Have you ever wondered what being able to arrive in your destination in a matter of seconds would be like? Well, scientists are working on it now. The idea of teleportation has been used in many different science fiction novels and movies. But now, scientists have put this idea to life by inventing the the first type of teleportation. Scientists have been working on a new type of teleportation called Quantum Teleportation, which is the transfer of information rather than regular matter. Quantum Teleportation is like destroying an atom, taking the information from it, and transferring the information to another atom, creating almost the exact same copy of the destroyed atom. However, there are slight differences that are actually quite unnoticeable. In today’s world, it is impossible to create an exact same replica of something using teleportation.This is like the principle stating that you can’t pinpoint the exact location of an object, whether you use Google Maps, or an atlas. You have to use a unit of numbers to find the accurate location of an object. These set of numbers are called coordinates. Another way to think about Quantum Teleportation is to put an atom in a 3D fax machine and faxing the information from that atom to a different atom in a different place. The original atom is destroyed. When you photocopy a piece of paper, the new copy will have flaws. It will not look the exact same as the original copy, but not in a way that majorly affects it. That’s kind of how Quantum Teleportation works. But how does Quantum Teleportation really work? The whole idea really determines on something called “Quantum Entanglement”. Quantum Entanglement is when an atom is “tangled’ with another atom. In other words, it’s when an atom starts acting like another atom. The original copy transfers all the information to another atom, which sends it to the place the atom is being teleported. Eventually, the entanglement destroys both of the atoms and another atom gets its hands on the information. Since the original copy is destroyed, there is no chance of the atom running into another atom with the same information, which confirms that it will not go through the process of entanglement, unless the information is teleported again. Physicists have been able to teleport atoms about half a meter, and photons over tens of kilometers. Now you may be wondering “What about humans? Will we ever be able to teleport them?” Eventually, we will. Teleporting humans will not go against the laws of physics, but there will be a non-biological minor difference. We already have 3D fax machines, so it’s pretty much like that. A human is made of about a trillion atoms, about 10 to the power of 28, so it’s physically impossible to get an exact copy of a human. There are too many atoms. The concept of teleportation is just theoretical, though it’s technically possible. But it may not be possible in the near future.
Bibliography: http://www.livescience.com/52259-quantum-teleportation-sets-distance-record.html
