What if aliens have units of measurement we don’t?

Watch: Could we build a teleporter to visit aliens?

Could we build a teleporter to visit aliens?

Sci-Fi Visions

What if aliens have units of measurement we don't?

Could We Build a Teleporter to Visit Aliens?

<h2>A Quantum Record</h2>
Not long ago, in the early 1990s, scientists only speculated that <a href="https://futurism.com/teleportation-could-possible-using-quantum-physics/" target="_blank">teleportation using quantum physics</a> could be possible. Since then, the process has become a standard operation in quantum optics labs around the world. In fact, just last year, two separate teams conducted the <a href="https://futurism.com/a-quantum-teleportation-breakthrough-physicists-just-smashed-previous-records/" target="_blank">world&#8217;s first quantum teleportation outside of a laboratory</a>.
Now, researchers in China have taken the process a few steps further: they <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00934" target="_blank">successfully teleported a photon</a> from Earth to a satellite orbiting more than 500 km (311 mi) away.
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/9-physics-questions-baffling-scientists-infographic/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/08/Strange-Universe_home_v1.jpg" alt="9 Physics Questions Baffling Scientists [INFOGRAPHIC]" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/9-physics-questions-baffling-scientists-infographic/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
The satellite, called Micius, is a <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608252/first-object-teleported-from-earth-to-orbit/?set=608245" target="_blank">highly sensitive photo receiver</a> capable of detecting the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. Micius was launched to allow scientists to test various technological building blocks for quantum feats including entanglement, cryptography, and teleportation.
This teleportation feat was announced as one of the first results of these experiments. Not only did the team teleport the first object ever from the ground to orbit, they also created the first satellite-to-ground quantum network, smashing the record for the longest distance for which entanglement has been measured.
“Long-distance teleportation has been recognized as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation,” says the Chinese team to <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608252/first-object-teleported-from-earth-to-orbit/?set=608245" target="_blank">MIT Technology Review.</a> “Previous teleportation experiments between distant locations were limited to a distance on the order of 100 kilometers, due to photon loss in optical fibers or terrestrial free-space channels.”
<h2>Defining Teleportation</h2>
What comes to mind when you think of teleportation?
Your brain might conjure images of Scotty beaming up the Enterprise crew in Star Trek, but it&#8217;s actually quite a different process than sci-fi films present.
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Quantum teleportation relies on quantum entanglement — a situation where one set of quantum objects (such as photons) form at the same instant and point in space. In this way, they share the same existence. This shared existence continues even when the photons are separated – meaning a measurement on one immediately influences the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them.
This link can be used to transmit quantum information by &#8220;downloading&#8221; the information associated with one photon over an entangled link to another photon. This second photon takes on the identity of the first.
Voilà. Teleportation.
In this particular instance, the Chinese team created entangled pairs of photons on the ground at a rate of about 4,000 per second. They then beamed one of these photons to the satellite, and kept the other photon on the ground. Finally, they measured the photons on the ground and in orbit to confirm that entanglement was taking place.
It&#8217;s worth noting that there are some limits to this technology. Transporting anything large, for instance, is a ways off. In theory, there&#8217;s also no maximum transportation distance, but entanglement is fragile, and the links can easily be broken.
Despite these limits, this research paves the way for even more ambitious studies of quantum teleportation. “This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet,” says the team.

Hard Science

Researchers successfully teleported a photon 500 km. The work is an essential step towards establishing a global-scale quantum internet.

Scientists Just Teleported a Photon from Earth to Orbit for the First Time

This is an essential step towards establishing a global-scale quantum internet.

Teleportation isn’t just science fiction.

Teleportation isn't just science fiction.

How to Teleport Schrödinger’s Cat

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In the video below, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUHW94eEFW7hkUMVaZz4eDg">minutephysics</a> explain how teleportation could be theoretically possible using quantum physics. Quantum teleportation uses quantum entanglement — a situation where one set of particles is dependent on the state of another. In principle, if scientists create specific sets of particles that are capable of being rearranged into whatever they wish to teleport, they can send partial information about one end of the entanglement — encoded as a quantum state — and thereby produce it in the other end. As an analogy: imagine taking a scan of what you want to transport, sending it to the other entangled particles, and rebuilding it from that.
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While being able to transport anything large, like a cat — the example the video uses — is a long way off, <a href="https://futurism.com/photons-teleported-100-kilometers-in-new-quantum-teleportation-record/">scientists have managed</a> to transport a single photon or electron about 100km. The difficulty lies in creating two entangled sets of particles and subsequently transporting one of them without it becoming disentangled.
This is linked to scientists achieving direct counterfactual quantum communication for the first time recently, which operates using the <a href="https://futurism.com/zeno-effect-verified-atoms-wont-move-being-watched/">Zeno effect</a> (freezing the situation by observing it) rather than entanglement. <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-achieved-direct-counterfactual-quantum-communication-for-the-first-time">In the experiment</a>, scientists successfully transported information using the phase of light.

