Teleportation is the hypothetical transfer of

matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

and in other popular culture. Teleportation is often paired with

time travel Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

, being that the travelling between the two points takes an unknown period of time, sometimes being immediate. An apport is a similar phenomenon featured in

parapsychology Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near ...

and

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...

. There is no known

physical Physical may refer to: *Physical examination In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally co ...

mechanism that would allow for teleportation. Frequently appearing

scientific papers : ''For a broader class of literature, see Academic publishing.'' Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scienti ...

and media articles with the term ''teleportation'' typically report on so-called " quantum teleportation", a scheme for

information transfer In telecommunications, information transfer is the process of moving messages containing user information from a source to a sink via a communication channel. In this sense, information transfer is equivalent to data transmission which highlights ...

which, due to the

no-communication theorem In physics, the no-communication theorem or no-signaling principle is a no-go theorem from quantum information theory which states that, during measurement of an entangled quantum state, it is not possible for one observer, by making a measureme ...

, still would not allow for

faster-than-light Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero ...

communication.

Etymology

The use of the term ''teleport'' to describe the

hypothetical A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obser ...

movement Movement may refer to: Common uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Motion, commonly referred to as movement Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...

of material objects between one place and another without physically traversing the distance between them has been documented as early as 1878. American writer

Charles Fort Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold w ...

is credited with having coined the word ''teleportation'' in 1931 to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. As in the earlier usage, he joined the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

prefix '' tele-'' (meaning "remote") to the root of the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

verb '' portare'' (meaning "to carry"). Fort's first formal use of the word occurred in the second chapter of his 1931 book '' Lo!'':

Cultural references

Fiction

Teleportation is a common subject in science fiction literature, film, video games, and television. The use of matter transmitters in science fiction originated at least as early as the 19th century. An early example of scientific teleportation (as opposed to magical or spiritual teleportation) is found in the 1897 novel ''

To Venus in Five Seconds ''To Venus in Five Seconds: An Account of the Strange Disappearance of Thomas Plummer, Pillmaker'' is a science fiction satire written by Fred T. Jane, the author of the original ''Jane's Fighting Ships'' and the founder of what would in time be ...

'' by

Fred T. Jane John Fredrick Thomas Jane (6 August 1865 – 8 March 1916) was the founding editor of reference books on warships ('' All the World's Fighting Ships'') and aircraft ('' All the World's Airships'') and the namesake of what would become Jane's Inf ...

. Jane's protagonist is transported from a strange-machinery-containing

gazebo A gazebo is a pavilion structure, sometimes octagonal or turret-shaped, often built in a park, garden or spacious public area. Some are used on occasions as bandstands. Etymology The etymology given by Oxford Dictionaries (website), Oxford D ...

on Earth to planet

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

– hence the title. The earliest recorded story of a "matter transmitter" was

Edward Page Mitchell Edward Page Mitchell (1852–1927) was an American editorial and short story writer for '' The Sun'', a daily newspaper in New York City. He became that newspaper's editor in 1897, succeeding Charles Anderson Dana. Mitchell was recognized as a ...

's "The Man Without a Body" in 1877.

Quantum teleportation

Quantum teleportation is distinct from regular teleportation, as it does not transfer matter from one place to another, but rather transmits the

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random ...

necessary to prepare a (

microscopic The microscopic scale () is the scale of objects and events smaller than those that can easily be seen by the naked eye, requiring a lens (optics), lens or microscope to see them clearly. In physics, the microscopic scale is sometimes regarded a ...

) target system in the same

quantum state In quantum physics, a quantum state is a mathematical entity that provides a probability distribution for the outcomes of each possible measurement on a system. Knowledge of the quantum state together with the rules for the system's evolution in ...

as the source system. The scheme was named quantum “teleportation”, because certain properties of the source system are recreated in the target system without any apparent

quantum information Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both th ...

carrier propagating between the two. In many cases, such as normal matter at room temperature, the exact quantum state of a system is irrelevant for any practical purpose (because it fluctuates rapidly anyway, it " decoheres"), and the necessary information to recreate the system is classical. In those cases, quantum teleportation may be replaced by the simple transmission of classical information, such as radio communication. In 1993, Bennett ''et al'' proposed that a quantum state of a particle could be transferred to another distant particle, without moving the two particles at all. This is called quantum state teleportation. There are many following theoretical and experimental papers published. Researchers believe that quantum teleportation is the foundation of quantum calculation and quantum communication. In 2008, M. Hotta proposed that it may be possible to teleport energy by exploiting quantum energy fluctuations of an entangled

vacuum state In quantum field theory, the quantum vacuum state (also called the quantum vacuum or vacuum state) is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. Generally, it contains no physical particles. The word zero-point field is sometimes used as ...

of a quantum field. There are some papers published but no experimental verification. In 2014, researcher Ronald Hanson and colleagues from the Technical University Delft in the Netherlands, demonstrated the teleportation of information between two entangled quantumbits three metres apart. In 2016, Y. Wei showed that in a generalization of quantum mechanics, particles themselves could teleport from one place to another. This is called particle teleportation. With this concept,

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

can be viewed as the teleportation of some electrons in the superconductor and

superfluidity Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortices that continue to rotate indefinitely. Superfluidity occurs in two i ...

as the teleportation of some of the atoms in the cellular tube. This effect is not predicted to occur in standard quantum mechanics.

Philosophy

Philosopher

Derek Parfit Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 1 or 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of ...

used teleportation in his

teletransportation paradox The teletransportation paradox or teletransport paradox (also known in alternative forms as the duplicates paradox) is a thought experiment on the philosophy of identity that challenges common intuitions on the nature of self and consciousness, ...

.Peg Tittle,''What If...: Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy'', Routledge, 2016, , pages 88–89

Etymology

Cultural references

Fiction

Quantum teleportation

Philosophy

See also

References

Further reading