Ever
since the invention of wheel more than 5000 years ago, human desire to reach a
place faster has lead to numerous inventions. From chariot to bicycle to automobile
to airplane and rocket, all have been created with a single motive to travel
faster. But all these inventions share the same flaw; it requires us to travel
the physical distance. With development in the field of paranormal physics, scientists have been
trying to combine the properties of telecommunication and transportation to
achieve “teleportation”.
Teleportation
involves transfer of matter from one place to another without physical
traversing the space between them. It deals with dematerializing an object at
one point, sending the details of the precise atomic configuration at another
location where it will be reconstructed. With the tremendous potential being
embedded on this invention it would explore the possibilities of travelling
without physically crossing the space. The
idea of teleportation moved out of the realm of science fiction into the world
of theoretical possibility in 1933. Physicist Charles Bennett with a team of
researchers at IBM confirmed that quantum teleportation is possible, but only
if the object being transported was destroyed. Since then, experiments using
photons has proven that quantum teleportation is in fact possible.
In
1998, physicists at Caltech successfully teleported a photon by reading its
exact atomic structure, sending the information across 1 meter of coaxial cable
and creating a replica of photon. As
predicted, the original photon was destroyed once the replica was made. In the
event of teleporting objects larger than photon the main hurdle in the path is
“Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”. The principle states that determining the
momentum and location of a particle simultaneously is not possible. If you
cannot determine the location of a particle then how can you teleport it? The photon
experiment was carried out by using a phenomenon called entanglement. For
a person to be transported, a machine would have to be built that can pinpoint
and analyze all of the
atoms that make up the human body. That's more
than a trillion trillion atoms. The machine would then have to send this
information to another location, where the person's body would be reconstructed
with exact precision. Molecules couldn't be even a millimeter out of place,
lest the person arrive with some severe neurological or physiological defect. The laws of physics may even make it
impossible to create a transporter that enables a person to be sent
instantaneously to another location, which would require travel at the speed of
light. The availability of this technology
tough looks bleak in the near future.
But like all technologies, scientists are
sure to continue to improve upon the ideas of teleportation to the point that
we may one day be able to avoid such harsh methods. One day, one of your descendants could finish up a work day at a space office above some far away
planet in a galaxy many light years from Earth, tell his or her wristwatch that
it's time to beam home for dinner on planet X below and sit down at the dinner
table as soon as the words leave his mouth.
By: Ankit Jain
By: Ankit Jain
