Quantum Today: Quantum Energy Teleportation - Activating Ground State Energy

Join us for Quantum Today, where we sit down with researchers from the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) to talk about their work, its impact and where their research may lead.

In quantum mechanics, “nothing” is hard to come by. Even the vacuum state has spontaneous energy fluctuations, although extracting useful work from them is notoriously difficult. By taking advantage of entanglement in the lowest-energy state of a system, it is possible to spend energy in one region to gain information that allows energy extraction somewhere else. This protocol, called quantum energy teleportation, was a purely theoretical notion until a recent result by IQC and University of Waterloo researchers, where they demonstrated the protocol using nuclear magnetic resonance. In this instalment of Quantum Today, University of Waterloo professor Eduardo Martin-Martinez and IQC alumnus Hemant Katiyar discuss taking ideas from quantum thermodynamics and designing an experiment to test the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Find their publication, titled “Experimental activation of strong local passive states with quantum information”, in Physical Review Letters and on the arXiv, and read more on IQC news: “IQC researchers bring theory to reality with a new experiment.”

[@QuantumIQC]

You can find the recorded lectures referenced by Eduardo on the Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive here - pirsa.org/speaker/Eduardo-Martin-Martinez

[@phillip6083]

Would it be possible to build a stystem like a dyson sphere and use qet to dispose of waste heat?

[@Skullkid16945]

I had a similar thought. Since Earth is having issues reflecting heat back into space due to greenhouse emissions, I had a thought earlier today after looking into heat exchangers. Then it crossed my mind that Earth keeps absorbing radiation from the sun, but it doesn't get rid of it all. The energy Earth recieves may change form, but we could technically end up with too much thermal energy here that the Earth gets too hot. I had always thought, yeah people can use ACs and all that, but all that does is use electrical energy to move thermal energy from one place to another, while also creating thermal energy in the process so it doesn't help at all. However, if we were able to move more heat that we produce, then it may be possible to move heat away from Earth itself to cool it down. Only problem is conduction and convection do not work in a vacuum of space, so radiation is the only option to expel energy from Earth. The problem is getting the thermal energy out into space to some sort of device that could then convert it to radiation and send it out into space somewhere. We could always try converting the thermal energy to radiation itself and beaming it up through the atmosphere but that may cause issues and be less effective. Then I remembered Quantum Entanglement and started looking around and found Quantum Teleportation. If it is possible to transfer energy through quantum means and bypass the atmosphere entirely then maybe it could be the answer to building a heat exchange system that would draw heat from the hottest regions on Earth and redirect it into space using Quantum Teleportation that could then use some sort of setup to turn that energy into radiation and get rid of it. Maybe even direct the radiation at another planet or the moon and use it to heat colder planets as a way to teraform possibly? I am not really into science enough to know much about anything in these fields but I do like to brainstorm things like this. Probably everything I have said has already been thought of and proven impossible or not practical for today. Also sorry for the long paragraph lol I just find this kind of stuff interesting despite my trouble learning about it in detail.

[@phillip6083]

@Skullkid16945 its theoretically possible but we are not to that stage yet.
Our biggest issue(aside from carbon pollution)is were replacing billions of miles of green with rooftops, asphalt and concrete.we need to take into consideration that we are altering environments by creating heat islands and start using more greenery...like green roofs and heat reflecting coatings for roads etc.

[@Skullkid16945]

@@phillip6083 I have also thought of this as well. Reflecting incoming radiation to prevent it converting to thermal energy, while also trying to find ways to actively convert and/or remove thermal energy from the atmosphere, ground, and oceans is definitely a lot to try and even consider doing. However, if we could somehow pull it off it would probably help with cooling the planet at the least since we are not just moving heat from one place to another, but rather getting it off the planet entirely. On a side note, I had also seen somewhere where scientist have discovered a way to turn light into matter by shooting high power laser pulses into plasma that can create positrons. Or as the paper says "Positron Generation and Acceleration in a Self-Organized Photon Collider Enabled by a Ultraintense Laser Pulse." Maybe it would be possible to use thermal energy to create electrical energy to power the laser, and then the laser would essentially make positrons, turning the thermal energy into positrons? I'm not entirely sure I follow half of this right anyways but maybe it would be some kind of odd way to turn thermal energy into something less volatile to our planet. Or maybe it wouldn't work at all, idk XD.

[@theultimatenewplayer9341]

Makes me wonder if Elon would attempt to construct a miniature Dyson swarm using starlink satellites equipped with this technology if it could be scaled up to transfer larger quantities of energy.