fragsworth 16y ago
Minimum round trip time between San Francisco and Tokyo is about 60ms due to the speed of light, which means in practice FPS games are unplayable across the ocean. If they manage to implement this shit, we'll be able to have FPS games hosted anywhere in the world!
- jerf 16y ago
  This technology can not be used for faster-than-light communication. If it could, this would orders of magnitude larger news than it is.
- iwjames 16y ago
  Heh, I wish. Unfortunately, the word teleport here does not mean what everybody immediately thinks. Otherwise, this would mean sooo much more than lower latency gaming.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  If we could actually break causality, playing games would be the last thing on our minds.
  - sp332 16y ago
    If causality is broken, how do you know it wasn't the first thing on our minds? :P
flashingleds 16y ago
Quantum optics is outside my realm of expertise; to be honest my eyes kind of glaze over whenever these guys give a talk. The real life applications of this are not really teleportation in the "beam me up sense" but more along the lines of encryption. If your transmission is based on quantum entangled photon states, it is physically impossible to eavesdrop without giving yourself away, since the act of eavesdropping 'collapses the quantum superposition' (like when you open the box with Schrodingers cat). They've actually already rolled out systems based on this technology in various places in the world, but there is a lot of work to improve bandwidth and so forth. I won't say too much more as I'm well outside the field and will probably garble it.

jerf 16y ago

It sounds to me like it's an incremental improvement on existing technique, which the researchers are justifiably excited about, and through the Mighty Power of Mass-Market Science Journalism (TM) it becomes something that has never been done before, instead of it "merely" being done better than ever before. Photons have definitely been "teleported" before, as have individual atoms [1]. Though I scare-quote the word because it doesn't really precisely correspond to what people think of when they hear the term. It's interesting, but it's not a breakthrough, nor does it herald any sort of advance in anything resembling Star Trek transporters, though to its credit I think this is the first Mass Market Science Journalism (TM) article on quantum teleportation I've seen that managed to avoid that faulty comparison, so points for that I guess. [1]: http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achi... (which I would note fails the Star Trek test)

fragsworth 16y ago

Minimum round trip time between San Francisco and Tokyo is about 60ms due to the speed of light, which means in practice FPS games are unplayable across the ocean. If they manage to implement this shit, we'll be able to have FPS games hosted anywhere in the world!

jerf 16y ago
This technology can not be used for faster-than-light communication. If it could, this would orders of magnitude larger news than it is.
iwjames 16y ago
Heh, I wish. Unfortunately, the word teleport here does not mean what everybody immediately thinks. Otherwise, this would mean sooo much more than lower latency gaming.
burgerbrain 16y ago
If we could actually break causality, playing games would be the last thing on our minds.
- sp332 16y ago
  If causality is broken, how do you know it wasn't the first thing on our minds? :P

flashingleds 16y ago

Quantum optics is outside my realm of expertise; to be honest my eyes kind of glaze over whenever these guys give a talk. The real life applications of this are not really teleportation in the "beam me up sense" but more along the lines of encryption. If your transmission is based on quantum entangled photon states, it is physically impossible to eavesdrop without giving yourself away, since the act of eavesdropping 'collapses the quantum superposition' (like when you open the box with Schrodingers cat). They've actually already rolled out systems based on this technology in various places in the world, but there is a lot of work to improve bandwidth and so forth. I won't say too much more as I'm well outside the field and will probably garble it.