Originally posted May 20, 2010 by Matt

Quantum Teleportation Explained: it’s voodoo!

May 20, 2010

Suppose someone hates you. Suppose they hate you so much, that they seek out a witch doctor and steal a lock of your hair to create a voodoo doll. We all know what happens next. They poke; you say ouch! They light a match; you feel the heat. Quantum teleportation is similar. The basic principle involves quantum entanglement of 2 particles, such as photons or ions, whose states (spin or polarization) are dependent on each other. If you separate these 2 entangled pieces by a physical distance and measure the state of one, you immediately know the state of the other. Now (grab your pin and matchbook) if you change the state of one, the other particle instantaneously changes too (ouch, stop poking me!).

This phenomenon was first proven 13 years ago by Dirk Bouwmeester, et al. and published in Nature (Nature subscription may be required to view full article), however the separation distance was limited to only a few meters (not a very effective torture range, eh?). On May 16, 2010 Xian-Min Jin and coworkers reported in Nature Photonics a huge improvement! Now we can poke your photons from 16 km (10 miles) away!

We’re still a ways off from human teleportation, however these experiments show that effective teleportation of information is possible.
Beam me 10 miles, Scotty!

For a general description, click here
Thanks to Kit for the tip du jour.