researchers teleport light

  On 4/15/2011 at 9:53 AM, chaosmachine said:

fortunately, they will teleport themselves into the past, and you'll already have had them by now.

An interesting idea regarding time travel is that nothing could go further back in time than when time travel was invented/discovered.

Crank Prank Time Phone!

Seriously though, it looks a form of communication that will make the universe much smaller and not just the world.

Get the devices down to a relatively portable size and drop one on Mars.

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:41 AM, Xyrofen said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 9:53 AM, chaosmachine said:

fortunately, they will teleport themselves into the past, and you'll already have had them by now.

 

An interesting idea regarding time travel is that nothing could go further back in time than when time travel was invented/discovered.

Yeah, the second you invented a time-machine I'd imagine there'd be tonnes of people from the future trying to come out of it.

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

indeed

edit: i have nothing else to add, but please continue ... I think I have an idea at what you are getting at.

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:47 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

 

indeed

 

edit: i have nothing else to add, but please continue ... I think I have an idea at what you are getting at.

I'm not really getting at anything other than what I feel is obvious: that teleporting light could mean we're able to teleport a particle, which I guess logically progresses to something of discernible mass, even if just an electron, then maybe a hydrogen atom. I'd actually really like to learn more about the Higgs-Boson and whatnot, but I don't think I have enough background or mental capacity to absorb enough meaning from it.

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:55 AM, Xyrofen said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:47 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

 

indeed

 

edit: i have nothing else to add, but please continue ... I think I have an idea at what you are getting at.

 

I'm not really getting at anything other than what I feel is obvious: that teleporting light could mean we're able to teleport a particle, which I guess logically progresses to something of discernible mass, even if just an electron, then maybe a hydrogen atom. I'd actually really like to learn more about the Higgs-Boson and whatnot, but I don't think I have enough background or mental capacity to absorb enough meaning from it.

for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

yeah something of "discernible mass" , would be cool to not have to take a plane anymore

I wasn't aware that we were even working on "light teleportation" , so I really have no idea what timeframe there could be for something as grand as the sci fi concept of teleportation

  On 4/15/2011 at 11:04 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:55 AM, Xyrofen said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:47 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

 

indeed

 

edit: i have nothing else to add, but please continue ... I think I have an idea at what you are getting at.

 

I'm not really getting at anything other than what I feel is obvious: that teleporting light could mean we're able to teleport a particle, which I guess logically progresses to something of discernible mass, even if just an electron, then maybe a hydrogen atom. I'd actually really like to learn more about the Higgs-Boson and whatnot, but I don't think I have enough background or mental capacity to absorb enough meaning from it.

 

for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson

 

yeah something of "discernible mass" , would be cool to not have to take a plane anymore

 

I wasn't aware that we were even working on "light teleportation" , so I really have no idea what timeframe there could be for something as grand as the sci fi concept of teleportation

As far as what I understood prior to even opening that wiki page (which I did open and am currently looking through) is that the Higgs Boson would basically explain how mass even exists, or something like that in better stated terms.

I think they've been working on this for awhile actually, especially because of entanglement, though I have no number to assign to "awhile." A lot of things that people even think to research come up by accident or as a byproduct of something else.

question : are they really teleporting photons or are they syncing photons ? Does that mean the transfer occurs immediately ?

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

This particle/wave duality is seen in every particle of matter, even molecules, and not just light.

  On 4/15/2011 at 1:59 PM, azatoth said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

 

This particle/wave duality is seen in every particle of matter, even molecules, and not just light.

Aha, but isn't the case that matter only behaves as a wave when not being observed? Therefore, it's not seen!

touché

  On 4/15/2011 at 5:59 AM, lumpenprol said:

yeah this sounds cool but I have no idea how important a breakthrough it actually is,

yeah. it's hard to put it into historical context, as this field of research is ongoing.

Half Life 2 is slowly becoming a reality.

  On 4/15/2011 at 2:37 PM, disparaissant said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 1:59 PM, azatoth said:

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

 

This particle/wave duality is seen in every particle of matter, even molecules, and not just light.

Aha, but isn't the case that matter only behaves as a wave when not being observed? Therefore, it's not seen!

Yeah, that really fucks with my head a bit.

