Is Teleportation Possible?

We all have, at some point or the other, come across people teleporting from one place to another for whatever reason. Mostly through Star Trek. Before you close your eyes and go "Beam me up, Scotty!", there are a few things that will burst your bubble mentioned in the article, but only for the present. Nobody said it's not impossible in the future! Human aside, I would just like something that can teleport cheesecakes to me.

Yes, teleportation is real. It exists theoretically and has also been done practically on a small scale in science labs. But the truth is, what we have gotten to till now is still too far from the fictional teleportation. All across the fiction world, you will have the concepts of teleportation like in Star Trek or the 2008 movie, Jumper. What reality dictates, however, is concerned with only atoms and molecules and their 'information'. Confused? All the more reasons to read on ahead on the matter. 

Fictional and Real Teleportation

Your teleportation shown in movies and written in books, consists of transporting physical bodies, human or otherwise, through either some form of time warp or dimensional rifts. Just like the movie Jumper, where teleportation means ripping a small portal of sorts through the dimension to travel through it and back to our dimension, at some other place.

Now, your current state of research and experiments on teleportation (or 'Classic Teleportation') is not that 'developed', if you may. Right now, teleportation only deals with the transfer of information from point A to point B, that are pretty close to each other (compared to two continents or planets). An experiment in 1998 showed the teleportation of a Photon across two terminals at a distance of 3.28 feet (or 1 meter). The latest experiment in April of 2011, teleported packets of light over 9.9 miles (or 16 kilometers) with previously unknown precision. This falls under another aspect of teleportation, known as 'Quantum Teleportation' and leads to the possibility of constructing quantum computers and quantum satellites.

Classic Teleportation

The main difference between the classic and quantum procedures of teleportation is the idea of transportation used. In the classic way, the object would simply be taken from point A to point B really, really fast, thus giving the idea of teleportation. Of course, the idea is old and no one thought it would actually work out that way. The truth is, the evolution of science and technology point to the fact that it indeed might be possible some day.

Now, teleportation takes a look at that old method, tries to do it the same way, but hits this one snag called the Uncertainty Principle (explained later). This prompts the new scientists to come up with a rudimentary concept of copying an object and sending it's information across to a receiving station. The whole idea revolves around the information the object carries. It works like a simple fax machine, like 2-D teleportation. Put paper with something on it on one end, send it to other end where the receiver gets your message. Note that the latter gets the 'message' and not the original paper. And that, is what Classic teleportation is; it suggests the duplication of an object by measuring it, sending over the information over to receiving end, where the object gets reconstructed according to the data and the material that the data 'wraps' itself around. Which means, if human teleportation were to exist this way, it would mean that a person stepping on the sending platform should have a somewhat similar organism on the receiving platform. He would then press the button, all the data carried by the person's structure is copied and transmitted over to the receiving station, where it is fed to the organic blob waiting for it and turn into the person on getting it. Now this obviously raises ethical questions like -

● What happens to the guy at the sending end?

● How similar are the two guys (in terms of physical reconstruction)?

● If the first one is 'destroyed', will that be killing and would it matter to the second guy created?

Teleportation and Uncertainty

In simple terms, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is not possible to simultaneously measure two complementary the position as well as the momentum of an object in the perfect sense. The more you know about one, the less you will know about the other. This has been one of the biggest obstacles of classic teleportation. Since you cannot measure both, you cannot possibly teleport the object across, without botching it up.

Quantum Teleportation

The whole thing is all about the quantum entanglement. Simply put, matter can be considered as an entangled quantum state. The idea is like this - gather the data as you unravel this entanglement, send data to receiver. Since the object is unraveled at the sending port, it no longer exists there. The concept is probably the only way to take a detour from the Heisenberg principle and still gather object data successfully. This teleportation of basic quantum data bits, or Qubits, is what teleportation is all about today. It has already been used to teleport atoms and light packets across small and great distances as mentioned above.

The idea of quantum entanglement as a useful method for teleportation comes from the result of the interaction between the entangled objects. In most cases, object A (that is being teleported) will interact indirectly with object B (placed where A is meant to travel to) through two additional entangled objects C and D. It is ironic that this was originally derived from the EPR paradox papers that aimed at arguing against quantum mechanics.

The thing with quantum teleportation and humans is that it's just very, very, very unbelievably hard to do. You would need to gather the data at a blazing speed and if not a light speed, then at something just slower than it. The problem is, even that just might not be enough. If you get 'disentangled' too slow at point A, you may even sense it. For a more graphic feel, refer to 'splinching' from the Harry Potter series.

Wormholes

Again one of the more fictional parts of the concept of teleportation would be traveling thorough wormholes. Wormholes, are like inter-dimensional holes that connect two points in the universe. Case in point, the movie "Jumper", where they open dimensional 'rips' and jump through them. A part of the science world says that the formulation of wormholes may be possible, while the other half laughs. Still, if we don't dream, we don't progress.

Whatever the future holds, we will not know accurately. It will keep changing as things advance, develop and deviate. Maybe there is another way we haven't looked at yet, maybe it's the wormholes. Whatever it is, I really hope we will be able to teleport cheesecakes with perfection.

By : Arun Prabhu

Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/is-teleportation-possible.html