TURKU, Finland — Beam me up, Scotty! In a study that seems straight out of a “Star Trek” episode, an international team of researchers has achieved a remarkable feat in the realm of quantum teleportation. They have successfully conducted near-perfect quantum teleportation despite the presence of noise that typically disrupts the transfer of quantum states.
Quantum teleportation is a process in which the state of a quantum particle, or qubit, is transferred from one location to another without physically sending the particle itself. This transfer requires quantum resources, such as entanglement between an additional pair of qubits.
I know, I was being sort of glib … But the internet doesn’t get sarcasm or gentle irony.
I got you, I just think there’s a lot of pop science reporting on this, and people act like we’re going to have transporters. Even the thumbnail for this article implies it. The problem with that sort of hyperbolic reporting is that then people are disappointed when reality doesn’t live up to the hype.
This is really big news and a great leap forward in research physics. If we can utilize quantum entanglement, it will change the world in ways we cannot even comprehend.
It would be like when Bell first called Watson, every newspaper started promising same-day Amazon delivery.
Y’know, I think I read this same hyperbolic reporting in the 80s in a New Scientist, and again in the 90s. For some reason teleportation went quiet in the early 2000’s as far as popular reporting went, but it looks like it is back.
I have a suspicion that, alongside space travel, there is this fascination in getting out of this place because we’ve fucked it up.