An article published in this week’s issue of Physical Review Letters outlines a mechanism that allows an electron to teleport, quantum mechanically, from one location to another. The Dutch researchers, whose article is actually titled Quantum Teleportation by Particle-Hole Annihilation in the Fermi Sea, propose an experiment that they believe is feasible, but has not yet been undertaken. Teleportation of light has been known for some time, but this would be the first example teleporting an object (the electron) that not only has mass, but carries a charge. Of course quantum teleportation isn’t exactly the instantaneous transfer of information that Star Trek “transporters” suggest – the two ends of the link need to have been set up with “entanglement” before the quantum information transfer is attempted. Still, this sort of experiment may get us closer to really understanding quantum computing.
One thought on “Teleportation, Here We Come!”
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One interesting question here is: is it the same electron? You can’t ‘tag’ an electron in any way, so indeed there is no way of knowing if it is the same electron that appears ‘over there.’ In fact, perhaps it is a meaningless question, even, if it is the same electron. But maybe not, I don’t know.
But suppose one day, in the quite unlikely scenario that we get this teloportation thing working on entire human beings. It is an interesting philisophical dilema — what if you are created anew, with brand new elemental building blocks, after a teleport. Neat to ponder.