"Exact teleportation was thought to be impossible," Charles H. Bennett of IBM Research, part of the team that first discovered "quantum teleportation," told CNN. "Now, however, it is known to be possible."
Further, adds Bennett;
"In fact it is simpler than it sounds. What you have to note is that in this sort of experiment the atom itself is not teleported, but rather the delicate quantum information contained in the atom. In effect you are disembodying the complete quantum state of one atom and reincarnating it in another atom of the same sort."
How is this "quantum teleportation" actually achieved? The process relies upon something called "Quantum Entanglement," a fiendishly counter-intuitive phenomenon that Einstein described as "spukhafte Fernwirkung" or "spooky action at a distance." Basically it involves two separate particles behaving as if they were essentially one and the same, even though they are separated by a great distance. Changes to one particle will be mirrored in the other. Using this phenomenon physicists have been able to transfer -- or in effect teleport -- the properties of one particle to another, in the case of atoms over a distance of about half a meter, in the case of photons over tens of kilometers.
Bennett believes that, in principle at least, it is perfectly feasible to teleport humans without violating any of the fundamental laws of physics. Not only that, but, also in principle, it could be done without resorting to the complexities of quantum entanglement. "Quantum entanglement is valuable in transmitting particles such as atoms and photons where the most delicate properties are significant and where simple approximation is not enough," he explains.
"Teleporting a person, on the other hand, would not require reproducing the quantum state anything like as exactly." Everything we know about biology and how molecules fit together to produce a living being, including the brain, indicates that creating some level of approximation would give you a real person who was a serviceable replica of the original in terms of looking the same and thinking the same thoughts, without necessarily being a perfect quantum replica.
"The teleported person would end up slightly different, but not in a biologically important way."
The implication of this is that you could scan a person using some advanced form of the technology used to perform MRI scans, and transmit that scanned information somewhere else -- using normal electrical or sound signals -- where it would then be reassembled into an approximation of the original. "It's the same principle as a fax machine," says Bennett. "When you fax something what comes out the other end obviously looks like the original and contains the same information. It's not the same paper, however, or the same type of ink. "It's the same, but not the same. "We already have three-dimensional fax machines, so the basic theory is there." What actually happens to the original person when their bio-molecular details are "faxed" somewhere else, and whether your average person on the street would be happy to be reassembled as a similar but at the same time slightly different average person on the street, are, thinks Bennett, moot points. With each human being made up of trillions upon trillions of atoms -- 10 to the power of 28 to be precise -- the technology to perform a sufficiently accurate scan to produce even the most basic approximation of a living person does not exist, and probably never will. "What might be possible in theory is, from a technological point of view, blatantly impossible," he says. "If you consider all the atoms in a person, and the fact that in the scan you would have to locate all those atoms to within a nanometer of each other, and then have some machine capable of translating that information into DNA, water, fat, protein etc. -- it's just silly to think about."
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Well, well, well...
I'm giddy over the endless comments on this one.
But where to start?
Any ideas?
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3 comments:
Well, well, well. I've been musing for several weeks trying to come up with something to say about this.
The idea is intriguing, to say the least. I used to say, "If somebody ever invents a time machine, I'll be the first one in it."
My first thought upon reading this post's title was, "Well, perhaps it's finally going to come to pass!"
But I must take issue with this. First of all, if the person being "received" on the other end of the fax ends up being only a copy of the person being "sent," how does this work for the "sent" person? Does the person get to experience any aspect of this alternate life to which he or she is being sent, or does the "received" copy reap all the benefits of being there?
When you are faxing something, there are obviously two versions of the same thing. The "received" looks the same as the "sent" but is NOT the same. Therefore there must be two versions of the person who is being "faxed." Since there are two versions, which one gets to experience being sent to another time/dimension? Clearly, the "received." Then what is the point of all this if the "sent" doesn't get to experience being sent?
And I would like more details about these supposed 3-D fax machines. What does this mean? Wouldn't that mean that they can teleport actual objects and not just facsimiles of the objects? Or are they speaking in terms of something that looks 3-D on paper? If they are, how is that any different from a regular fax and what bearing does that have on the discussion of teleporting humans? We all know faxing exists, but the gap has yet to be bridged between said faxing and quantum teleportation.
I await this gap-bridging with eagerness, if also with some scepticism. Keep us informed, SFL. You are the link between the scientists and the non-scientists, since you've elected to blog about such matters. :)
Yes, a famous person once said, "it is better to receive than to give." So of course the sent version of the person is merely a conduit for the sender and will be used for all they are worth until the sender is satisfied at which time the sent version will be terminated. This should not appear foreign to you since we do that now with people. Once we are finished using someone to meet our needs we simply ignore them or discard them and move on to a new person.
Now in this particular situation the termination of a copy of ourselves may hold some ethical dilemna's. Is this murder? Is it suicide? Is it self-mutilation? These and other yet to be contemplated issues will be addressed in upcoming chapters, so stay tuned!
A conduit? OK. That seems feasible, I suppose, as long as one could figure out the materials with which to build such a "bridge" between the sent and the received. I would hazard a guess that this bridge could perhaps be completed with carbon nanotubes, but since it would have to be a rather intangible bridge, it would be more along the lines of wireless internet...I think?
I'm really trying here. You have to give me credit for that, at least! LOL!
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