Scotty won't beam anybody anywhere anytime soon, but a new report by Chinese scientists shows that it is possible to transmit information over long distances using quantum entanglement. The research, published in the current issue of the journal Nature Photonics, could lead to faster and smaller quantum-based computers and unbreakable, encrypted communication across the world.
The team reported they were able to "teleport" information 16 kilometers, or 9.9 miles.
"This is the longest reported distance over which photonic teleportation has been achieved to date, more than 20 times longer than the previous implementation," said Cheng-Zhi Peng, one of the co-authors of the study and a scientist at University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University in Beijing.
In science fiction, teleportation usually describes the transfer of matter from one point to another, more or less instantaneously. In real physics, it's considered part of the "spookier" aspects of quantum mechanics (as Einstein famously derided the nascent field), that describes the behavior of the atoms and their constituent particles.
https://news.discovery.com/tech/teleportation-quantum-mechanics.html
Pretty cool stuff.
Jul 21, 2010 @ 21:01:56
