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Location: Dallas, TX | From Nature.com: Researchers have teleported a single ion of the element ytterbium over a metre in distance, shattering previous records. Photons have gone further but teleportation of matter has only occurred between ions in the same trap over a few micrometers. Although still highly inefficient, their technique provides an important proof-of-principle for long-distance quantum teleportation and brings the era of quantum communication closer to reality. The work appears in the journal Science. ... "What you're moving is information, not the actual atoms," says Chris Monroe, from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in College Park and an author of the paper. But as two particles of the same type differ only in their quantum states, the transfer of quantum information is equivalent to moving the first particle to the location of the second. Moving quantum information is much more difficult than moving classical data. 'Bits' of digital information are stored as ones or zeros, which can be read and transmitted with ease. A quantum bit, on the other hand, lives in a fuzzy state of one and zero simultaneously. Worse still, measuring that bit directly will destroy its fuzziness, so quantum teleportation requires researchers to move the data without reading them first. |