Teleportation Takes Quantum Leap

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Stefan Lovgren

for National Geographic News

April 18, 2004



It sounds like something out of Star Trek.

Austrian researchers have teleported photons (particles of light) across the Danube River in Vienna using technology that calls to mind Scotty beaming up Captain Kirk in the science fiction series.

"We were able to perform a quantum teleportation experiment for the first time ever outside a university laboratory," said Rupert Ursin, a researcher at the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna in Austria.

The researchers read the "blueprints" of the photons they wanted to teleport. They then broke up the photons into smaller particles called quantum bits and sent these bits, along with the blueprints, through a fiber-optic cable in a sewage pipe under the river.

At the other end, replicas of the original photons were

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