Einstein Wormhole Spacetime

Quantum physics could, theoretically, be used to fulfill the age old desire to teleport.

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<h2>No Beaming Up, Yet</h2>
As fascinating as the image it conjures up, quantum teleportation is not the same as teleportation you see in psychic Pokémon, or what you see Scotty doing in Star Trek. Still, quantum teleportation has its own kind of coolness.
Simply put, <a href="https://futurism.com/researchers-advance-quantum-teleportation/" target="_blank">quantum teleportation</a> is a process of transferring quantum information from one particle to another without the actual particles meeting. It involves a principle called entanglement, where the quantum state of one particle can be instantly shared by another regardless of distance.
As the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/quantum-teleportation-moves-out-lab-scientists-achieve-long-distance-information-2418939">International Business Times</a> succinctly explains:
<blockquote>Here&#8217;s how quantum teleportation works. Imagine, if you will, three people — Alice, Bob and Charlie. Alice wants to send information to Bob. In order to do so, she prepares a photon she wants to teleport and sends it to Charlie, while Bob entangles two photons and sends one of them to Charlie. When Charlie receives the two photons — one each from Alice and Bob — he carries out what&#8217;s known as a Bell-state measurement, which actually forces the two to become entangled. This, in turn, causes the photon Bob has to collapse into the state of Alice&#8217;s original photon, thereby teleporting quantum states between Alice and Bob, who can, in theory, be separated by a distance of miles.</blockquote>
Scientists have been playing around with the concept and testing it out in labs. In 1997, teleportation was tried at an 800-meter distance between two particles in the same lab. Then in 2012, the <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/fig_tab/nature11472_F1.html" target="_blank">record was set at over 143 kilometers</a> (88.8 miles), when the teleportation happened between two particles in two separate locations in the Canary Islands.
Since then, the possibility of conducting secure quantum teleportation in relatively uncontrolled areas has been explored, until quite recently when it was <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-figured-need-achieve-secure-quantum-teleportation/">deemed possible</a>.
<figure style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/09/sci-fi-background.jpeg" alt="Credits: Shutterstock" width="800" height="380" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image credit: Shutterstock/pixelparticle</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Photons and Potential</h2>
Fast-forward to today. <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2106326-quantum-teleportation-over-7-kilometres-of-cables-smashes-record/">Two separate teams</a> of researchers from Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China conducted the first &#8220;real world&#8221; quantum teleportation. The two teams managed to teleport using their city&#8217;s existing fiberoptic cables.
The Calgary team managed to send photons over a distance of about 6.4 km (4 miles), at a fast rate of 17 photons per minute. The Hefei team, on the other hand, teleported photons at a slower rate, but over a 14-km (9-mile) stretch. The Hefei team also batted a 50% average in correctly determining the photon state of the particles after teleportation, due to an added, time-consuming step in the process. The Canadians scored about 25%.
Researcher Wolfgang Tittel at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada believes that their setup could be more useful in enabling quantum communication between cities using a <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1595-quantum-repeater-promises-complete-long-distance-secrecy/" target="_blank">quantum repeater</a>. Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China, researcher from the Hefei team, believe that what is needed is just a central quantum computer to make urban quantum teleportation work.
Both tests, undoubtedly, are achievements. <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/quantum-teleportation-moves-out-lab-scientists-achieve-long-distance-information-2418939">Johannes Kofler</a> at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich notes that these &#8220;experiments can be seen as milestones on the path to a long-term goal, namely to build a fibre-based quantum internet connecting large cities.”
Quantum teleportation may also prove useful for a more secure data encryption. With entanglement, there would be no way for an outsider to read data moving along these quantum teleportation lanes. <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2016.180.epdf?shared_access_token=DpjTdBTb518KpdTcS5kG69RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NezZxMCVN082wYsiJSANTwLpYOzhLoxGcCZqxxkg6dYvdpqDknPbXtAKdkMMFvtvA88LDwzUvL0d1xKCClB0mwJMoeSLI0CyfWEB20ZqXNWvMqe1C_qefi1YQGxE3nsbi2EoA0FXxF-XZpgoqw1vKN">The findings</a> of <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2016.179.epdf?shared_access_token=mzzbVVUVqaS3HlhR9IQKR9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Mgf1-jAmO1OXBCupp0IqtVSCGABt4tE2ZEEdGfFGJjtyVrbdyb33O1wGQgmhROHxKFnp-RaY1CK-_Y8f-lFmbOJ4QM2LISFwH7_6lBVih_Tg-xq5-Sn7megWdgYQ3KnmmVCANvXad8CQwIawvzSkpO">both teams</a> were published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Two separate teams of scientists have successfully conducted the world's first quantum teleportation outside of a laboratory. While the setup of both tests have variations, the conclusion is essentially the same: quantum teleportation is possible.

