Scientists make quantum leap, teleport data from light to matter

I searched and saw some discussion on this but no thread about this actually becoming a reality.

In another breakthrough in the weird, wonky world of quantum physics, researchers teleport data an unprecedented distance with a novel technique -- inching us closer to the rise of a 'quantum Internet.'
We're one step closer to creating the Ansible communicator in "Ender's Game," the warp drive envisioned by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre and a "Star Trek"-style Transporter.

Or we can at least keep thinking that while scientists do the hard, incremental physics required to keep us dreaming of those kinds of future advancements. This time the progress comes from a research team out of the lab of Professor Nicolas Gisin in the physics department at the University of Geneva.

The team achieved teleportation of the quantum state of a photon -- in this case, it's known as the photon's polarization -- to a crystal-encased photon more than 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away. The distance breaks the previous record of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) set 10 years ago by the same team using the method. This marks the latest success in a series of experiments the group, led by physicist Félix Bussières, has been conducting over the last decade in an effort to better understand quantum data transfer with ever-newer technology.

The results, which were achieved in March, were published in the journal Nature Photonics on September 21.

In this particular experiment, the researchers stored one photon in a crystal, essentially creating a solid-state memory bank. They sent another photon of a different wavelength 25 kilometers away through optical fiber, whereupon they had it interact with a third photon. Because the first two photons were entangled -- a quantum property meaning the particles could speak to another across an infinite distance -- the interaction sent the data to the photo stored in the memory bank, where the team was able to retrieve it.

Still with me?

The team uses pool balls to help explain what they were doing:

"It is a bit like a game of billiards, with a third photon hitting the first which obliterates both of them. Scientists measure this collision. But the information contained in the third photon is not destroyed -- on the contrary it finds its way to the crystal which also contains the second entangled photon."

An experimental setup for the University of Geneva's latest quantum teleportation achievement that we will not try to explain.
University of Geneva Quantum teleportation, though not the kind of "beam me up" transportation we imagine, is the moving of quantum data -- meaning classical bits are off the table for now -- from one location to another without having to travel the distance between them. That means speeds and the receiving of data aren't necessarily held down by the constraints of space and time. In that sense, it's easier to think of this kind of teleporting not as we do in science fiction, but as an exchange of information that you know, ahead of the transfer, is either A or B.

For example, if you and a friend have two playing cards -- the ace of spades and the ace of hearts -- and you each blindly pick one, walk into different rooms and then look at the card in your hand, you'll both know instantly know what card your friend has. It's that kind of instantaneous awareness between two points -- instead of cards, think spin states of an electron -- that physicists call teleportation because the data point doesn't require you to observe it directly or have someone send it back for confirmation.

While it may not seem terribly exciting on the surface to teleport the other half of a simplified picture, it opens up startling possibilities. Imagine a future with more instantaneous communication with astronauts in space or rovers on Mars alongside unprecedented network speed and security thanks to quantum encryption.

For non-quantum physicists, the novel aspect of this experiment is that the team achieved teleportation of data across the kind of optic fiber that forms the basis of modern-day telecommunications. One day, researchers hope, we'll have a quantum Internet with "quantum routers that can receive quantum information from location and route it on to another without destroying it," writes the MIT Technology Review.

Gisin's lab is bringing that closer to reality by laying the scientific foundation for that kind of monumental network advancement.

As physicists continue to push the boundaries of the our understanding about the quantum world, we're getting closer to translating these kinds of advancements outside the lab. More practical applications like quantum computing and quantum encryption are burgeoning markets that in the last few years have exited research labs and entered commercial arenas like banking security, medical research and other areas in need of huge computing muscle and super-fast information transfer.

With the rise of a potential quantum Internet on the horizon, we could see the next jump in communication happen over the next couple of decades. So while we're a long way off from trying to pry quantum teleportation and entanglement from the grip of the theoretical realm, scientists are making headway, if only a handful of kilometers at a time.

