INSIGHT
As a part of this modern communication world, you all would definitely be aware of the ever fascinating word “Teleportation”. Teleportation concept has been discussed and written about in great details by various science enthusiasts. This concept has even been the basis of various successful movies. Teleportation, as the dreamers and scientists have long argued, is the movement of an object from a particular position to the other position instantaneously without any physical known modes of transportation. Thus in a way teleportation will lead to the disintegration of the object into elementary particles , communicating them to a distant position and then restructuring back the particles into the original object.
For long this particular idea of teleportation has been laughed off, considering it to be a mere child’s dream. Many researchers and scientists dumped this very notion of teleportation. But the people rejecting even the possibility of this notion have forgotten that our today’s world airplanes were also the dream of our previous civilizations. It’s just the right time and right efforts that transform the dreams into the actual reality.
So, now you must be wondering that is teleportation now a reality? The answer to this wonderful fascinating question is a definite YES!! The recent development in the science and technology has made possible the existence of the nearly impossible teleportation. The recent experiments conducted helped achieving this breakthrough. In 2006 the scientists were able to transport the information in the laser beam to the cloud of dust. This was a remarkable achievement as this was the first time scientists have been able to teleport between two different forms of objects i.e. light and matter.
First declaration of the possibility of teleportation was been made by six scientists including IBM fellow Charles H. Bennett in 1993 by giving the theoretical proof. In the theory they gave the explanation of how teleportation is possible. They stated that to achieve teleportation of an object all the properties of the object is scanned closely so as to send this information collected to the other desired place by restructuring the object with high precision. In this process the original object is destroyed and the same appears at new place.
Now some of the science people amongst you must be thinking of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that acts as a main barrier for teleportation of an object more than the size of photon. It states that the exact location and speed of any object cannot be simultaneously known. Now if this precise information of the location cannot be known, how can the exact information about the object can be known? The scientists came out with a theory and phenomenon without violating this uncertainty principle. The scientists took the help of proposed theorems of Einstein about the quantum entanglement, which has been proved by the modern science. In entanglement, at least three photons are needed to achieve quantum teleportation:
- Photon A: The photon to be teleported
- Photon B: The transporting photon
- Photon C: The photon that is entangled with photon B
If researchers tried to look too closely at photon A without entanglement, they would 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 be passed 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 can create an exact replica of photon A. However, photon A no longer exists as it did before the information was sent to photon C.
The first ever successful experimentation of this theory and hence teleportation was conducted in 1998 when physicists at California Institute of Technology along with other two European groups successfully transported a photon across 1 meter. In June 2002 the teleportation of laser beam was achieved. In 2004 scientists teleported atoms. And recently in 2006 as already been stated earlier was the teleportation of laser beam into the dust cloud.
With achieving of these great heights recently into the ever dreamt field of teleportation, we are really looking forward to the very new concept of communication. Just think of today’s fastest medium of sending information to the other place. Obviously your choice would be satellite communication. We can achieve around 5 GBps speed of information flow which is a great communication speed. But if we go for whole of the properties of an object in precision like for example whole of the properties of a human being which would involve his height, size, structure, bone density, blood properties, cellular structure and much more, the whole of the information collected for a single human being would be very much high and would account to thousand’s of gigabytes. Such large amount of information would need large amount of time to communicate to the other place. Also the physical movement of the object is impossible through these concepts. This is where the future of communication comes into picture i.e. TELEPORTATION. Through teleportation the physical objects could be moved instantaneously from one location to the other. This would simply set aside the concept of space and time.
Another advantage of teleportation could well be seen in the quantum computing which can transmit data at the transmission rates many times faster than the today’s most powerful computer. As already been achieved the teleportation of photons and teleportation of light into matter, the storing and transmitting the information instantaneously is now at our hand’s reach. Few years from now on we would be able to develop these types of computers which operate on teleport technology.
Although the scientists have only been able to teleport photons and laser beam information to not greater than the distances of 5 metres, but it has actually opened up a pathway that has been long considered as inexistent. Will we be able to teleport objects bigger than photons? Or Will we be ever able to teleport humans as been shown in the fascinating fiction movies? The current science and technology is incapable of teleporting such huge quantities of mass, but what we know for sure is that these teleportation’s would happen sooner or later as the time unveils before us.