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Friday, June 25, 2004

"QUANTUM: researchers successfully teleport quantum bits"
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States and the University of Innsbruck, Austria have demonstrated the transfer of information between two locations without any intervening physical medium. The separate efforts mark the first teleportation of material states, a concept long postulated and one that could open new avenues for unbreakable encryption technology � information would never be eavesdropped upon because it is not actually being transmitted. "We and another group at the University of Innsbruck are the first to demonstrate teleportation of quantum states from one location to another," said NIST physicist David Wineland. "Both groups have followed Bennett's original algorithm very closely, and we both successfully teleported qubits." Wineland was referring to a 1993 finding by IBM fellow Charles Bennett and five colleagues that because matter was based on quantum-mechanical waves, "beam me up, Scotty" teleportation was possible in principle. The caveat: The original of the item being teleported would be destroyed in the process.
Audio Interviews / Text: http://eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=22102104