Physics of the Impossible: Teleportation

    Well. We will continue to develop comprehensively: not only information technology, but also physically. :)
    Mankind has come up with a lot of interesting abilities that we would like to use now, but it's not as simple as we are shown in science fiction films. The previous object of our discussion was Invisibility . Now let's touch teleportation.
    Teleportation, or the ability to instantly move people and objects from one place to another, can easily change the direction of development of civilization and the whole world in general. For example, teleportation would once and for all change the principles of warfare, make all means of transportation unnecessary and the most pleasant: holidays would cease to be a problem. Well, who does not want to have their own personal teleport at home? Probably, for this reason, this ability is the most desirable among humanity. Of course, physics will have to realize this dream sooner or later. Well, let's see what humanity already has in our time?

I would like to start with a quote from a famous scientist:

It is wonderful that we met with a paradox. Now we can hope to move forward. © Niels Bohr

Newton Teleportation

    Within Newton’s theory, teleportation is simply not possible. Newton's laws are based on the idea that a substance is made up of tiny hard billiard balls. Objects do not move unless pushed; objects do not disappear or reappear elsewhere. But in quantum theory, particles are capable of doing just such tricks.
    Newtonian mechanics lasted for 250 years and was overthrown in 1925 when Werner Heisenberg , Erwin Schrödinger and their colleagues developed quantum theory . In general, if teleportation will ever be realized, then thanks to the Quantum theory. Therefore, let's consider it in more detail.

Quantum theory

    One of the most important equations in teleportation is the Schrödinger wave equation (see photo). Perhaps there is a place to talk about how it appeared. Erwin once gave a lecture on an interesting phenomenon, which stated that electrons behave in the same way as waves. One of the physicist colleagues Peter Debye in the room asked the question: “If an electron can be described as a wave, then what does its wave equation look like?”
    By that time, thanks to Newton, everyone already knew differential calculus , physicists described any wave in the language of differential . equations. Therefore, Schrödinger took this issue as a challenge and decided to develop a similar equation for an electron. And he did it, as Maxwell once deduced his equations for the Faraday fields, Schrödinger deduced the equation forde Broglie waves (the so-called electronic wave).

A slight deviation from the topic: the historians of science have spent a lot of effort trying to figure out where Schrodinger was and what he was doing when he discovered his famous equation. It turned out that he was a supporter of free love and went on vacation often with his mistresses. He even kept a detailed diary in which he recorded all his mistresses and marked each meeting with a complex cipher. It is believed that the weekend when the equation was discovered, Schrödinger spent in the Alps, at the Hervig villa, with one of his girlfriends. So women can sometimes help stimulate mental activity;)

    But not so simple. If an electron is described as a wave, then what oscillates in it? The answer is currently considered the following thesis of Max Bourne: these waves are nothing more than probability waves. That is, an electron is a particle, but the probability of detecting this particle is given by the de Broglie wave. It turns out that suddenly in the very center of physics - science, which previously gave us accurate predictions and detailed trajectories of any objects, starting from planets and comets and ending with cannonballs - there were concepts of chance and probability! From here came the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: it is impossible to know the exact speed, the exact position of the electron and its energy at the same moment. At the quantum level, electrons can do completely unimaginable things: disappear, then reappear, be in two places at the same time. Well, now let's move directly to teleportation.

