What they’ve done is teleport a complex set of quantum information that existed in a state of quantum superposition, meaning they existed in two different states simultaneously. That’s essentially the same as transferring information where the data is both a 1 and a 0. The kicker here is that the transfer was quick and there was no data lost, something that has frustrated scientists in the past.
The breakthrough has given the team cause for celebration. As we already know, the transfer of quantum objects within a computer or across a network is exponentially faster than classical computing. Steady but vital progress like this might see us teleporting cats in years to come. [PopSci]
Jay and Silent Bob
Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 10:38 PM“Ticket please, thank you! Now if you would just stand in front of the Nigh-a-Laser, we’ll just perform some measurements and have you reappear on Mars in a jiffy.”
olearymo
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 8:31 AMSo I’m guessing this wasn’t entanglement then? But something a bit different?
We’ve always been told data can NOT be transmitted via entanglement?
helen
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 12:59 PMteleportation requires entanglement as a resource. teleportation cannot be superluminal as it requires the transportation of classical information.
entanglement ‘appears’ to allow superluminal communication, but it is not true ‘communication’. if you want to read about it wiki no-communication theorem.
Todd Hubers
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 11:15 AMQuantum Teleportation is not 1. Instantaneus information transmission, nor 2. The precursor to human teleportation.
I’m not going to explain why, research it yourself, and next time include that, so we don’t create yet another old wives fable.
Jim Lemon
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 8:29 PMWhile I quite agree with your warning about overstating the capabilities of quantum information transfer, a fable is a story about animals, not humans. So perhaps it should be an old cat’s tale…
huu
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 12:33 PM“…Steady but vital progress like this might see us teleporting cats in years to come”…Hmm Is this mean to be funny or you are truely ignorant? Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment to explain the paradox of the quantum state, it got nothing to do with Cats, let along transporting one!!
Jester
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 3:09 PMI can’t believe that anybody would actually have taken that line about teleporting cats seriously. You, sir, are a fool.
Bearus
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 7:47 PMLol, Jester – isn’t that your job..
Steve Tran
Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:31 PMNo, someone name-dropped a Schrodinger’s Cat reference into an article that had little or nothing to do with that thought experiment. The author chose a very poor headline.
Seiji
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 12:27 PMI think the wave packet they “teleported” was called a Schrodinger’s cat state of light. The cat state as far as I understand is the name given to light that exists in this superposition of two states, such as 0 & 1. The cat state is an example of a “truly quantum” state of light.
Physicists have teleported light before, why this is interesting is because it’s the first time a group has teleported light that has truly “quantum” properties.