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Will You Be Teleporting Into 2010?
Teleportation is the instant transference of matter from from one point to another either by paranormal means or through the use of science and technology and has often been referred to in works of fiction and science fiction.
The word was 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 these people did was to teleport something called a 'qubit' from one atom to another with the help of another third party atom which acted as the 'teleportation state'- a bit like you or me helping two old people across a road, maybe? 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 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. I guess like having completely identical twins on completely opposite sides of the world? No?
One article tried to explain this process in more simple terms: "A qubit walks into a bar, unsure of whether to order drink A or drink B. If the bartender asks the qubit what it wants, the qubit will collapse and be destroyed. But now researchers can instantly teleport the original, intact qubit to another 'bar' far away".... ok? No? This didn't help me either.
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 and at many times their speed.
So in 2004, we were able "to teleport in a deliberate way - that is, at the push of a button". This had apparently, according to sources, been done before, but not in such a way that the information could be kept at the end of the process.
In more recent developments, in fact, on January 23 2009, to be precise, in Washington 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."
Differently to in 2004, now, a team from the 'Joint Quantum Institute' 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.
It will be a very long time, to say the least, until we ourselves can teleport to different destinations around the globe or within our respective houses and towns. So unless you are up for travelling around as a tiny 'qubit' inside 'invisible quantum wiring' for now you will have to stick to what you know best; cars, buses, trains and planes.
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