Modern Teleportation

In my recent entry of cool science fiction technologies that people made in real life, Interesting Engineering indicated that teleportation is no a reality. Say What?  If Scotty can now beam me around places, I do not know what I was doing waiting for a 9 hour layover in Heathrow recently.

Before you get too excited about your new 40 millisecond commute, we cannot yet teleport people. However, we (humanity) have teleported photons from one Canary Island to another!  That is so amazing and exciting! Wooo! Wait. I have no idea what that really means. 

Enter Wikipedia. What is quantum teleportation, really? Quantum teleportation is transferring a single piece of quantum information from one place to another without that information traveling through the intervening space. It is not the same as Star Trek type teleportation where an entire system (ie you) is copied and moved from one place to another. Sadly, there is a quantum proof saying that such things are not possible.

What is possible is making a computer that makes this laptop look about as useful as a stack of punch cards aka quantum computing. For reasons that are about as clear to me as how this computer works in the first place, the ability to transfer information from particle phase into photons and teleport them. And we can do that now! 

So, I'm disappointed that I won't be teleporting home next weekend, 

Image credits: Geek Magazine