Physics of the impossible: Teleportation

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

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

It's great that we met with a paradox. Now you can hope to move forward. © Niels Bohr

Newton Teleportation

In the framework of Newton's theory of teleportation is simply impossible. Newton's laws are based on the notion that a substance consists of tiny solid billiard balls. Objects do not move if not pushed; objects do not disappear and do not appear again in another place. But in quantum theory, particles are capable of doing just such tricks.
Newtonian mechanics lasted 250 years in power and was overthrown in 1925, when Werner Heisenberg , Erwin Schrödinger and their colleagues developed a quantum theory . In general, if teleportation will ever be realized, thanks to 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. Ervin once gave a lecture about an interesting phenomenon, which said that electrons behave like waves. Peter Debye, one of the fellow physicists present in the hall, asked the question: “If an electron can be described as a wave, what does its wave equation look like?”
By that moment, thanks to Newton, everyone already knew differential calculus , physicists described any wave in the language of differential . of equations. Therefore, Schrödinger took this question as a challenge and decided to develop a similar equation for an electron. And he did it, as Maxwell once derived his equations for the Faraday fields, Schrödinger derived the equation for the de Broglie wave (this is how the electron wave was called).

A small deviation from the topic: the historians of science spent a lot of effort trying to figure out where Schrödinger was and what he did when he discovered his famous equation. It turned out that he was a supporter of free love and often went on holiday with his mistresses. He even kept a detailed diary in which he wrote down all his mistresses and with a complex cipher indicated every meeting. It is believed that the weekend when the equation was discovered, Schrödinger spent in the Alps, in the Herwig villa, with one of his girlfriends. So women can sometimes help stimulate mental activity;)

But not everything is so simple. If an electron is described as a wave, then what does oscillate in it? The answer is now considered the following max Born thesis: these waves are nothing more than probability waves. That is, an electron is a particle, but the probability of finding 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 with planets and comets and ending with cannonballs - turned out to be concepts of chance and probability! Hence 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 absolutely unimaginable things: disappear, then reappear, be in two places at the same time. Well, now let's go directly to teleportation.

Teleportation and Quantum Theory

When people are asked: “How do you imagine the process of teleportation?”, The majority say that they should get into some special cabin, similar to an elevator, which will take them to another place. But some 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 probably impossible due to the principle of uncertainty of Heisenberg: we can not find out the exact location of electrons in the atom. However, this principle can be overcome due 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 will be 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 whole cesium atoms, and soon, perhaps, they can teleport DNA molecules and viruses. By the way, it was possible to prove mathematically the fundamental possibility of teleportation in 1993. IBM scientists led by Charles Bennett. So they are not only able to do processors, if someone did not know :)
In 2004, physicists at the University of Vienna were able to teleport light particles to a distance of 600m under the Danube River via fiber optic cable, 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 entangle a beam of light and a gas consisting of cesium atoms. Many trillions of atoms participated in this event!
Unfortunately, using this method to teleport solid and relatively large objects is terribly inconvenient, so teleportation is likely to develop more quickly without entanglement. Let's sort it out below.
')

Teleporting without tangling

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 it can not be used, then many associated problems can be avoided. So, this 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 over a fiber optic cable, and then recreate the original beam of atoms elsewhere. Dr. Aston Bradley, who is responsible for this study, called this method classical teleportation.
But why is this method possible? It is possible because of the newly discovered state of matter “ Bose-Einstein condensate ”, or CBE (In the image on the left, it is spun in an ellipsoidal trap). It is one of the coldest substances in the entire Universe. In nature, the lowest temperature can be found in space: 3 Kelvin, i.e. three degrees higher than absolute zero. This is due to the residual heat of the Big Bang, which still fills the universe. But CBA 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 the state of a BEC, all atoms fall to 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 BEC resembles a giant “superatum”. The existence of this substance was predicted by Einstein and Shatendranat Bose in 1925, but this condensate was discovered only in 1995 in the laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Colorado.
So, now consider the principle of teleportation with the participation of CBA. First, a super-cold substance is made up of rubidium atoms in the CBE state. Then, ordinary rubidium atoms are sent to this CBA, the electrons of which also begin to fall to the lowest energy level, emitting at the same time quanta of light, which in turn are transmitted through a fiber-optic cable. Moreover, this beam contains all the necessary information to describe the initial beam of matter. After passing through the cable, the light beam enters the already different CBA, which turns it into the initial flow of matter.
Scientists believe this method is extremely promising, but there are also problems. For example, CBA is very difficult to obtain, even in the laboratory.

Conclusion

Can we say with 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, several decades will probably be spent on developing a method for teleporting DNA, or perhaps some virus. However, the technical problems that need to be overcome on the way to such an achievement are astounding. Most likely it will take many centuries before we can teleport ordinary objects, if at all possible.

There are quite a few comments on this topic here .

PS If you have 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 have a heart-to-heart talk about the future of humanity.