The most trying aspect of traveling is the actual transportation from point A to point B. There needs to be a more cost efficient and environmentally friendly method to travel long distances. There are many disadvantages with the current method of travel, especially via airplane. The uncomfortably cramped seats, The delays, the horrible food, The amount of dollars to build accommodating infrastructure basically the overall complexity and inefficiency of the solution. It would be a great accomplishment to develop a new method which would remove the stone age method of travel. One development is through the means of Teleportation. Yes the same kind in Star Trek, phrases like "Beam Me Up Scotty" won't be for members of the Starship Enterprise any more. (FYI I don't like Star Trek or Star Wars or anything involving space)
Teleportation comes from the term Telecommunication and Transportation. Basically the concept revolves around a massive fax machine, where ultimately humans will be the paper being fed into it and a carbon copy being replicated at the destination. We are a long way from transporting entire human beings but scientists have been able to transfer properties of an atom to another atom., which is a break through in itself. Quantum Teleportation will be the next phase of computing, conveniently called Quantum Computing.
The good people at IBM state:
Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original.
A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.
This study was from 1993!!
A more recent revelation was done as a joint effort between Austria and the United states states that :
The ability to transfer key properties of one particle to another without using any physical link has until now only been achieved with laser light. Experts say being able to do the same with massive particles like atoms could lead to new superfast computers. This development is a long way from the transporters used by Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Kirk in the famous Star Trek TV series. When physicists talk about "teleportation", they are describing the transfer of "quantum states" between separate atoms.
These would be such things as an atom's energy, motion, magnetic field and other physical properties. In the computers of tomorrow, this information would form the qubits (the quantum form of the digital bits 1 and 0) of data processing through the machines. The landmark experiments are being viewed as a major advance in the quest to achieve ultra-fast computers, inside which teleportation could provide a form of invisible "quantum wiring". These machines would be able to handle far bigger and more complex loads than today's super-computers, and at many times their speed.
You can read the entire article here.
Moore's Law states that current architecture design using the traditional transistor model will max out by 2011 which would require a new mechanism and particle transfer medium, basically a new architechture for computing to be done. Teleportation is that medium and new wave of computing. For you non techies out there, this means faster Mindsweeper and alot faster porn!, haha
Teleportation on grand stage would allow instant globalization, where everything can be done face to face, without borders of land an sea. There would be less pollution and the architecture while at first will be burdensome, will eventually become the equivalent of a phone booth. You walk in state your destination and then walk out from a similar phone booth at your destination. Quantum teleportation should be able to take you anywhere in the world conceivably.
Teleportation is among the biggest scientific advancements that we have left to make. Now that I live in Toronto, where the commute traffic say on the 401 is a full-on "catastrofuck," my desire for teleportation technology has grown 10-fold. Sure airplane companies would lose alot of money if this happened. I say jump on the gravy train Air Canada, you can't do any worse!
I'm out.
peace!
From Gizmodo
