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.
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It's SPOCK..!!!!
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Not even close.
To destroy the Earth and create an asteroid belt you would need roughly a 60km sphere of antimatter with a density approaching nickel-iron.
A 200 lb man turned to antimatter would release about 3.89 Teratons of TNT in an equivalent explosion. By way of comparison it would be somewhere between the K-T impact event and the energy required to disrupt the planet's atmosphere. Still, it's orders of magnitude less than required to destroy the Earth.
Of course it just would kill most every living thing on the planet.
1.8E+17 J/g Antimatter
4.19E+12 J / kiloton
Your intellect?
That's an interesting question. If you believe in remote viewing....the Ingo Swann stuff, not the Dr. Doom (Ed Dames) stuff.....you can read where there were several experiments done where the projection of thought was intantaneous....as in "at the same time" the experiments registered the results at the same time, in the US and Europe.
Not to hijack the thread, but Ingo did many government sponsored experiments in the early 70's describing the surfaces of Saturn, Neptune, etc.....all the scientists regarded him as a pure nutter at the time. As our planetary probes did their fly-bys during the last 30 years, his descriptions have been proven to be spot on.
Just something to ponder.....
Nah. With all the six-packs that are sold in supermarkets around here,
I haven't the slightest idea where I'd go to find a decent selection of kegs.
Gotta go all the way back to Pennsylvania to find a good beer distributor.
I want one with a bumper sticker which says "NOW it's the 21st Century!"
"Forever is a long, long time. Who knows what the next breakthrough might be?"
Also true. 66 years from the Wright brothers first flight to a moon landing.
Hey, I like that! =)
Darn! Don't I feel like such a fool by making great fun of all those cool guys attending Star Trek Conventions while I stayed home and merely got laid!
This is more like "Subspace communications".
Is this really 'teleportation' or the near-instantaneous creation of a copy?
Big difference...
Well, it is kind of catchy, and of course, it is yours by right of copyright.
Fascinating
But all this stuff is beyond my feeble understanding of physics.
Talk about a buzz kill...
I understand that the same kind of thing happened to Al Gore.
Inexplicable Communion Theory ©
There - that's better! =)
I believe the "Kornikova rule" is actually a corrolary to the "Anne Coulter Rule". Nonetheless, the principle is applicable across all posts referring to Anna K., Anne C., 7 of 9, and Laurie Dhue.
Absolutyly secure, uncrackable, unjamable, military communications.
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