This is no joke folks. I’ve got no idea how this actually works, but according to CNN (via Reuters):
“…physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality….”
According to the article:
Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter.
“It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium,” Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday.
The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further.
“Teleportation between two single atoms had been done two years ago by two teams, but this was done at a distance of a fraction of a millimeter,” Polzik, of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, explained.
“Our method allows teleportation to be taken over longer distances because it involves light as the carrier of entanglement,” he added.
Now, three thoughts come to mind:
- If they went from transporting a single atom about 1 millimeter two years ago to transporting 1 trillion atoms 500 millimeters today, that’s like a 500 Trillion percent improvement in two years. At this rate we’ll be beaming crap all over the place in about a decade.
- Given how pissed they get when we use insecticide, what will the organic tree-hugger type folks have to say when we can put in our grocery order online and have our food beamed to our fridge?
- Finally, what are the terror implications when a bomb can be beamed and detonated anywhere in a fraction of a second?
Well, as long as I can get my Chinese take-out delivered with a 60 second guarantee, I’m willing to live with the consequences!
