[TheEnd187]

AUSTRALIAN physicists have discovered a method that could see atoms being teleported between Sydney and Perth and pave the way for possible Star Trek-like travel in the future.

The method involves cooling down a group of atoms and shooting lasers at them, making them "appear to disappear" before using transporting them along optic fibres at light speed to another location where they can be reconstructed.

The "simple" way of transporting atoms was developed by physicists Murray Olsen, Ashton Bradley, Simon Haine of the Australian Research Council Centre for Quantum-Atom Optics, and and Joseph Hope of ANU.

Dr Olsen told NEWS.com.au the method was very much like the Star Trek characters' favourite way to get back onto the ship.

The atoms are cooled to almost absolute zero, or -273C. At a billionth of a degree above this temperature, a quirk of physics makes all the atoms start behaving in the same way. Then the scientists zap them with two lasers.

“If you cool these atoms down enough ... in a condensate, they all enter the same quantum state,” Dr Olsen said.

“When a few thousand atoms are overlapping (and you hit them with the laser beams)… they basically disappear.

“We can use an optic fibre (to transport the signal at the speed of light) into a second condensate, which could be in another room, or another building, or another state.

“We’ve got the coldest thing in the universe and the fastest speed in the universe.”

Experiments

He said the method could be being used in laboratories in the next four years, but didn't expect he would ever see humans teleported.

Dr Haine said the team’s method was a lot simpler than previous theories.

Dr Haine also said their method would reconstruct the atoms better once transported, compared to the “entanglement” theory.

“As our scheme doesn’t rely on the quality of the entanglement, it may be possible to achieve more accurate teleportation via this method,” Dr Haine said.

Another scientist at ANU, Dr John Close, intends to implement the experiments over the coming years

Scientists find way to teleport atoms on optic fibres | NEWS.com.au
source

[killians45]

If this is the same news, I remember reading this about 1 or 2 years ago. Far away from star trek but still... it is exciting news. If you find this interesting take a look at quantum entanglement, or as Einstein put it spooky action at a distance. VERY interesting read and shows just how bizarre physics can get.

[francisco8760]

cool, but i don't think it is to convenient, a rather go in transforming bio-material in digital material. so you could carry your sister in a storage device! lol

[killians45]

Oh no, any sort of living organism is way off if still not impossible. As far as digital, that's another aspect of quantum computing.

[saltynay]

old old old news I read about this around 3-4 years ago interesting yes but nothing seems to of happened since and if it has the military would be all over this sort of tech so the chance of it entering any form of civilian application would still be a decade or two after the military have played with it.

Small detail aswell scientist haven't even mapped the human brain yet the chance of being able to construct one out of pure digital matter is nigh impossible and again no-one knows the lmits and extent of the human brain memory alone could be way more then a trillion terabytes for all we know

[killians45]

Agreed, old news... but let's face it, with quantum entanglement and quantum fields like listed above, 3 or 4 years ago is nothing. I wouldn't expect to hear anything real about this for 20 or 30 years. Very early in development and some HUGE pitfalls in the way, none the less it is interesting.

[Sydzy]

that and all the hippies will slow down research on it. i say abolish human rights! i know! We just need WW3 to rock up, cause when that happens all ethics go out the window! North Korea got the right idea there, lol, experiment on humans =P