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  • ReanuKeeves@lemm.ee
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    11 hours ago

    In this context, the article describes quantum teleportation as “teleport information so that it never physically travels across the connection”

    So why would we need a physical medium like fiber optics? Do they not use that to transfer the information between qubits? Because that’s what it’s reading as. I understand the superposition of qubits but why is that relevant when at the end of they day, they are transfering information through a medium? In quantum entanglement you wouldn’t need any medium so it’s technically a form of teleportation. I don’t see how optics transferring information whether it’s superpositioned or not would be the same.

    • knightly the Sneptaur
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      10 hours ago

      As confusing as it seems, they’re correct. A physical medium is still necessary to enable the two parties to interact with each other, but the information that travels through it doesn’t exist until it is received.

      The photons that carry the information are Shrodinger’s Cat, both alive and dead until the box is opened. It’s impossible to know one way or another without checking, so the information about the contents of the box doesn’t physically exist until then.

      This has been proven via the double-slit experiment. Shining a beam of light at a card with two slits in it causes the resulting shadow to show a diffraction pattern. This is caused by the photons interacting with themselves as they pass through both slits simultaneously. However, if you put a photon detector in front of one slit to try and measure which slit the photon passes through, the diffraction pattern dissapears because the act of measuring it collapses the quantum uncertainty and prevents the photon from passing through both slits and interacting with itself. The information about which slit the photon actually passed through simply does not exist, and can’t be measured without destroying the quantum diffraction pattern.