Beam me up, Scotty!
December 4, 2009
Teleportation is defined as is the transfer of matter from one point to another, more or less instantaneously, either by alchemy, paranormal means, or through technological means.
The word was originally coined in 1931 by the American writer Charles Fort to describe disappearances and appearances of anomalies, and he suggested that teleportation might explain allegedly ‘paranormal’ phenomena. Some suggest that it is difficult to tell whether Fort was being serious and genuinely believed in the idea of teleportation or was pointing out the inadequacies of mainstream science in using teleportation to explain and brush aside strange phenomena which fundamentally, perhaps, were just not understood.
In 2004 the Guardian reported that scientists had performed successful teleportation of atoms for the first time. It was reported that the teleportation was achieved by two teams of researchers working independently in both the US and Austria. They managed to transfer key properties of one particle to another using a laser light and without any physical link.
When talking about teleportation these physicists are describing the transfer of “quantum states” or information between separate atoms e.g the atom’s energy, motion, magnetic field and physical properties. Basically, what they did was teleport something called a “qubit” from one atom to another with the help of another third party atom which acted as the “teleportation state”. The whole thing relies on a process that exists in the atomic scale which Einstein liked to call a “spooky action” but is also known as entanglement – which basically means that two particles can have related properties even when they are far apart.
When the two particles become “entangled”, their separate quantum identities get blended so that a single equation represents both. This form of teleportation, however, is only really applicable to the creation of super-fast computers inside which teleportation could provide a form of invisible quantum wiring and supposedly these computers would be able to handle much more information than computers today at many times their speed.
In more recent developments, in fact, on January 22 2009 at the University of Maryland, it was reported that “scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart, which is a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.”
This time scientists had succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another, in separate, non touching containers, over a substantial distance. The difference here is that previously none of the procedures provided a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances but this one did. This method would allow for the production of quantum computers which could work considerably faster than normal machines. Scientists have suggested that this new combination “represents an attractive architecture for a quantum repeater, that would allow quantum information to be communicated over much larger distances than can be done with just photons.”
Unfortunately, teleportation is massively limited and not yet efficient enough to use even for the purposes described above and presently only applies to the realms of building faster computers. Unfortunately, it will be a very long time, to say the least, before we can teleport to different destinations around the globe. So unless you are up for traveling around as a tiny “qubit” inside “invisible quantum wiring” for now you will have to stick to what you know best: planes, trains, and automobiles.
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