Teleportation: Not so fictious anymore!

How we dream about teleporting ourselves from one end of the world to the other, from a boring party to the beach on Miami etc etc. These thoughts were majorly inspired by science fiction movies creating quite a mess there, producing inside out baboons, gene-spliced monsters and dematerialized madmen like nobody’s business.In reality, however the experiments are way less disgusting and quite promising, contrary to common belief.

Fun facts 

Gathered from various sources, here's a compilation from some fun facts and believes from all over the internet: 

·        In 1998, physicists at the California Institute of Technology , along with two European groups, made IBM's teleportation theory a reality by successfully teleporting a photon (particle that is responsible for light) 

Recipe :

1.     Read the atomic structure of a photon,

2.      sent this information across 3.28 feet (about 1 meter) of coaxial cable

3.     created a replica of the photon on the other side.

Conclusion : As predicted, the original photon no longer existed once the replica appeared.

Theories involved:

·        the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle : this principle states that you cannot simultaneously know the location and the momentum of a particle.
“ It's also the main barrier for teleportation of objects larger than a photon.”

How did they overcome the obstacles?

But if you can't know the position of a particle, then how can you engage in a bit of quantum teleportation?

As explained and stated in many articles, this is what Caltech physicists have believed to have done: 

In order to teleport a photon without violating the Heisenberg Principle, the Caltech physicists used a phenomenon known as entanglement. In entanglement, you need at least three photons to achieve quantum teleportation:

1.     Photon A: The photon to be teleported

2.     Photon B: The transporting photon

3.     Photon C: The photon that is entangled with photon B

Process:

·        If researchers tried to look too closely at photon A without entanglement, they'd bump it, and thereby change it.

·        By entangling photons B and C, researchers can extract some information about photon A, and the remaining information would pass on to B by way of entanglement, and then on to photon C.

·        When researchers apply the information from photon A to photon C, they create an exact replica of photon A.

 However, photon A no longer exists as it did before the information was sent to photon C.

IN STAR TREK TERMS: ”In other words, when Captain Kirk beams down to an alien planet, an analysis of his atomic structure passes through the transporter room to his desired location, where it builds a Kirk replica. Meanwhile, the original dematerializes.”

Timeline:

·        Since 1998, scientists haven't quite worked their way up to teleporting baboons, as teleporting living matter is infinitely tricky. Still, their progress is quite impressive.

·        In 2002, researchers at the Australian National University successfully teleported a laser beam

·        In 2006, a team at Denmark's Niels Bohr Institute teleported information stored in a laser beam into a cloud of atoms about 1.6 feet (half a meter) away. Which Is a step further into the research in this field because it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects! Where one is the carrier of information (laser beam) and other is the storage medium(atoms)

·        In 2012, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China made a new teleportation record. They teleported a photon 60.3 miles (97 kilometers), 50.3 miles (81 kilometers) farther than the previous record

·        In 2014, European physicists were able to teleport quantum information through an ordinary optical fiber used for telecommunications.

Let’s go Hollywood style

·        Jumper 

·        Star Trek

·        Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

·        Doctor Who

·        Blake’s 7

·        X2: X-men United

·        The Tomorrow People

·        The Prestige

·        The Fly

·        Dante’s Cove

·        Zeta One

What’s the future of it?

Given these advancements, you can see how quantum teleportation will affect the world of quantum computing far before it helps your morning commute time. These experiments are important in developing networks that can distribute quantum information at transmission rates far faster than today's most powerful computers.

It all comes down to moving information from point A to point B. But will humans ever make that quantum jaunt as well?