“Star Trek” Teleportation: Physicists Develop a Way to “Beam Up” Atoms

Remember that famous episode of Star Trek, “The Enemy Within,” where a transporter malfunctions and beams up two versions of Captain Kirk, one good and one evil?

Well, once again, science is imitating science fiction: In a discovery that may pave the way for possible Star Trek-like travel in the future, a group of physicists have developed a method to teleport atoms.

Physicists Murray Olsen says the method is very much like the Star Trek characters' favorite way to get back on the Enterprise.

The atoms are first cooled to almost absolute zero, or -273C. At a billionth of a degree above this temperature, a quirk of physics makes all the atoms start behaving in the same way. Then the scientists zap them with two lasers.

“If you cool these atoms down enough ... in a condensate, they all enter the same quantum state,” Dr Olsen said.

“When a few thousand atoms are overlapping (and you hit them with the laser beams)… they basically disappear.

“We can use an optic fiber (to transport the signal at the speed of light) into a second condensate, which could be in another room, or another building, or another state.

“We’ve got the coldest thing in the universe and the fastest speed in the universe.”

Dr Haine said the team’s method is quite simpler than any previous teleportation theories.

He also said that their method would reconstruct the atoms better once transported, compared to the “entanglement” theory.

“As our scheme doesn’t rely on the quality of the entanglement, it may be possible to achieve more accurate teleportation via this method,” Dr Haine said.

Physicist John Close says he will be implementing teleportation into various experiments over the next several years.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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Comments

[juantuffgai]

A better scene of beaming gone wrong is from Spaceballs. Mel Brooks gets talked into using it even though he is coming from the room next door, and it puts his head on backwards.

[macha88]

yeah, humans can definitely be frozen to absolute zero without harm...

[SiriS]

First, nothing can be frozen to absolute zero, that's not what it said. Secondly, that's not necessarily true. Thirdly, they didn't say anything about transporting humans.

[me]

I dont fucking beleive it. how can you turn matter into protons and move it thru fiber optics? Alot has been left out of this story.

[me]

thats photons not protons!

[Plageron]

Its simple really...the idea is that the actual atoms are just changed on the frequency level.....ie.e the way they reverberate is altered. This particles once altered can then be transmitted.

In essence i suppose this is a form of actualy making things intangible...i.e. you know how a person is composed of atoms...adn the space between the particles there is alot of that.

So sicne they are slowing the atoms down(super cooling) then changing their frequency(i.e. the part where they change their resonance to duplicate inthis article that of a photen whihc is a light particle)

Then there you have it.

In my opion it would be far easier to create a fountain of photons focused at single points and capturing the particles inthe condensed area whihc would of course overflow the space...and then directing the actual energy seeping out in direct line to the location in question...then using more condensed photon immiters to create another condensed form of space to capture the particles and re-assemble the mass via more photon immiters.

Would take alot of energy...but the effect would be about as safe as the whole super cooling thing...and i think the travel time would be faster.

Of course getting crushed by the micro black hole created by the lasers probably would be fairly bad....but it should be quick enough that a person wouldnt even notice.

Super cooling in my opinion would hurt too much.

[Blah Blah]

Cool (no pun intended), there's lots of people I'd like to beam off terra firma straight into the middle of the deep ocean. Call the system 'rapture', and most would sign up voluntarily.

[philip firsov]

but surely if you cool someone to absolute zero - they are sead as a doornail in liquid nitrogen..