In my blogs & articles I have spoken of how our Solar Ancestors can dwell on a dimension unseen to us, how their world uses photons in a similar way to how ours utilises atoms, and how they are able to travel along grids in their solar-photon state. One of the next major leaps for humanity in the coming decades will necessitate us learning how to teleport both information and objects/beings.
The term ‘quantum teleportation’ involves the transfer, or remote reconstruction, of information encoded in quantum states of matter or light. It embraces what is known as quantum entanglement, where particles communicate and respond to each other instantly, regardless of the distance that separates them. Up until now, Earth scientists considered that quantum repeaters had to rely on atoms or other matter, which has posed a difficult engineering challenge and would also significantly slow down transmission.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have conducted an experiment confirming that quantum communication over long distances is possible. The research team has successfully teleported quantum information carried in light particles over 100 km of optical fibre in a NIST laboratory in Colorado. They have managed to transfer quantum information contained in one photon to another photon. The breakthrough research results were published in the Optical Society Journal on September 23, 2015.
Different research groups have been successful in teleporting quantum information over even longer distances during the past 20 years, however, these experiments have been conducted in free space, while the ability to perform teleportation over conventional optical fibre is far more flexible solution for network designs. This breakthrough is unique in its way, as so far, a large amount of quantum data has been lost in fibre and transmission rates and distances achieved have been quite low. The new technique opens up possibilities for building a ‘quantum internet’.
We are being guided towards our inevitable future and this is another step forward.
Sources: National Institutes of Standards and Technology, The Abstract of the paper - The Optical Society Journal.
Reference: "Quantum teleportation over 100 km of fiber using highly efficient superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors" - Hiroki Takesue, Shellee D. Dyer, Martin J. Stevens, Varun Verma, Richard P. Mirin, Sae Woo Nam - The Optical Society Journal (2015) - doi:10.1364/OPTICA.2.000832
Quantum teleportation artist's impression. Image credit: Phil Magnini
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