It says that another step toward "quantum computing" has been taken by some guys who have "teleported" information from light to matter.
Quantum entanglement involves entwining two or more particles without physical contact.
Although teleportation is associated with the science-fiction series Star Trek, no one is likely to be beamed anywhere soon.
But the achievement of Polzik's team, in collaboration with the theorist Ignacio Cirac of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, marks an advancement in the field of quantum information and computers, which could transmit and process information in a way that was impossible before.
"It is really about teleporting information from one site to another site. Quantum information is different from classical information in the sense that it cannot be measured. It has much higher information capacity and it cannot be eavesdropped on. The transmission of quantum information can be made unconditionally secure," said Polzik whose research is reported in the journal Nature.
Quantum computing requires manipulation of information contained in the quantum states, which include physical properties such as energy, motion and magnetic field, of the atoms.
"Creating entanglement is a very important step but there are two more steps at least to perform teleportation. We have succeeded in making all three steps -- that is entanglement, quantum measurement and quantum feedback," he added.
I don't know if that is an accurate description of what was done, but it sounds good. And a lot like Magical Vines and Adjacent Universes (eventually).
Don't be in such a hurry to get to that Other Universe. It's not time. It's not 'ready' yet.
4 comments:
Recently it happens quite often that people delete their blog posts.
Why did you delete your latest post?
Hi wolfgang,
I decided that I didn't want to give any more time, energy, space, power, or anything else to the subject of that post. I made my point, he read it (or at least someone from his domain did), and I've made that point elsewhere. I deleted it totally of my our accord because I realized that it didn't accomplish anything. No one asked me to delete it. Honestly, the post was written in a state of distress which has since been enough alleviated to prompt the deletion. Thanks.
I swear that wasn't a Freudian slip with the "our" that should have said "own". ;-)
Hi Rae Ann,
Quantum entanglement as an interpretation of the Bell inequality, as tested by Aspect et al., relies upon a belief in the "wavefunction collapse".
The exact state of any particle is supposed to be indeterminate before being measured. When measured, the wave function "collapses" into a definite value.
Einstein objected to this, and often joked to believers of wave function collapse:
Do you believe that the moon exists when you aren't looking?
EPR (Einstein, Polansky and Rosen) wrote a paper in Physical Review on the wavefunction collapse problem in 1935. (This led eventually to Aspect's tangled experiment.) Schroedinger was inspired by it to write the "cat paradox" paper a few months later.
PROBLEM WITH ENTANGLEMENT
Dr Thomas Love of the Departments of Physics and Mathematics, California State University, points out that the "wavefunction collapse" interpretation (and all entanglement interpretations) are a load of s---.
He points out that the wavefunction doesn't physically collapse. There are two mathematical models, the time-dependent Schroedinger equation and the time-independent Schroedinger equation.
Taking a measurement means that, in effect, you switch between which equations you are using to model the electron. It is the switch over in mathematical models which creates the discontinuity in your knowledge, not any real metaphysical effect
When you take a measurement on the electron's spin state, for example, the electron is not in a superimposition of two spin states before the measurement. (You merely have to assume that each possibility is a valid probabilistic interpretation, before you take a measurement to check.)
Suppose someone flips a coin and sees which side is up when it lands, but doesn't tell you. You have to assume that the coin is 50% likely heads up, and 50% likely to be tails up. So, to you, it is like the electron's spin before you measure it. When the person shows you the coin, you see what state the coin is really in. This changes your knowledge from a superposition of two equally likely possibilities, to reality.
Dr Love states on page 9 of his paper Towards an Einsteinian Quantum Theory: "The problem is that quantum mechanics is mathematically inconsistent...", which compares the two versions of the Schroedinger equation on page 10. The time independent and time-dependent versions disagree and this disagreement nullifies the principle of superposition and consequently the concept of wavefunction collapse being precipitated by the act of making a measurement. The failure of superposition discredits the usual interpretation of the EPR experiment as proving quantum entanglement. To be sure, making a measurement always interferes with the system being measured (by recoil from firing light photons or other probes at the object), but that is not justification for the metaphysical belief in wavefunction collapse.
