TELEPORTATION
From the time man invented wheel few thousand years before, people have been more curious to invent faster means of transportation. This curiosity is attributed to the fact that people wants to spend less time while travelling from one place to another, which lead to the invention of trains, planes, rockets, etc. The curiosity of the people has now made people to find flaws in all these kinds of transportations, in which we have to cross a physical distance. People started thinking if there is any way for us to travel without wasting anytime and without passing through that physical distance. Yes, there is a concept called Teleportation. Teleportation can be understood as the combination of Telecommunication and Transportation.
Teleportation can be understood more better by an example, just imagine that if you’re able to go to a supermarket from your home without using any vehicle and imagine if the space crafts are not needed to travel from Earth to outer space. Interesting right, Have you seen the Star Trek series, where Captain Kirk and other will enter into a box like room and suddenly they will appear in some other outer space. Even in the latest movie which was released a couple of years before DOOM starring The Rock also shows this concept. This is exactly Teleportation.
Source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZkO9KNbaPQM/ReM6XMDMZII/AAAAAAAAAC0/yOQHnCNw1Rc/s320/teleportation.jpg
Many scientists are presently working in this concept, by combining the properties of the telecommunication and the transportation in order to achieve a near miracle called teleportation. Teleportation usually involves the dematerializing of any object at one place and then sending its details with exact atomic configurations to another place, where the reconstruction will be done. By this means, the time and distance during any travel is eliminated completely.
At first it was just a science fiction stories, and it was the sci-fi writers who gave the name teleportation, but later in the year 1993, the idea took a U turn and a team from IBM headed by the physicist Charles Bennett started working hard on this, by using the photons instead of humans as in the sci-fi movies, which is called quantum teleportation. They said that this concept is possible in the real world, but gave out lot of criticism as the original object has to be destroyed first and it will be reconstructed in the new place.
During the year 1998, a group from Caltech along with other groups from Europe, teleported a photon successfully across 1 meter of coaxial cable. As said before the original photon no longer existed, but it was rather reconstructed at the new point. The principle that Caltech Scientists used for this experiment is entanglement, which comprises 3 photos. One is the photon to be teleported, second the transporting photon and third the photon that is to be entangled with 2nd photon. The 2nd photon actually carries the detailed information about the 1st photon and as this 2nd will be entangled with the 3rd photon, the reconstruction is possible as the details are passed on to the 3rd during entanglement.
Source: http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/8/6/10/kimble.jpg
And during the year 2006, another experiment was conducted by Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, where a team headed by Dr. Eugene teleported a information that was stored in laser beam into an atom cloud, where it was teleported about 0.5 meter.
Though the exact implementation of the concept is many generations away, this quantum teleportation gives promise for developing quantum computing; in which computers will be very powerful and very fast.
Now let’s come to the real issue, what about human teleportation as shown in Star Trek and other sci-fi movies? Human body consists of 10^28 atoms, and when going by the principles of the teleportation, then all those 10^28 atoms will be destroyed at one place and has to be reconstructed precisely. Even if a single atom/molecule changes its place while reconstructing, then the human may get some serious nervous or physical disorders. Its more complex than a fax machine, the original will be destroyed and its perfect duplicate will be formed at the other end.
Source: http://www.dhushara.com/book/quantcos/at/sci_quantum.gif
Biological cloning is the name which describes all these process. Biologically the human body dies when being teleported, then the body will be recreated again. With the memories, emotions, dreams, etc all are passed on to the new body through digital means.
Even though it’s still a long way to go for the perfect teleportation to be developed, there is always some hope with the scientists that one day, their descendents may travel using this presently sci-fi concept of teleportation.