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Clickbait and a borderline-lie.
Quantum teleportation is a very technical thing you can do with qubits; no actual matter is moved. If you can’t adequately describe a qubit you shouldn’t even care about this.
Important note: this is about quantum teleportation. They transferred data between two quantum computers without a cable or wifi. Teleporting matter, let alone matter in useful quantities is far off.
That’s not entirely correct, they did use a fiber optic cable to transfer the data, as the more detailed article linked in another comment states. Quantum entanglement itself can’t be used to transfer data; you still need to send the entangled particles through some physical means.
So what is being teleported? The state of the two entangled particles?
This highlights the problem with using that term. The two particles assume a state at the same time at a distance. It has 0% to do with the colloquial term.
Yes. Information is what’s being teleported. The photons that carry the information still have to travel from sender to recipient but the information they contain doesn’t exist until it is received. Like how Shrodinger’s Cat is both alive and dead until you open the box to check.
I see. that makes more sense, thanks!
No problem! I love getting into the comments under articles on quantum stuff 'cuz the topic is weirdly unintuitive from the classical perspective and a lot of folks share some common misconceptions about jargon like “teleportation” and “entanglement”. Please do ask if you’ve got any other questions! 😄
So, Bluetooth?
nah, bluetooth and wifi both use electromagnetic radiation. I didn’t read the article and I understand nothing about quantum mechanics, but I don’t think they use photons in this. someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Allow me to oversimplify for the sake of understanding:
Quantum entanglement is a process where the measurable properties of two particles become linked. For example, an entangled pair of photons might share the same polarization, so that when you measure one, you’d also learn the polarization of the other without having to measure it.
That’s quantum teleportation in a nutshell, send out an entangled pair of photons and each of the recipients will know what the other got without having to ask. They call it ‘teleportation’ because the information about who got what doesn’t exist until the photons are measured, and can’t be intercepted in transit because the act of measuring an entangled particle breaks the entanglement. You physically cannot tap or eavesdrop on a QE link. To do so successfully you would have to be able to capture a photon on the line and transmit an identical copy in its place simultaneously, but the act of measuring takes a non-zero amount of time and even a nanosecond of delay would be obvious to the intended recipient.
Entangled photons are like a pair of identical Shrodinger’s Cats, you can’t know if they are alive or dead until you open the box, but you do know that both boxes will show the same result regardless of where they end up.
What’s new in this article is that they’ve managed to entangle entire qubits between separate computers, like a single Shrodinger’s Cat that exists in two places at once. They’ll be able to use this technique to develop the quantum equivalent of parallel processing.
They used a fiber optic cable which transmits information using photons.
Bluetooth ain’t faster than the speed of light
It is, in fact, significantly slower, when it works at all.
This is not correct. Bluetooth is a radio frequency communication tool. RF is part of the electromagnetic spectrum and does, in fact, "move’ at the speed of light.
What @knightly@pawb.social said, but I do appreciate the lesson!
I think they were making a joke about the bluetooth protocol rather than literally describing the electromagnetic field.
Oh… :(
Yes, I got really excited, wondering if they’d solved reassembly.
The actual paper is beyond my level of physics knowledge, but Oxford uni published an article about it themselves which looks far better to me. No clickbait headline and it explains the significance of the achievement far better
First distributed quantum algorithm brings quantum supercomputers closer
So not FTL right?
Correct. The speed of light is the speed limit of information in the universe.
Entanglement is neat because it allows us to transmit a quantum superposition to two places at once.
It’s like an identical pair of Shrodinger’s Cats. You can’t know if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box, but you do know that the other box will show the same result as yours regardless of where it ends up.
The new thing they’ve figured out in this article is how to entangle qubits between separate quantum computers, essentially creating a single Shrodingers’ Cat that exists in two computers simultaneously which allows them to do the quantum equivalent of parallel processing.
Articles/titles need to stop using the word ‘teleportation’ -_- it has very different implications
I don’t disagree, but I think the bigger problem is journalists who misunderstand the topic and erroneously imply that “quantum” can enable faster-than-light or undetectable communication.
I assume not, but primarily because I would expect the actual scientists and/or Oxford to make a bigger deal out of that if they had achieved it
Great article, thank you for sharing
Look, as someone that’s not afraid to be wrong I’m gonna say that I’m skeptical and say that I don’t trust this is real until I’ve read the research papers.
Reading the news nowadays kinda feels like “trust me bro” unless there are several additional systems based on logic that corroborates what is said as truth.
