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Scientists Transfer Info Between Atoms (Star Trek Teleportation is REAL!)
Local 6 News ^ | 6-16-2004 | AP

Posted on 06/16/2004 1:54:18 PM PDT by vannrox

TED: 2:55 pm EDT June 16, 2004
UPDATED: 3:03 pm EDT June 16, 2004

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 Thursday'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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Government
KEYWORDS: atom; atomic; crevolist; discovery; exposure; light; mass; matter; physics; road; science; star; teleportation; time; transfer; travel; trek; unusual
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To: AntiGuv
However, I do expect it to behave in a grossly different way from something that does not traverse the universe at all.

Information is something. If no information is going from point A to point B, then there is nothing to discuss. Of course there won't be a causality violation if nothing is sent. I already told you that that was the real solution to the conundrum.

221 posted on 06/17/2004 11:42:24 AM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist
Please, please, please read the page you linked.

Are you telling me to reread this part:

*******

By itself, this single use of the ansible doesn't create a causality violation. If Bob transmits a signal back towards Alice using a conventional light-speed transmitter, she receives it a later time than when she signalled to Bob. Even if Bob re-transmits with his ansible, Alice receives the reply just a little after she sent out her signal. The problems arise when we bring another inertial frame into play.

*******

Either tell me what I'm misreading or tell me why it's wrong!

222 posted on 06/17/2004 11:42:59 AM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: PatrickHenry
True. But when you're receiving messages from a different frame ...

I already said that if you bring a different inertial frame into the equation then you have causality problems. That requires a third frame of reference interacting with the first two!

223 posted on 06/17/2004 11:45:09 AM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: AntiGuv
And another thing: I do not accept the a priori supposition that a phenomenon which raises causality paradoxes is thereby inherently impossible.

Nor do I. If I am presented with conclusive evidence of causality violation, I will accept it. However, everything I've seen suggests to me that causality is respected in the physical universe.

When I observe that special relativity says that travelling faster than light is equivalent to travelling backwards through time, I am not making any statement about the impossibility of travelling either faster than light or backwards in time. It is merely a mathematical observation about special relativity, and a correct one.

224 posted on 06/17/2004 11:50:55 AM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist

But our traveller is NOT travelling faster than light. He is travelling at 99% luminal velocity and therefore NOT travelling backwards in time. The transmission is NOT travelling anywhere either. It is not even a transmission in the formal sense of the word. It is an extrapolation of a series of actions upon the entangled particles at the other end via the observation of changes to the entangled particles on your end. The entangled particles have no known physical connection to one another.

Their perceived interaction would presumably exhibit the effects of time dilation to our communicating observers, but that would be all. Wherewhenever the opposite end may be along the inertial frame, at any given point in one frame of reference it would not be at a preceding given point in that frame of reference. Maybe the resulting communications would be distorted in some weird time-dilated fashion, but that should be about it. At least, that's how understand the conjectural phenomenon. Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows?!


225 posted on 06/17/2004 11:58:56 AM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: AntiGuv
Either tell me what I'm misreading or tell me why it's wrong!

Bob and Alice are at rest with respect to each other in that example. They share the same axis of simultaneity. Events that are simultaneous to Bob will be simultaneous to Alice.

But the principle of relativity is that the physics must be the same for all observers, and in this case, it won't be. Two relativistic observers flying past in opposite directions along the signal axis will not see these events as being simultaneous. In fact, they will see them as having time orderings that are opposite from each other; one of the observers will see the signal received before it was sent.

226 posted on 06/17/2004 12:00:09 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: AntiGuv
I already said that if you bring a different inertial frame into the equation then you have causality problems. That requires a third frame of reference interacting with the first two!

I don't follow this at all. The traveler and the earth are two separate frames of reference. Nothing more is required to generate the effects I've been talking about. (If the hypotheticallly instantaneous transmission system makes them both into a single frame of reference, then you'll never have a 3d reference frame, because it too will be in instantaneous communications with the others.)

