By now, most of us, or at least some of us, have seen multiple TikToks about Apple's most expensive product being a teleportation device.
We even have articles claiming that the teleporter will have an add-on feature called Scenery Mode. This sounds silly all by itself since I'm not sure how you can enjoy birds singing while being separated into particles.
Whether the news about Apple's new innovative product is real or not (it’s not), how about we answer a more pressing question: is teleportation - Star Trek or Rick and Morty type of teleportation - even possible?
Short answer: no. That type of travelling across planets or galaxies is impossible to achieve at this point in time. It would mean having the option to open a wormhole anywhere, anytime. A wormhole is similar to a tunnel between two remote points in our universe that cuts the travel time from one point to another. To make one, you need to attach one part of the universe to another, just like a throat connects the head to the body. The head would be a black hole, and the body a white hole (the opposite of a black hole). The problem is that they are permanently "ill" and terribly unstable. But to "heal" this neck is not as easy as taking a pill. You need to use something called exotic matter ( matter with negative mass ), which doesn't appear to exist in the universe. So, the illness is without a cure. For now.
But what about teleportation from one point of the planet to another? Well, it is possible. But only in the quantum world. And only with information.
Basically, we can transport information from one point to another without being physically connected. In 2019, scientists found that information could be passed between photons on computer chips without them being physically linked. In 2020, according to National Science Foundation-funded research by the University of Rochester and Purdue University scientists, teleportation may also be possible between electrons.
Quantum teleportation is also called quantum entanglement or as Einstein called it: "spooky action at a distance". Like other aspects of quantum science, the phenomenon of entanglement reveals itself at microscopic, subatomic scales. When two particles, such as a pair of photons or electrons, become entangled, they remain connected even when separated by large distances. In the same way that a tango occurs from individual dancers, entanglement occurs from the connection between particles.
You might have heard about Schrödinger's cat. It is a simple way to explain the concepts of quantum physics. The experiment notes that a theoretical cat is locked in a box with some radioactive substance controlling a vial of poison. When the substance decays, it triggers a Geiger counter that causes the poison to be released, thereby killing the cat.
Since the box is locked, and we on the outside don’t know whether or not the radioactive substance has decayed and released the poison, we can’t tell if the cat is alive or dead. So, until we open the box, according to quantum physics the cat is both alive and dead - its state of living is entangled.
In conclusion, opening wormholes, travelling with a teleporter or any other type of matter teleportation may sound as impossible as Schrödinger's cat zombie-like existence, but the theory as improbable as it sounds is at the base of quantum physics, so who knows maybe in the far, far away future teleporting will be like walking to the local grocery store, an ordinary day to day activity.
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