• Question: will we ever be able to teleport around the world?

    Asked by claire to Gavin, Karen, Mark, Michel, Roisin on 10 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Michel Destrade

      Michel Destrade answered on 10 Nov 2016:


      Ever since I watched the movie “The Fly”, I’m terrified of this idea!

    • Photo: Roisin Jones

      Roisin Jones answered on 10 Nov 2016:


      Honestly I don’t know! There’s obviously a lot of speculation about it, particularly in popular sci-fi media, for example, Star Trek, their ‘Beam me up Scotty!’, but thus far, I don’t think there’s been a massive amount of progress made in real world application. Human/object teleportation is definitely a long way off, and may never actually be a real thing, but there has been some progress made on a quantum level in physics. For example, this year it’s been proposed that superconductive materials are displaying a type of particle teleportation, but they’re still trying to prove it experimentally!

    • Photo: Mark Kennedy

      Mark Kennedy answered on 10 Nov 2016:


      I suspect we’ll eventually get their. But the question will be this.

      Is it real teleportation, where I take you and move you through space and time to another place, intact?

      Or will I be breaking you down to your individual atoms, moving those atoms to another place, and rebuild you piece by piece, essentially just killing you and creating a perfect clone of you somewhere else?

      I think it’ll be the second scenario. Which means I would never use a teleporter! I don’t want to die and have imposter Mark roaming the Earth!!

    • Photo: Gavin Coleman

      Gavin Coleman answered on 10 Nov 2016:


      There’s a small possibility, either if we learn how to create and control a theoretical portal through space, commonly called a wormhole (we have never actually seen one yet) or learn to harness something called quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is something scientists HAVE seen, as incredible as it sounds: two particles, at any distance apart, act identically. As in, if you “push” one, the other one is pushed the same way. We could potentially use this to “move” a person from one spot to another, by breaking down the atoms in your body and recreating you from atoms at a quantum entangled spot (this is all just theory at the moment). There’s a suggestion that this is the most likely way we would be able to explain how teleporting in Star Trek works. However this would mean that the you that pops out the other end is made from entirely different atoms…so is it really you, or a clone O.o there’s a lot to work out before we get there!

    • Photo: Karen

      Karen answered on 10 Nov 2016:


      I don’t think this will ever happen…but I’m no expert so what they say??

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