Update at 9:40 a.m. PT, Wednesday, Sept. 24: Clarified that quantum teleportation does not yield faster-than-light communication -- nor does it allow the transfer of classical bits, only quantum qubits or states -- because it depends on the constraints of classical communication.

Scientists make quantum leap, teleport data from light to matter

When will we have a super fast internet???? I'd love to be around with this would hit the mainstream. to sum up the article, data can be instantaneously moved from one place to the next with pretty much no delay using a quantum router.

originally posted by: OptimusCrime
When will we have a super fast internet????

When Cablevision gets sucked into a black hole.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: OptimusCrime
When will we have a super fast internet????

When Cablevision gets sucked into a black hole.

The thing I would like about this technology, it would get rid of a ton of clutter and wires. No more wires running from house to house. Other than power, for now. And, you wouldn't have tons of wires having to be ran in your household.

I'm with Comcast. Verizon has been pushing hard in my area and they have a great deal in order to switch. I'm happy with Comcast but Verizon is about $60 a month less and they give you a $300 visa prepaid card if you sign for 2 years.

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: OptimusCrime
When will we have a super fast internet????

When Cablevision gets sucked into a black hole.

So... As off topic as it is ( I'll get back to the topic in a moment ) - Cable is to this day one of the best internet delivery platforms that exists... If you don't like your cable provider, it's because of them; not the medium.

At my place of work I'm on an 80 Mbps cable connection that has gone down maybe... 3 times in 3 years; and 2/3 of those outages were very brief. I've had cable for the last ten years for my internet service, and at the first utterance of 15 Mbps I was flabbergasted and couldn't stop my mouse from moving if I wanted to. Now, in my area at least; the Baseline cable provision is 30 Mbps, which by all means is far more than 70% of internet users know how to take advantage of. Similarly, their higher end packages breach the 100 Mbps mark; which depending on the age of your computer, means your computer might not even be able to read the data fast enough.

The next clear step in data communication is ... either quantum crystals ( 0_o ) or Fiber Optics; which 99% of internet users ( with current average bandwidth requirements ) will never use. If you're that dissatisfied with cable, go to fiber and don't look back - but for the price, cable is the best deal that exists - and if your local cable company has any competence then their network is exponentially more reliable than anything DSL or Satellite can provide.

I just moved to a DSL connection from AT&T - and anyone that tries to tell me that they hold a candle to any cable provider is incompetent. Sorry. Just for an example - AT&T's best package for home service is a 45 Mbps 'Uverse' connection that is only available in certain areas. Anywhere where they haven't implemented the Uverse platform, their internet service peaks at 6 Mbps, and after installing my service earlier this month I've been monitoring latency pretty consistently - to find that on average I'm about a 70 MS ping to a server I'll generally ping < 30 MS to on a cable connection - and I've seen variances from 100 MS to 200 MS all the way to a full second for 32 bytes to get echo'd back to me. Not to mention the intermittent complete timeouts - which seem to happen about 50 times a day.

All in all - if your cable provider isn't meeting your expectations - it's because their infrastructure sucks, not because of the platform. DSL will never compare on account of the 'community shared' bandwidth, and the limitations of the physical interface. Satellite doesn't even deserve mention; as they are still Striving for 15 Mbps connections - that are still subject to weather.

Sorry for the rant; but Cable is not the problem.

Now back to the fun stuff - quantum teleportation! It sounds like these folks have definitely found an approach that conveys a '1 or a 0' more or less , across distance, which is a suitable first step toward my being able to visit Egypt via a phone booth in 2 seconds. I'd be most curious to see what happens when you have a plethora of 'stored photons' and you try to transmit them - targeting specific photons and only sending the data for the ones that have not been sent yet seems rather intense - there would have to be a way to 'mark' photons that have been targeted already - unless you can just... pause your photonic structures constant change.

All in all though this could be a pretty cool step toward faster communication for top-level organizations; I'm sure this would alleviate a lot of the NSA's data collection bottleneck

Good article, thanks OP.