CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Australian scientists said Monday they had successfully “teleported” a laser beam encoded with data, breaking it up and reconstructing an exact replica a yard away. Their work replicates an experiment at the California Institute of Technology in 1998, but the Australian team believes their technique is more reliable and consistent.
Although the research brings to mind the way “Star Trek” characters were beamed around on TV and in film, scientists at the Australian National University said their technique’s main use will be as a way to encrypt information and for a new generation of super-fast computers.
At this stage, the process perfected by Australian physicist Ping Koy Lam and his 12-member team can only teleport light by destroying the light beam and creating an exact copy at the receiving end from light particles known as photons.
“We have taken a beam of laser light … and completely destroyed it and then made measurements of the destroyed laser beam and then took the measured results to the other side of the lab and reconstructed an exact replica of what we have destroyed,” said Lam. Teleporting a laser beam involves destroying and replicating billions of photons.
Lam said he believes the process, called “quantum teleportation” and which takes a nanosecond – one billionth of one second – will soon be used for teleporting matter.
