

Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy - recampbell
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24759/

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lisper
> the measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system

That set off my bogometer. What is "quantum energy"?

The devil is always in the details, but I have yet to see a popular account of
anything having to do with entanglement that didn't completely ignore the
fundamental fact that entanglement and measurement are the same physical
phenomenon. Once you realize that most of the mysteries simply evaporate.

<http://www.flownet.com/ron/qm.pdf>

~~~
Nwallins
Wow, fantastic read.

From the concluding section:

 _So Mermin was on the right track, but he didn’t get it quite right: not only
is the moon is not really there when nobody looks, but it isn't really there
even when you do look! "Physical reality" is not "real", but information-
theoretical reality is. We are not physical entities, but informational ones.
We are made of, to quote Mermin, "correlations without correlata." We are not
made of atoms, we are made of (quantum) bits. At the risk of stretching a
metaphor beyond its breaking point, what we usually call reality is really a
very high quality simulation running on a quantum computer._

 _This is a very counterintuitive view of the world, but the mathematics of
Quantum Mechanics tell us unambiguously that it is correct, just as the
mathematics of relativity tell us that there is no absolute time and space.
Entanglement, far from being an obscure curiosity of QM, is in fact at its
very heart. Entanglement is the reason that measurement is possible, and thus
the reason that the Universe is comprehensible._

~~~
itistoday
I'd be wary of it, I haven't read the whole thing but it seems suspicious,
least of which is that he comes off as if he fully understands QM.

I only know so much about QM, but I do know that no one fully understands it,
and that in attempting to sound deep, the author of this paper misattributed a
classic Zen koan to Douglas Hofstadter.

~~~
Nwallins
I certainly can't attest to its correctness, but I found it insightful and
thought-provoking.

As to the misattribution, the paper reads:

 _The best I can offer as an answer to that question is a Zen koan from
Douglas Hofstadter:_

It seems to me he is describing Hofstadter as the conduit and not the origin.

~~~
lisper
I got it from GEB. Hofstadter doesn't attribute it, so I just assumed it was
original with him. (And frankly I'd be surprised if you found any references
to Zen Master Zeno prior to GEB.)

~~~
gjm11
It is not original to Hofstadter; it comes from the Mumonkan:
<http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/gateless-gate/29.html> . Of course the original
doesn't call the sixth patriarch "Zeno"; it leaves him unnamed. (The sixth
patriarch actually appears to have been called Huineng:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate#Case_29:_Huin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gateless_Gate#Case_29:_Huineng.27s_flag)
.)

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decavolt
Title is totally misleading. Hotta has come up with a theory, but hasn't
tested it and hasn't "discovered" anything new.

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jheriko
I couldn't help but laugh at this unfortunate wording "He gives the example of
a string of entangled ions oscillating back and forth in an electric field
trap, a bit like Newton's balls."

I hope they mean Newton's cradle...

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fjabre
The article seems to suggest it's impossible to communicate faster than light
speed using entanglement b/c they need to know a bit of information at the
sender's side which can't be sent using the entanglement phenomenon itself.

That's something I'd like to understand better..

Is it really impossible to distinguish between an 'On' state and an 'Off'
state at the receiver's end without this piece of information? Is it our
ability to measure the observation that hinders this or is this a law of
physics that will 'never' be broken?

~~~
Mallard
To answer with an example, a lot of these experiments entangle the "spin"
property of two particles. In a two-state system such as spin up and spin
down, it is tempting to call, say, "up" 1 and "down" 0, but you won't get too
much use out of that. What you'll often read is that when you take two
entangled particles and take them to opposite ends of the room (or the
universe), and you measure your particle as having spin up, you know at once
that the other particle must have spin down. That is a function of
conservation of angular momentum, and has a very intuitive classical analog.

Before you make a measurement, though, the particle you measured is in a
combination of both states. It's not that you don't know which it is; it
really is neither (to the best of modern interpretations). If it has equal
probability spin up or down, you are equally likely to measure either one.
Once you measure it once, though, and get either up or down, if you
immediately measure again, you'll get the same result. That's the hastily
abused "collapsing the wave function." If you consider the wave function of
the particle with regard to its spin states to be representative of a
probability distribution of measuring either state, once you measure it, the
state you measured has probability one and the rest have probability 0. The
new wave function is just a delta, and has been collapsed.

Now to get on with answering your question-- you've not only collapsed this
particle's wave function; you've collapsed the other one's too.Instantly. So,
you know what the other guy taking measurements on his will measure. What you
have no control over is the information content itself. You can't spin your
particle so the other one spins in the opposite way. It just doesn't work that
way. Information propagation in relativity comes with a caveat-- causal
information travels no faster than the speed of light. Non causal information
can travel as fast as it likes. It's not spooky action at a distance because
it's not really action. Nothing's different in the tangible world as a result
of it, which is why you can't use it to send bits. If you're really
interested, I recommend Griffiths' Intro to Quantum Mechanics. It was used in
all of my related courses, and the author has a way with the inexplicable.

~~~
fjabre
@Mallard

Thanks for the explanation. That definitely answered my question.

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thinkbohemian
Working for a test and measurement company I would be curious to see the non
generalized version of this report. One with tests and measurements, possibly
some data and techniques.

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phreanix
Man for a second I thought the ansible was within reach. Pft. =)

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itistoday
So, the summary doesn't make this clear, and if you were to use the colloquial
definition of teleportation the title of the article would simply be wrong.

Quantum teleportation is nothing like teleportation in shows and movies. The
big difference is that you have to _already have something on the other side_.
In other words, you can't teleport a rat to mars because there is no rat on
mars. Yet. :-p

Further, that rat would have to be _entangled_ with another rat on mars, not
something trivially accomplished. At least that's my understanding of it.

Here's an article on QM teleportation that's easier to grok (although not
about teleporting energy specifically):

[http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/telepo...](http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/teleportation.ps)

~~~
JulianMorrison
I think it could roughly be summarized as "quantum teleportation moves
identity, not substance".

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nkassis
Can I use this to charge my laptop?

