Why don’t we have teleporters yet?

Crowded airports, delays, jet lag – travel by plane can be a real pain. Imagine zipping to Hawaii for a surf session, then zapping to Italy for a slice of pizza, all in the time that it takes some planes to taxi for takeoff. Believe it or not, teleporting technology already exists, but it isn’t quite the crew-beaming transporter from Star Trek.

Using a process called quantum teleportation, scientists have figured out how to transfer the characteristics of one atom (the basic unit of matter) to a distant atom. The technology might eventually be used to transmit objects across the solar system. Teleporting people, however, is a trickier matter. The object being “teleported” is essentially destroyed at its point of origin and duplicated at its destination.

 

Picture Credit : Google