Comments on: Quantum Teleportation is Real

By: Bean

Bean — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:33:19 +0000

Jason,

I would like to point out that at one time, almost all modern conveniences were in the realm of “science fiction” including the “communicator” on my hip that my wife is constantly keeping tabs on me with (ala, Star Trek). Beam me up Scottie!! LOL

By: Jason W

Jason W — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:54:03 +0000

Thanks for the consideration. It is very interesting stuff. Who knows what science will come up with one day?

By: Chad Upton

Chad Upton — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 04:51:24 +0000

Thanks Jason. I added some clarification to the post to make it as accurate as possible. The Ars Technica source touches on using it for communication one day and I think that’s an interesting concept.

By: Jason W

Jason W — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:28:40 +0000

I just wanted to comment that while the science here is pretty interesting stuff, I believe that some of the info you have isn’t quite right and could be misleading.

“Changing the state of one, also changes the state of the other.”

More accurately, when the state of one changes, the state of the other changes to match. The problem is, these changes aren’t caused by us, and are random. For this reason, they can not be used to send information.

“But, Quantum information moves faster than the speed of light so there would be negligible delay if it could be used for communication.”

Actually, nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Since the changes in these paired particles are random, they are not actually transmitting any information, it’s just random movement. If you could use these particles for communication, that would mean that the information was traveling faster than the speed of light, which would violate known laws of physics.

On a side note, this science is very similar to the basis of the “ansible” system that allows instantaneous communication in the Ender series of books by Orson Scott Card. While the concept is extremely cool, alas, science fiction is just that.