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Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

abc.net.au

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Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#5
One thing that isn't clear in this article is whether they really teleportated it, meaning that they were able to transfer information instantaneously from point A to point B (which would go against Einstein's relativity law that states that nothing can go faster than the speed of light), or if they just transported a light beam from one point to another with regular means of communication.

It sounds more like it's the later case, and the word "teleportation" here is probably more a link bait than anything else.

And in any case, the title in the article is horrible: "Scientists teleport Schrodinger's cat"

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#7

One thing that isn't clear in this article is whether they really teleportated it, meaning that they were able to transfer information instantaneously from point A to point B (which would go against Einstein's relativity law that states that nothing can go faster than the speed of light), or if they just transported a light beam from one point to another with regular means of communication. It sounds more like it's t…

Quantum teleportation does not allow for faster than light transmission of information.

"It does not transport the system itself, nor does it allow communication of information at superluminal (faster than light) speed." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Quantum_telep...

I doubt this is different.

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#9

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?

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-achi... (which I would note fails the Star Trek test)

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#10

One thing that isn't clear in this article is whether they really teleportated it, meaning that they were able to transfer information instantaneously from point A to point B (which would go against Einstein's relativity law that states that nothing can go faster than the speed of light), or if they just transported a light beam from one point to another with regular means of communication. It sounds more like it's t…

This is not FTL no, that's still impossible and if they'd done -that- this would be a big deal indeed.

What this allows is simply transmitting "quantum information" from one place to another with any reliability at all, by packing it with classical information that helps accomplish that (being the macro-object/light packet).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-teleportation_theorem explains why transmission of quantum information is difficult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem explains why quantum effects do not enable FTL transfer of classical information.

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