14 DAY TRIAL // Teleportation, the well-known sci-fi concept, seems closer and closer with every new discovery in quantum physics and many news articles present the recent finds as "the next step to teleportation" or "beam me up, Scotty," and the general Star Trek clich?s.
Really, will we ever be able to go from one place to another, instantly and across huge distances? It would be nice if we could, since traffic jams will most likely disappear, bus stations will be replaced by "teleportation booths" where you would insert your card, type in your destination and be there instantly.
Although it will most likely ruin the transportation industry as we know it (God forbid we lose the "benefits" of car smoke), it would be very convenient. Of course, this is one possible future that some sci-fi authors have already depicted in novels or movies.
There's one problem: we don't know how to teleport things around! We don't even know if it's possible. The probable starting point of this idea is a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which misleads most people into believing matter could simply go from one place to another just by flipping a switch.
Quantum entanglement is a mechanical phenomenon that allows for a description of the quantum states of two or more objects with reference to each other and already has various applications in fields like quantum computing and quantum cryptography.
This technique has been used to experimentally realize quantum teleportation, a method of transferring a quantum state to a random distant location through a distributed entangled state and the transmission of some classical information.
This teleportation has been achieved and this year a team of scientists were able to send bits of information over a distance of 89 miles, from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighboring island of Tenerife, using quantum teleportation.
But dealing with individual photons is not the same thing as trying to transport the billions of cells in a human body. For now, this means of transportation remains a dream, since even if it is possible, the most powerful supercomputer, calculating the exact position of each molecule to be reassembled in a different location to recreate the human body, will need a few billion years to complete the entire operation.
So, I guess it's back behind the steering wheel for most of us, although you have to admit the concept sounds really good when you're stuck in traffic...