227 posted on 06/17/2004 12:00:21 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Yes, that IS a gun in my pocket.)
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To: Physicist

I have another link bookmarked somewhere dealing with wormholes and the perceived time at the opposite ends. I'm gonna try to find that one too since it's somewhat relevant to the point at hand. It brings up the twins paradox too. Anyhow, if I recall correctly parts of that further clarify the points that I'm attempting to convey.


228 posted on 06/17/2004 12:01:25 PM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: AntiGuv
The transmission is NOT travelling anywhere either. It is not even a transmission in the formal sense of the word. It is an extrapolation of a series of actions upon the entangled particles at the other end via the observation of changes

Stop right there. You can never observe changes in the entangled particles. You can only observe their state once, after which the entanglement is destroyed. The best you can do is observe (after the fact) that there was a correlation.

to the entangled particles on your end. The entangled particles have no known physical connection to one another.

All of that is otherwise correct, and that is why quantum entanglement cannot be called a signal. It cannot be used to transmit information, and cannot violate causality. I already said all that.

Do you understand the crucial difference between that and the Bob/Alice problem you just quoted?

229 posted on 06/17/2004 12:07:32 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist
Do you understand the crucial difference between that and the Bob/Alice problem you just quoted?

Probably not. Explain it to me so we can figure out why I'm wrong! =)

230 posted on 06/17/2004 12:10:47 PM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: PatrickHenry

Well, I'm increasingly convinced that I have seriously misunderstood some fundamental concept but I am not yet seeing what that is, so maybe it will become clear to me at some point. For the interim, I'm just suspending my insistence that my perception of the situation is accurate!


231 posted on 06/17/2004 12:14:54 PM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: AntiGuv
For the interim, I'm just suspending my insistence that my perception of the situation is accurate!

This stuff is very counter-intuitive. No less an intellect than Isaac Newton simply assumed that time was the same for everyone, everywhere.

232 posted on 06/17/2004 12:25:07 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Yes, that IS a gun in my pocket.)
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To: PatrickHenry; Physicist
Well, I am not finding the wormhole link I want and I have to go now. The basic relevant point of it was iirc that the distant clock moving at relativistic velocity is displaced in both space and time, whereby the two appear synchronized even though the distant clock is running 'slowly' from the vantage point of the other. I'll try to find it when I get back..
233 posted on 06/17/2004 12:27:56 PM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: PatrickHenry
It is emphatically not the case that FTL communications are always received by the recipient before they're transmitted. Depending on the relative state of motion of the transmitter and receiver its possible for the reception event to have earlier or later coordinate times than the transmission. Coordinate times aren't of any great importance though. As far as I'm aware, the construction in my article is the simplest causality paradox arising from FTL in special relativity.
234 posted on 06/17/2004 12:30:13 PM PDT by sharpblue
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To: sharpblue
Depending on the relative state of motion of the transmitter and receiver its possible for the reception event to have earlier or later coordinate times than the transmission.

Can you give us an example? (Other than the obvious and irrelevant case involving a transmitter and receiver who are both in the same of reference.)

235 posted on 06/17/2004 12:42:53 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Yes, that IS a gun in my pocket.)
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To: PatrickHenry
(Psst: if the interlocutors are travelling towards each other, the time axis reaches into the future.)

Homework: contemplate the Twins Paradox.

236 posted on 06/17/2004 12:50:58 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: techcor

I live in LA, they are performing Saturday.


237 posted on 06/17/2004 12:51:02 PM PDT by Feiny (I can resist anything but temptation.)
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To: PatrickHenry
I wrote: the time axis reaches into the future

Sorry, that was atrocious. By that statement I mean the spaceship's axis of simultaneity reaches into the Earth's future.

238 posted on 06/17/2004 12:52:59 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: sharpblue

Wow, I'm impressed at your timely arrival. Welcome to FR!

I'm one foot out the door but I look forward to checking out the thread later.

Hopefully it'll set me straight and I won't have to pretend I know what I'm talking about anymore! =)


239 posted on 06/17/2004 12:54:29 PM PDT by AntiGuv (When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
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To: feinswinesuksass

NO WAY! Really? Thanks for the info. I'm going to do some more checking to see if I can get their albums (now that I've started down this road).


240 posted on 06/17/2004 12:55:34 PM PDT by techcor
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