P. 51: Love quotes a letter from Einstein to Schrodinger written in May 1928; 'The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing philosophy - or religion? - is so delicately contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot easily be aroused. So let him lie there.'
P. 52: 'Bohr and his followers tried to cut off free enquiry and say that they had discovered ultimate truth - at that point their efforts stopped being science and became a revealed religion with Bohr as its prophet.'
P. 98: Quotation of Einstein's summary of the problems with standard quantum theory: 'I am, in fact, firmly convinced that the essential statistical character of contemporary quantum theory is solely to be ascribed to the fact that this theory operates with an incomplete description of physical systems.' (Albert Einstein, 'Reply to Criticisms', in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by P. A. Schipp, Tutor Publishing, 1951.)
'Einstein ... rejected the theory not because he ... was too conservative to adapt himself to new and unconventional modes of thought, but on the contrary, because the new theory was in his view too conservative to cope with the newly discovered empirical data.' - Max Jammer, 'Einstein and Quantum Physics' in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Gerald Holton and Yedhuda Elkana, 1979.
P. 99: "It is interesting to note that when a philosopher of science attacked quantum field theory, the response was immediate and vicious. But when major figures from within physics, like Dirac and Schwinger spoke, the critics were silent." Yes, and they were also polite to Einstein when he spoke, but called him an old fool behind his back. (The main problem is that even authority in science is pretty a impotent thing unless it is usefully constructive criticism.)
P. 100: 'The minority who reject the theory, although led by the great names of Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac, do not yet have any workable alternative to put in its place.' - Freeman Dyson, 'Field Theory', Scientific American, 199 (3), September 1958, pp78-82.
P. 106: 'Once an empirical law is well established the tendency is to ignore or try to accommodate recalcitrant experiences, rather than give up the law. The history of science is replete with examples where apparently falsifying evidence was ignored, swept under the rug, or led to something other than the law being changed.' - Nancy J. Nersessian, Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories, Martinus Nijhoff Pub., 1984.
O'Hara quotation "Bandwagons have bad steering, poor brakes, and often no certificate of roadworthiness." (M. J. O'Hara, Eos, Jan 22, 1985, p34.)
Schwartz quotation: 'The result is a contrived intellectual structure, more an assembly of successful explanatory tricks and gadgets that its most ardent supporters call miraculous than a coherently expressed understanding of experience. ... Achievement at the highest levels of science is not possible without a deep relationship to nature that can permit human unconscious processes - the intuition of the artist - to begin to operate ... The lack of originality in particle physics ... is a reflection of the structural organization of the discipline where an exceptionally sharp division of labor has produced a self-involved elite too isolated from experience and criticism to succeed in producing anything new.' [L. Schwartz, The Creative Moment, HarperCollins, 1992.]
P. 107: 'The primary difference between scientific thinking and religious thinking is immediacy. The religious mind wants an answer now. The scientific mind has the ability to wait. To the scientific mins the answer "We don't know yet" is perfectly acceptable. The physicists of the 1920s and later accepted many ideas without sufficient data or thought but with all the faith and fervor characteristic of a religion.'
Love is author of papers like 'The Geometry of Grand Unification', Int. J. Th. Phys., 1984, p801, 'Complex Geometry, Gravity, and Unification, I., The Geometry of Elementary Particles', Int. J. Th. Phys., 32, 1993, pp.63-88 and 'II., The Generations Problem', Int. J. Th. Phys., 32, 1993, pp. 89-107. He presented his first paper before an audience which included Dirac (although unfortunately Dirac was then old and slept right through).
Love has a vast literature survey and collection of vitally informative quotations from authorities, as well as new insights from his own work in quantum mechanics and field theory.
It is a pity that string theorists block him and others like Tony Smith (also here), Danny Ross Lunsford (see here for his brilliant but sadly Motl-censored paper which was deleted from arXiv and is not only on the widely ignored CERN Document Server now, and see here for his suppression by stringers), and others who also have more serious ideas than string, like many of the others commenters on Not Even Wrong.
Cheers,
nc
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