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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

#41

Post by arethuza »

baddox wrote: post #22
gregschlom wrote: post #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 t…

The speed limit of the universe isn't just some hypothesis waiting to be disproven. It can't be broken. It's impossible.

Scientific theories aren't reality - they are a model of reality and to be considered scientific a theory has to be refutable - if you can't conceive of experimental results that would disprove your theory then it's not really a scientific theory.

So every scientific theory is in a very real sense "waiting to be disproven".

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#42

Post by Blunt »

Teleportation is a misnomer here. Nothing is being teleported or transmitted rather information is being measured in two different locations simultaneously as if it were teleported. What I believe is that information is showing up in two different locations simultaneously. This term, entanglement, I think means that every quantum spin has an equal and opposite quantum spin at some other location that always exists. In other words, there's an opposite "thing" of our "thing" and when we adjust our "thing" we can now see or measure the opposite "thing" adjusting oppositely.

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#43

Post by StavrosK »

terandle wrote: post #30
jerf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to post what is nearly a "me too", but I'd also like to ask that question, with the clarification that I do not mean it as a rhetorical equivalent of "No, of course it's not instantaneous, duh", I am genuinely curious where the sheer confidence of the definition of "teleportation" as "instantaneous in violation of relativity" suddenly came from. Is there some scifi show on TV that I'm not watching that is prom…

Not sure how anyone could of missed the whole teleport = instantaneous thing... Thankfully Wikipedia is here to save the day! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fiction_containing_tele...

"Instantaneous", in that context, might not mean "faster than light". Communication via the internet is pretty much instantaneous, but it's not FTL...

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#44

Post by ElliotH »

gregschlom wrote: post #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 t…

It would appear that they did. The abstract of Lee et Al's report states:

"We report on the experimental quantum teleportation of strongly nonclassical wave packets of light. To perform this full quantum operation while preserving and retrieving the fragile nonclassicality of the input state, we have developed a broadband, zero-dispersion teleportation apparatus that works in conjunction with time-resolved state preparation equipment. Our approach brings within experimental reach a whole new set of hybrid protocols involving discrete- and continuous-variable techniques in quantum information processing for optical sciences." [1]

The abstract as a whole is a little beyond my knowledge of physics, but the way I read it seems to support that they did actually teleport - but in the quantum sense (ie they destroyed and recreated something in the same quantum state, not that they moved in instantaneously).

Another Science article in the same issue supports my reasoning "Such exotic quantum states can now be prepared in the lab, and even better, they can be teleported—that is, destroyed in one place and recreated in another one, as shown by Lee et al. (1) on page 330 of this issue." [2]

[1] - "Teleportation of Nonclassical Wave Packets of Light" - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6027/330 (Science 15 April 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6027 pp. 313-314) [2] - "Make It Quantum and Continuous" - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6027/313.full (Science 15 April 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6027 pp. 313-314)

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#45

Post by jerf »

terandle wrote: post #30
jerf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to post what is nearly a "me too", but I'd also like to ask that question, with the clarification that I do not mean it as a rhetorical equivalent of "No, of course it's not instantaneous, duh", I am genuinely curious where the sheer confidence of the definition of "teleportation" as "instantaneous in violation of relativity" suddenly came from. Is there some scifi show on TV that I'm not watching that is prom…

Not sure how anyone could of missed the whole teleport = instantaneous thing... Thankfully Wikipedia is here to save the day! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fiction_containing_tele...

I have had this conversation twice a year for the past ten to fifteen years. Something needs to have changed, because the conversation has changed in the way I cited. The vast bulk of those don't even address whether it's "instantaneous" in violation of lightspeed because they just ignore lightspeed entirely. You in fact seem to be reinforcing my point by the casual assumption that teleportation must be instantaneous-as-FTL by the very definition of the word, and thus the mere fact that the word is used proves your point (circularly, I might add), so let me ask you: Where did you get that idea? It's not the way the word has been defined for the past 50 years, it's a new mutation. Why do you think that? (And why would English have such a rigid, useless definition for a word like that?)

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#46

Post by jessriedel »

gregschlom wrote: post #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 t…

"Teleportation" is a precise term in the field of quantum information; it wasn't the choice of the news article. Yes, the term was chosen to sound sexy, but it's not an unreasonable term for what it describes even if it can't quite live up to Star Trek.

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#47

Post by jessriedel »

bmunro wrote: post #24

Why are people assuming that 'teleportation' means instantaneous travel? To me, teleporting has always meant transferring the information that describes an object to another location, where the object is reproduced. This transfer of information occurs via light/radio waves or similar.

This confusion comes up every time there's a popular article about quantum teleportation.

In a certain interpretation of the unambiguous mathematics, quantum teleportation does feature an instantaneous transfer of the quantum state. It's just that this state is useless for sending messages unless accompanied by a few bits of classical information. Since this classical info flows at less than the speed of light, there's no conflict with special relativity.

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#49

Post by cpeterso »

burgerbrain wrote: post #7
gregschlom wrote: post #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 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.

Subspace radio allows for faster than light communication.

Re: Researchers have successfully teleported wave packets of light

#50

Post by pavel_lishin »

cpeterso wrote: post #49
burgerbrain wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Subspace radio allows for faster than light communication.

Magic, too.
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