Edit:
I’ll need more sleep before attempting to read let alone understand the published paper. No promises in how long it’ll take for me to provide my thoughts on it.It’s real, but the jargon is unintuitive.
“Teleportation” in the field of quantum mechanics refers to the process by which a quantum state can be copied from one place to another.
This process is like Shrodinger’s Cat, both alive and dead until you open the box to check. Quantum information simply does not exist until a measurement collapses it into back into classical information, so copying a quantum state literally involves teleporting the information about it from sender to receiver without allowing the box to be opened during the transition.
This isn’t a first, quantum teleportation has been a thing since 1997. The breakthrough here is teleporting the information of an entire logical gate. The usecase here enables them to link multiple smaller quantum processors together so they can act as one bigger system.
Couldn’t agree more. At first when I read it, I was like “wow”, the my logical brain did a re-read and I was like “doubt”.
Can someone explain how using lasers to transmit an image means it was “teleported”?
bc if they said data was transferred by lasers then people wouldn’t click the article and load their ads
Think of it like an identical pair of Shrodinger’s Cats. You can’t know if the cat is alive or dead 'til you open the box, but because they’re identical you know that the other box will show the same result as your own.
The lasers don’t transmit information, they transmit a quantum superposition. The act of measuring this quantum state creates information, and because the photons are entangled, this information includes what was received at both ends.
So the photons that carry the information aren’t teleported, but the information itself is because it doesn’t exist until it is observed.
That sounds like complete garbage though, if those qubits are still in superposition then it hasn’t changed from being both 1 and 0. All that means is that nothing has really between the two points and the teleportation is theoretical.
It might be counterintuitive, but that’s genuinely how quantum systems work.
The entangled photons are in a state of quantum superposition until they are measured, and that measurement creates information about the state of both photons.
It’s not a process that can be used to transmit classical information, it’s a process that transmits identical quantum random numbers to two places at once that can’t be intercepted without breaking their identicalness.
I understand quantum entanglement is a real thing but in this article, you click on where it says quantum teleportation and it tells you what they do is use laser patterns and no mention of quantum entanglement, it just sounds like fiber optics minus the fibers.
“Previous demonstrations of quantum teleportation have focused on transferring quantum states between physically separated systems,” said Dougal Main, from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, who led the study.
"In our study, we use quantum teleportation to create interactions between these distant systems. By carefully tailoring these interactions, we can perform logical quantum gates – the fundamental operations of quantum computing – between qubits housed in separate quantum computers.
“This breakthrough enables us to effectively ‘wire together’ distinct quantum processors into a single, fully-connected quantum computer.”
To simplify, they’re not just entangling pairs of photons and sending them out to two systems, but entangling entire qubits that exist on separate systems. This allows the qubits on separate systems to interact with each other without collapsing their superposition, enabling the quantum equivalent of parallel processing.
Rather than two identical Shrodinger’s Cats as in entangled photons, the entangled qubits act as one Shrodinger’s Cat that’s in two places simultaneously.
Here’s an article directly from university of oxford regarding this
They explicitly describe the process as using a photonic network interface. I don’t see how this is entanglement rather than optics/lasers
They even mention using optic fibers in the article
The optics are just the medium through which the qubits are entangled, the interesting part isn’t the lasers but the interaction between physically-separated qubits.
You could theoretically accomplish the same thing by physically bonking the qubits together so that they interact via nuclear forces instead of the electromagnetic field, like they did with entire molecules at Durham University a few weeks back: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/world-first-quantum-entanglement-of-molecules-at-92-fidelity-uk-achieves-magic/ar-AA1xfHI9
Where’s it say they used a laser to transfer the information? This sounded like quantum entanglement was being demonstrated here
It says it in the article
The word laser does not appear once in this article.
Dude, click on where it says quantum teleportation…
So…not in the article, but in a completely different linked article. Got it
A completely different linked article? It was literally a hyperlink within it. I ain’t gonna argue with you over something so dumb just because you couldn’t be arsed to understand what you were reading.
Hyperlink which went to a different article. Do you not understand how the Internet works? Don’t act like you weren’t wrong when you failed to clarify properly. That’s not on me
One step closer to beating the homophobia that is distance :3
Nah, this technique is more like having a Shrodinger’s Cat that’s in two places at once. It won’t collapse the tyrrany of space, but it will allow us to build bigger and better quantum computers.