Wow, they put that shit in superposition to move it eh. Cool. Now they need to make a handheld portal device.

beam me up Brundlefly

This is going to change the high-frequency trading game a LOT. The large firms that can afford this are going to gain an untouchable advantage over those who can't.

  On 4/15/2011 at 7:30 PM, acidphakist said:

This is going to change the high-frequency trading game a LOT. The large firms that can afford this are going to gain an untouchable advantage over those who can't.

I wonder if there will be legislation against it until everyone can afford it?

  On 4/15/2011 at 7:30 PM, acidphakist said:

This is going to change the high-frequency trading game a LOT. The large firms that can afford this are going to gain an untouchable advantage over those who can't.

Large firms that can afford the best programmers already have an untouchable advantage. HFT has made a joke out of the stock-market.

  On 4/15/2011 at 10:45 AM, Xyrofen said:

It's also interesting to consider that light has the properties of both a particle and a wave.

another thing to consider; truth is love is light, the carrier wave of life.

smoochies!

also, paradox is power

  On 4/15/2011 at 4:19 PM, ZiggomaticV17 said:

Half Life 2 is slowly becoming a reality.

Not quite, but perhaps Aperture Science is... Physicists are now thinking with Portals

There is a serious philosophical issue that, if a human being was transported, they would temporarily cease to exist. Here are some thoughts by Julian Baggini on this matter, from his book "The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten". I typed this all out, don't ignore it.

  Julian Baggini said:

  Derek Parfit said:

For Stelios, the teletransporter is the only way to travel. Previously it took months to get from the Earth to Mars, confined to a cramped spacecraft with a far from perfect safety record. Stelio's TeletransportExpress changed all that. Now the trip takes just minutes, and so far it has been 100 percent safe.

However, now he is facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled customer who is claiming the company actually killed him. His argument is simple: the teletransporter works by scanning your brain and body cell by cell, destroying them, beaming the information to Mars and reconstructing you there. Although the person on Mars looks, feels and thinks just like a person who has been sent to sleep and zapped across space, the claimant argues that what actually happens is that you are murdered and replaced by a clone.

To Stelios, this sounds absurd. After all, he has taken the teletransporter trip dozens of time, and he doesn't feel dead. Indeed, how can the claimant seriously believe that he has been killed by the process when he is clearly able to take the case to court?

Still, as Stelios entered the teletransporter booth once again and prepared to press the button that would begin to dismantle him, he did, for a second, wonder whether he was about to commit suicide...

 

Source: Chapter 10 of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit (Oxford University Press, 1984)

 

On what does our continued survival depend? In normal circumstances, we would say the continued functioning of out body. But since there is no part of the body that couldn't conceivably be replaced by a synthetic substitute, perhaps this is not necessarily true. Isn't it rather that we continue to exist just as long as our consciousness continues? The day no one wakes up thinking he is me, with my memories, plans and personalities, is the day I have died.

The 'psychological continuity' theory of personal identity has an intuitive appeal. It is only because it seems to reflect our fundamental intuitions that we can make sense of stories such as Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which a man wakes up in the body of a beetle. We instantly recognise that the man is the beetle because his mind inhabits it. Mental, not physical continuity, marks him out as the same person.

But in the case of teletransportation, although we do have psychological continuity as complete as it is in ordinary life, it also seems beyond doubt that what has been created is a copy, a clone. A clone, however, is not the same individual as the person cloned. It is the same only in the sense that two statues cast from the same mould are the same: they are identical in every detail but they are distinct entities nonetheless. If you chip one, the other remains undamaged.

It is not as though Stelios doesn't know how his teletransporter works. He just doesn't see why the fact that, strictly speaking, the machine 'clones' him every time should matter. What matters to him is that, as far as he is concerned, he walks into the booth and wakes up onto another planet. The physical mechanism is irrelevant.

If that sounds glib, consider for a moment the possibility that one night, a few years ago, you were kidnapped in your sleep, processed by the teletransporter, and the resulting person returned, unknowing, to your bed. Had this happened, you would have no way of telling, because your conscious expereinces of your ongoing life as a continuing being would be exactly the same if it had not happened. The fact of teletransportation, in some sense, leaves your life and world exactly as it was.

Perhaps then to ask whether Stelios is a clone or ' the same' person is the wrong question. Perhaps we should instead ask what matters about our past and future existence. And maybe the answer to that is psychological continuity, by whatever means necessary.

I'm gonna read it then, honest.