Comments on: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:41:11 +0000

Reagan is smiling down from Heaven, er, the Spirit World.

By: Bookslinger

Bookslinger — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:40:21 +0000

What? No post on this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1111660620100212?type=marketsNews

Star Wars (ie, SDI), is now a reality.

By: Bruce Nielson

Bruce Nielson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:18:36 +0000

I was wondering if it was something like this.

By: Vader

Vader — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:55:00 +0000

Another point is that transporting energy faster than the speed of light may not be as useful as it sounds. A flow of energy is possible only when there is a net increase of entropy. It’s really entropy you want to manipulate, and since entropy is a measure of information, a method that requires the information to be transported at the speed of light may not allow any useful flow of energy faster than the speed of light.

But I still haven’t actually read the paper, so I’m speaking purely out of my hat here *wheese wheese*

By: Ben Pratt

Ben Pratt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:33:15 +0000

*weighed

By: Ben Pratt

Ben Pratt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:32:47 +0000

Reading the first section of the paper, it’s clear that in order to know which measurement to make at the second particle (B) in order to extract the energy injected at A, one must first transmit information about the measurement done on A the old-fashioned way from point A to point B. Causality is safe.

As for scaling up such a system to actually deliver energy, I don’t know how practical such a thing may be, simply because the amount of energy teleported is related to the “consumption of ground-state entanglement.” I’m not an entanglement expert, but I interpret this to mean that a given entangled system can only be used to teleport a certain amount of energy before entanglement completely breaks down. So the boon of teleported energy must be weight against the energy cost of repeatedly setting up the entangled system.

By: Bruce Nielson

Bruce Nielson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:34:33 +0000

Yes, a more specific critique would be nice. This violates my understanding of physics at many levels. But if it were true, I’d be happy to have had my understanding violated for something this cool. But I guess, at this point, I’m assuming something is wrong with the proposal at a fundamental level and I just can’t understand it.

By: Vader

Vader — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:14:42 +0000

Any faster-than-light transport will violate causality in some reference frames, so I tend not to take seriously any FTL proposals. But I can look this one over if you’d like a more specific critique.

By: Bruce Nielson

Bruce Nielson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:20:35 +0000

I’d like to hear your comments on this one, Vader.