Quantum Teleportation and Computation

[KellyAdmirer]

I'm not sure what kind of replies you expect when you say it is "too esoteric" for here. "I disagree with Werner Heisenburg and the uncertainty principle."? "Peter Shor was full of hooey."? I mean, there's not much to debate about this topic. The bottom line seems to be, good for computers (in maybe 50 or 100 years), bad for transporting people. All very nice, but it doesn't seem to have many practical implications during most of our lifetimes.

[AUgrad]

esoteric: of or relating to a small group.

I didn't believe there would be very many people interested in discussing this topic on this ( a mainly political) forum. I have obviously been proven quite wrong on that point.

This article only discusses one of the possible applications of quantum computing. There are many other ways that quantum computing can be rendered useful that don't present the monumental engineering challenges that teleportation does.

[lafroste]

I hate to get nit-picky here, but if the original object A is destroyed in the process, replaced with a perfect copy, A', at the end, how can this be construed to be teleporting? While that difference may be academic when applied to fundamental particles, it still cannot be argued to transport the original A, but to duplicate A out of something else at another point.

There is nothing in the HUP or other theories that I am aware of that would contradict the concept of generating a unique 1 to 1 relationship that (in concept) could uniquely tag the original A, and I do not see how that tag could be transported to A'. Just because a given particle, C, has identical attributes to A, does not make it A. It leaves it C that is identical to A.

I can see arguments on the author's side of this for fundamental particles, but I think his extrapolation that it "proves" the concept of teleportation for complex systems, is false.

In my mind it comes down to the basic question of "if something is mathematically possible, is it necessarilly possible?" I have been wrestling with that one for awhile, but my sense of it is that the answer is "no". My strongest argument to date for my position has a ready example in the potential energy function, E=mgh, for gravitational fields. I have concluded that potential energy is nonsense, and the fact that a simple (and more complex) mathematical equation describes it well is an illusion made possible by incomplete understanding, much as Newton's laws are merely approximations and do not really describe reality.

[avg_freeper]

I've read before, that a related method could be used for sending messages that you do not want intercepted.

The message is encoded by photon spin. The beauty of the idea is that the message is sent in a way such
that it is impossible to intercept the message without both sides (the sender and receiver) knowing about it.

[Tribune7]

What I got out of it I thought was pretty cool.

[Zon]

All very nice, but it doesn't seem to have many practical implications during most of our lifetimes.

Key word is 'seem'. One hundred years ago it didn't seem that any one could conceive of the Internet, but here it is. With the always ascending technology curve time to meaningful technology advancements shrinks.

Nanotechnology should arrive in fifteen to twenty years. In thirty years it will be in nearly every industry plus industries not yet known. 

[TheEdge]

Terrific read. I'm reminded of that unusual statement, "Quanta is all there ever was, is and will be. If you don't know quanta, your ignorance is complete.")

[AUgrad]

much as Newton's laws are merely approximations and do not really describe reality

Don't Einstein's laws (using Quantum measures) match what is theoretically possible much more closely than Newton?

[FairWitness]

A good analogy of how a teleporter works is that it works like a 3-D fax machine.

Would that be a 4-D fax machine in the case where the original object does not disappear ("some authors explore the possibility that the original object doesn't disappear, resulting in there being two sets of the same thing"?

[AUgrad]

Would that be a 4-D fax machine in the case where the original object does not disappear

What would the fourth dimension be?

[JRandomFreeper]

plus industries not yet known.

One interesting place that nano-tech will be is medicine. Consider gradually replacing human neurons with engineered replacements that don't wear out or die. When the process is complete, do you have a human brain analog that lasts (effectively) forever? Is imortality within our grasp? (except for the "Hey ya'll, watch this" crowd)

/john

[Zon]

The way I see it, and I'll use a complex object as example is that, what does it matter to a person that wants to "travel" to a civilization at the other side of the Milky Way if the information of himself is instantaneously recreated via quantum entanglement on that distant civilization? He didn't travel anywhere but for all he knows as he stands among the distant civilization is that he is really there and no longer here.

[JRandomFreeper]

What would the fourth dimension be?

t

/john

[TheEdge]

Refresh my memory. Didn't I read in Science News a little bit ago that scientists already "teleported" a small frog (?).

A little frog was seen here . . . and here!

[lafroste]

What would the fourth dimension be?

The generally accepted answer is that the fourth dimension is time. The more interesting question is "what is the fifth dimension?" (And no smart remarks about the musical group please)

[FairWitness]

One of the things I was taught in Chemistry is that there is no such thing as "action at a distance". In other words, chemistry happens only when atoms (or more accurately, their electron "clouds") touch each other. On the other hand, at least some of what I have heard of quantum physics (which is admittedly not a lot) indicates that that is not necessarily true for elementary particle physics. Fascinating (in my best Spock imitation).

[Russ]

I don't understand very much about this but one thing I am able to do here on FR is learn. I appreciate the post and apologize if I seemed to become "ruffled". Actually, I'll admit your comment rubbed me the wrong way but your explanation cleared that up. Thanks!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"You probably won't get very many replies though. "

I disagree. These quantum physics threads usually go fairly long.

[lafroste]

The way I see it, and I'll use a complex object as example is that, what does it matter to a person that wants to "travel" to a civilization at the other side of the Milky Way if the information of himself is instantaneously recreated via quantum entanglement on that distant civilization?

The problem IMHO is that all this ignores the essence of what it is to be human, ie. a spirit. How can a physical process, no matter how sophisticated, act on that which is not subject to physical law? At this point, science and philosophy will have to be reconciled (in other words, it is still a long way off).

[AUgrad]

The generally accepted answer is that the fourth dimension is time. The more interesting question is "what is the fifth dimension?" (And no smart remarks about the musical group please)

You're getting over my head. I don't understand how time could be a dimension in this sense.