You're thinking of Group Velocity vs. Phase Velocity. Phase velocity for EM signals travels faster than the speed of light, group velocity (which can have information modulated onto it) travels slower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_velocity

To say that these particles have been "teleported" is a bit disingenuous really, all that happened was that they quantum-entangled two particles, physically seperated them, and observed one. The other flipped into the relevant state instantaneously. It wasn't a copy or anything. To have a proper transporter, you'd need some way of ordering bosons and fermions into a the required configuration, which would require some pretty hefty and precise magnets (since it's all done via EM forces).

Edit - the original article was careful to say that "information" had been transported at faster than the speed of light, which was true. They hadn't teleported any matter at all. The big news was that information can indeed be communicated at faster than light speeds.

Aye that's what I was remembering :)
hmmm ... really, huh, I thought "information" hadn't been transmitted ... link for my continuing education? :)

The original paper is here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7206/full/nature07121.html
DOI: 10.1038/nature07121
There's some debate as to whether there is "information" transmitted at all, since if you disentangle one of the photon pairs, you would know the information of the other one anyway :)

Wow, this is the most depressing thing I have read for the day. I guess anti-intellectualism has to start young. I had originally hoped that the teenager had some interesting questions for Hawking, should have known better though. Sigh

Now I can't be 100% certain (it's late, I haven't slept and I'm definitely not great at any area of science), but I believe one technically can't just 'create' or 'replicate' in the way you're suggesting, due to the laws of matter.

If I recall, that law basically states something along the lines that something cannot be created from nothing (if this is a different law, I apologize and would love to be corrected). So if we tried to create something with molecules, protons, electrons, or what have you, we'd have to pull those from somewhere... but where?

As it would have to be existent, we would either have to pull directly from the universe itself (and unless it's infinite, this could cause serious problems) or from existing materials here on Earth. It might work if we could use the molecules of trash, or even something as disturbing as dead bodies (Christine anyone?), but we'd have to make sure we weren't accidentally taking molecules from things like support beams, living creatures, oxygen or anything else we would actually need.

So, while the idea sounds interesting, theoretically I don't know as it would be possible.



As relates to the kids: I don't find them questioning theoretical science's usage to today's technology/sciences/etc as strange or stupid. After all, it's very natural to question the validity of things. The problem is, as stated, that they seem proud to not understand these things, and apparently also don't understand how theory can become truth.

As well, they say they're not trying to be mean about him being disabled, but I basically read "Har har, they're only calling this guy smart because he's totally fucked for life and an invalid and useless otherwise!" when one should really know better. They're forgetting that they are basically saying that anyone with a disability is useless, because they aren't "whole," whatever that is.


And now, to bed for me!

Well, Russia isn't a part of Europe, but a part of Russia is in Europe. Wikipedia. Sadly I can't find a non-wikipedia source at this time, other than by googling for the map of Europe. I was also taught this at school, ages ago, so I believe it's correct. Without the Russia parts, Europe is way smaller than USA (unless the maps are extremely distorted).

You're thinking of the law of conservation of matter. This worked quite well until particle physics came along and showed that, in order for relativity to be correct, a particle's energy is given by
E^2 = p^2c^2 + m^2c^4
(where E = energy observed, p = momentum, m = mass and c = speed of light) which, if you shift to the rest-frame of the particle, becomes
E = mc^2
which people know as Einstein's famous equation. So you can generate mass out of energy relatively easily, if you have enough energy. This is precisely what particle accelerators do - they accelerate charged particles up to very high speeds in a vacuum, then smash them together to create huge amounts of energy, which then give rise to all sorts of particles for them to analyse.
[Edit - added terminology description for those not used to physics equations]
Edit2 - I agree that you can't make something out of nothing, you just need to expand your description of "something" to take into account energy too :)

I'm a little surprised nobody has mentioned something like time dilation principals for teleportation. Basically, you speed up, light has to stay the same speed, time slows to compensate. Technically, people have "time traveled" already. In fact there is a world record for most time traveled. The record escapes me. The point is, time travel and teleportation have already occured in a very basic sense.

One runs into issues then of which reference frame you are talking about - moving clocks run slow, as they say, and so both the lab observers and the person obtaining high speeds will both observe the other person's clock to have slowed. So whilst it is time travel, it would be confusing to all involved :)

Of course, the amount of energy required to place an actual person safely into such a high velocity frame would be huge, and there is no way to actually go backwards in your timeframe (would require a greater than infinite amount of energy to do so).

What if time traveling particles leads to safe, nuclear fusion? I'm not saying it will but there may be something very useful that comes out of something like that. I'm not sure Newton's math was terrible apropos to most folks back in the day, but without his work to stand on a lot of later scientists wouldn't have had the same grounding for furthering their work. There's no "applied" science really, just building on other science and people using scientific principles to accomplish a goal, the goal of building a widget is no more noble than the goal of gaining more understanding. It's telling that computer science (the math behind computers) was developed 100s of years before the first computer, pretty awesome, huh?

2050 should be well after peak oil, as the oil gets hideously expensive people will start starving (modern farming basically converts oil to food), the reaction to Fukishama tells me all I need to know about whether we'll be prepared for this event, and the answer is no. Ironically, Fukishama very well may have killed most of us, just not in the way most people think. I suspect the invasion of Iraq may have actually been partly about messing with oil production enough that it muddies the numbers, making it harder to detect the peak.

FYI peak oil in the US hit in the 70s. All those capped oil wells you hear about, the Mars oil field (biggest find in 20 years!) would last mere days. Mars would last the US 46 days to be exact. The 500 years of coal you keep hearing about was based on a report from the 70s that had two caveats: "we can only mine half" and "at current usage rates", usage rates have gone up drastically, 8% per year has been the goal, which doesn't sound like much until you realize that means we're using over 16 times as much per year today as in 1970. The big eastern coal fields have about 20-30 years left in them, and note, they're chopping the tops of mountains already to get to what they can, there will be no real improvements to get at more of it.

They haven't. Quantum teleportation is not what you think it is.

Communication will never be faster-than-light.

As an American, I'm deeply irritated at my generation and wish that Hawking would chase after these idiot teenagers with Richard Dawkins shooting lasers.

Put a Hemi in his wheelchair with an automatic tranny. Gattling guns on the side with swivel mounts so they can get around 45 degrees of turn. The underside of the chair can be used as bullet storage and a counterweight to the extra added mass of the gats and the V8. No need for a radiator since the V8 should get enough air to be cooled by it considering it won't have that much weight to push. After exhaustive testing this should make a fine Stupidity Elimination Stephen Hawking Mobile Weapon Station :D

We'll never break the sound barrier.

Though due to my limited physics knowledge I can't really debate the rest of it with you, I don't know that much about the mechanics.

Myth. The scientific community never believed we wouldn't. In fact, it's been done regularly throughout history, from whip cracks to propeller blades. There were no rigorously tested theories that implied it was impossible. It was simply considered a milestone, not an impossibility.

However, there are for FTL comms.