When I first saw this article the thought came that this would be just what the invention of the ansible would look like.
An ansible is a hypothetical machine capable of instantaneous or superluminal communication. Ansibles occur as plot devices in science fiction literature. ... The word ansible was coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in her 1966 novel, Rocannon's World. ... The name of the device has since been borrowed by authors such as Orson Scott Card,[3] Vernor Vinge,[4] Elizabeth Moon,[5] Jason Jones,[6] L.A. Graf,[7] and Dan Simmons.
Wiki
Scientists report that they have successfully teleported complex quantum information, by encoding two entangled particles, separated in space, with packets of light. When one of the two particles was destroyed, the information associated with it was instantly recoverable from the remote particle.
In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost.
The last sentence in the following quote misses the point. Sure beaming here and there would be great but the kind of communications implied with this breakthrough are stunning enough, especially if it not limited to the speed of light, but entanglement may NOT be limited to c. Or so I understand. Any physicists care to chime in?
The team at the University of Tokyo were able to put the light wave in a 'Schrödinger's cat' state with the help of a machine simply called 'The Teleporter', and make it have two opposite phases at the same time.
Professor Elanor Huntington, who was part of the research team, told ABC News: "What we've done is take a macroscopic beam of light and put it into a quantum superposition, which is extremely fragile, and teleported that from one place to another."
Doing this demonstrates that - for the first time - blocks of complex quantum information can now be carried by light.
"If we can do this, we can do just about any form of communication needed for any quantum technology," she said.
Unfortunately the breakthrough doesn't mean we'll ever be able to transport human beings, Star Trek style. At present even bacteria is far too complex to be transported.
From Yahoo News (first link in diary) and also reported in Science (subscription required). Here's the abstract:
We report on the experimental quantum teleportation of strongly nonclassical wave packets of light. To perform this full quantum operation while preserving and retrieving the fragile nonclassicality of the input state, we have developed a broadband, zero-dispersion teleportation apparatus that works in conjunction with time-resolved state preparation equipment. Our approach brings within experimental reach a whole new set of hybrid protocols involving discrete- and continuous-variable techniques in quantum information processing for optical sciences.
Even if we don't get an ansible, we'll get better faster comms and computers.
Cheers.