Forwarded message follows:______________________________________
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 09:48:31 -0500
From: Erin Reid aka (Erik Jones) <ejones@aip.org>
To: aegis@igc.apc.org
Subject: Teleportation successful!
Kathryn,
I'm forwarding this to you, I think you'll find it *fascinating*!
****
For all you sci-fi buffs out there, where I work, the American Institute of
Physics, has just put out the most incredible press release. Teleportation
has been achieved! It's only on a photon, but they figured out how to
bypass Heisenberg's Uncertainly Principle to transfer the properties of a
quantum particle from one location to another. And, since the process
happens on the quantum level, it is instantaneous (as in faster-than-light!)
Now another part of the process right now has to take place at light
speed, so it's not FTL communication yet, but the core of the process is
FTL. They believe they will be able to make the process work on atoms
within three years, molecules with 10 years. This is truly a remarkable
step forward. If you want to see a diagram and read more about it, go
to:
http://www.aip.org/physnews/graphics/atoms/1997/teleport/teleport.htm
If you want details, here's a press release:
QUANTUM TELEPORTATION has been experimentally demonstrated by
physicists at the University
of Innsbruck (Anton Zeilinger, 011-43-676-305-8608, anton.zeilinger@
uibk.ac.at; Dik Bouwmeester,
Dik.Bouwmeester@uibk.ac.at). First proposed in 1993 by Charles
Bennett of IBM (914-945-3118),
quantum teleportation allows physicists to take a photon (or any other
quantum-scale particle, such as an
atom), and transfer its properties (such as its polarization) to another
photon--even if the two photons are
on opposite sides of the galaxy. Note that this scheme transports the
particle's properties to the remote
location and not the particle itself. And as with Star Trek's Captain Kirk,
whose body is destroyed at the
teleporter and reconstructed at his destination, the state of the original
photon must be destroyed to
create an exact reconstruction at the other end. In the Innsbruck
experiment, the researchers create a
pair of photons A and B that are quantum mechanically "entangled": the
polarization of each photon is in
a fuzzy, undetermined state, yet the two photons have a precisely
defined interrelationship. If one photon
is later measured to have, say, a horizontal polarization, then the other
photon must "collapse" into the
complementary state of vertical polarization. In the experiment, one of the
entangled photons A arrives at
an optical device at the exact time as a "message" photon M whose
polarization state is to be teleported.
These two photons enter a device where they become indistinguishable,
thus effacing our knowledge of
M's polarization (the equivalent of destroying Kirk).What the researchers
have verified is that by ensuring
that M's polarization is complementary to A's, then B's polarization would
now have to assume the same
value as M's. In other words, although M and B have never been in
contact, B has been imprinted with
M's polarization value, across the whole galaxy, instantaneously. This
does not mean that faster-than-light
information transfer has occurred. The people at the sending station
must still convey the fact that
teleportation had been successful by making a phone call or using some
other light-speed or
sub-light-speed means of communication. While physicists don't foresee
the possibility of teleporting
large-scale objects like humans, this scheme will have uses in quantum
computing and cryptography.
Cool, huh?
Erin