Teleportation and quantum theory

    When people ask: “How do you imagine the teleportation process?”, Most say that they should sit in some special cabin, similar to an elevator, which will take them to another place. But some people imagine it differently: they collect information from us about the position of atoms, electrons, etc. in our body, all this information is transferred to another place where, using this information, you are collected again, but in a different place. This option is perhaps impossible due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: we will not be able to find out the exact arrangement of electrons in an atom. However, this principle can be overcome thanks to the interesting property of two electrons: if two electrons initially oscillate in unison (this state is called coherent), then they are able to maintain wave synchronization even at a great distance from each other. Even if these electrons are located at a distance of light years. If something happens to the first electron, information about it will be immediately transferred to another electron. This phenomenon is called quantum entanglement. Using this phenomenon, physicists over the past years have been able to teleport entire cesium atoms, and soon, perhaps, they can teleport DNA molecules and viruses. By the way, to prove the fundamental possibility of teleportation mathematically succeeded in 1993. scientists from Using this phenomenon, physicists over the past years have been able to teleport entire cesium atoms, and soon, perhaps, they can teleport DNA molecules and viruses. By the way, to prove the fundamental possibility of teleportation mathematically succeeded in 1993. scientists from Using this phenomenon, physicists over the past years have been able to teleport entire cesium atoms, and soon, perhaps, they can teleport DNA molecules and viruses. By the way, to prove the fundamental possibility of teleportation mathematically succeeded in 1993. scientists fromIBM led by Charles Bennett. So they not only know how to do processors, if anyone did not know :)
    In 2004, physicists at the University of Vienna managed to teleport light particles to a distance of 600m under the Danube River via fiber optic cable, thus setting a new distance record. In 2006, for the first time in such experiments, a macroscopic object was involved. Physicists from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Max Planck Institute managed to confuse a ray of light and a gas consisting of cesium atoms. Many trillions of atoms participated in this event!
    Unfortunately, the use of such a method for teleporting solid and relatively large objects is terribly inconvenient, so teleportation will most likely develop faster without entanglement. Let's analyze it below.

Teleport without entanglement

    Research in this area is rapidly gaining momentum. In 2007, an important discovery was made. Physicists have proposed a teleportation method that does not require entanglement. After all, this is the most complex element of quantum teleportation, and if you manage not to use it, you will be able to avoid many related problems. So, here is the essence of this method: scientists take a beam of rubidium atoms, translate all of its information into a beam of light, send this beam through a fiber optic cable, and then recreate the original atomic beam in another place. Dr. Aston Bradley, who is responsible for this study, called this method classical teleportation.
    But why is this method possible? It is possible due to the recently discovered state of the substance, the Bose-Einstein condensate", or KBE (In the image on the left, it is unwound in an ellipsoid trap). This is one of the coldest substances in the entire Universe. In nature, the lowest temperature can be found in space: 3 Kelvin, that is, three degrees above absolute zero. This due to the residual heat of the Big Bang, which still fills the Universe, but CBE exists from one millionth to one billionth of a degree above absolute zero. This temperature can only be obtained in the laboratory.
    When a substance is cooled to a state of CBE, all atoms are dumped on the lowest energy level and begin to vibrate in unison (become coherent). The wave functions of all these atoms overlap, so in a sense, the CBE resembles a giant “superatom.” The existence of this substance was predicted by Einsteinand Shathendranath Bose in 1925, but this condensate was not discovered until 1995 in the laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Colorado.
    So, now we will consider the principle of teleportation with the participation of CBEC. First, a super-cold substance from rubidium atoms in the state of CBE is accumulated. Then ordinary rubidium atoms are sent to this CBE, the electrons of which also begin to fall to the lowest energy level, while emitting light quanta, which in turn are transmitted via an optical fiber cable. Moreover, this beam contains all the necessary information to describe the initial beam of matter. Passing through the cable, the light beam enters another CBE, which turns it into the initial flow of matter.
    Scientists consider this method to be extremely promising, but there are also problems. For example, CBE is very difficult to obtain even in the laboratory.

Conclusion

    Can we say, taking into account all that has already been achieved, when we ourselves will receive this amazing ability? In the coming years, physicists hope to teleport complex molecules. After that, it will probably take several decades to develop a method for teleporting DNA or maybe some virus. However, the technical problems that will need to be overcome on the way to such an achievement are amazing. Most likely, it will be many centuries before we can teleport ordinary objects, if at all possible.

You can find quite a lot of comments on this topic here .

PS If you noticed some impudent lies in the article, then I apologize in advance, since most of the ideas that are described here are taken from the book. Therefore, you need to argue not with me, but with its author. Thank you

Material used: Michio Kaku "Physics of the impossible"

Question . Please answer a small question. Imagine that you have a device at home that can teleport you to any place in our Galaxy. What places would you visit first? I would like to visit the planet “Mars” and Sergey Brin’s office: I would like to have a cup of tea with him and talk heart to heart about the future of humanity.