Physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, part of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, have found a way to teleport information using quantum mechanics.
Albert Einstein once stated that quantum mechanics doesn’t hold water in his scientific world view because “physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.” That spooky action at a distance is entanglement, a quantum phenomenon in which two particles, separated by any amount of distance, can instantaneously affect one another as if part of a unified system.
Quantum data (not classical bit data) can be relayed seemingly faster than the speed of light thanks to the strange properties of entanglement,
Quantum teleportation is not teleportation in the sense one might think. It involves achieving a certain set of parameters that then allow properties of one quantum system to get tangled up with another so that observations are reflected simultaneously, thereby “teleporting” the information from one place to another.
To do this, researchers at Delft first had to create qubits out of classical bits. In this case, electrons trapped in diamonds at extremely low temperatures that allow their quantum properties, like electron spin, to be observed.
A qubit is a unit of quantum data that can hold more than one value simultaneously thanks to an equally integral quantum phenomenon called superposition, also supported by the Schrödinger equation, as well as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that says something exists in all possible states until it is observed. It’s also the reason quantum computing may one day surpass the speeds of classical computing by allowing calculations to spread bit values between 0, 1 or any probabilistic value between the two numbers — in other words, a superposition of both figures.
“Faster than light speed information” would prove revolutionary for time oriented computer systems, and space travel communications, and we are only at the beginning stages of this technology. What a time to be alive.