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<h2>&#8220;Teleporting&#8221; to L.A.</h2>
The new startup, SleepBus, might not be as high tech as <a href="https://futurism.com/elon-musks-hyperloop-may-be-americas-next-moonshot/">Elon Musk&#8217;s Hyperloop train</a>, but it does have a leg up on the competition—as of last night, it&#8217;s already running. The <a href="http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/sleepbus-gets-you-from-sf-to-la-for-50.html">overnight bus service</a>, established by Tom Currier made its first &#8220;teleportation&#8221; trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles last night.
Passengers paid $48 a piece to rent out bunks in the 20-bed Volvo sleeper coach. The bus left from the Caltrain station in San Francisco&#8217;s South of Market neighborhood at 11 p.m. and arrived at Santa Monica Pier a 6 a.m. The vehicle offers a lounge area, free coffee, tea, WiFi, and twin-sized cots.
Surprised everyone is so excited about a hotel on wheels? So was Currier. Roughly one in 25 who see Facebook ads for Sleepbus are clicking through, and one ad received as many as 203,000 views, according to Currier. He predicts the nascent company will become a go-to for those commuting from NoCal to SoCal.
&#8220;It would basically be like you teleported to L.A. It would be cool,&#8221; Currier said.
&nbsp;
<h2>Community Connection</h2>
The idea for the SleepBus stems from Currier&#8217;s desire to build communities—including his vision of building an entirely new city located hours outside of San Francisco. Kudavi, as he intends to call it, which would ultimately be populated by around five million creative workers and remote employees (including many with jobs that take place in virtual and augmented reality).
&#8220;You don&#8217;t have to commute to the city, you can just, like, put on the HoloLens,&#8221; says Currier, referring to the not-yet-released augmented reality glasses from Microsoft. But when commuting is necessary, you can just take the SleepBus.
It might sound a little ambitious. But as Currier says, &#8220;every city was created from nothing, right?&#8221;

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<h5>This is Your Brain on Teleportation</h5>
Even though we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-figured-need-achieve-secure-quantum-teleportation/" target="_blank">teleportation technology</a>, we already have a pretty good idea about how the brain handles the experience of being “beamed” from one place to another. Or at least, we think that we do.
New research indicates that, rather than becoming a confused and sputtering morass as a result of the experience, our brains are able to keep up and can even register how fast the teleportation process occurs and how far one travels when they are transported.
But how can research show this if we don&#8217;t even have true teleportation technologies?
To explain, neuroscientists at the University of California, Davis are <a href="http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(16)00092-1" target="_blank">learning how humans find their way around</a> and memorize different places and routes. Scientists know that a rat’s brain gives off a rhythmic oscillation whenever it has to navigate a maze, and they found that humans also exhibit this behavior when navigating virtual landscapes, like in video games.
The oscillations that emanate from the hippocampus are thought to be driven, at least in part, by external inputs, according to most models of brain function.
Associate professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience Arne Ekstrom said: “There is this rhythmic firing in the brain during navigation and while remembering things, but we don’t know if it is triggered by sensory input or by the learning process.”
<h5>Virtual Teleportation</h5>
<figure id="attachment_25783" style="width: 1101px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/20130213_arne_ekstrom_6189.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-25783"><img class="size-full wp-image-25783" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/20130213_arne_ekstrom_6189.jpg" alt="Neuroscientist Arne Ekstrom uses virtual mazes to explore how we learn to find our way around. Via UC Davis" width="1101" height="732" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Neuroscientist Arne Ekstrom uses virtual mazes to explore how we learn to find our way around. Via UC Davis</figcaption></figure>
The research team worked with patients being treated at the Department of Neurological Surgery at UC Davis who suffer from a severe form of epilepsy. They implanted electrodes on the patients’ brains in order to determine where seizure activity begins.
Volunteers were asked to navigate through a virtual streetscape viewed on a computer screen. They would find certain points where they could enter a teleporter to “beam” to a different location on the map that had been previously known. The computer screen would turn black for random periods of time whenever they teleported.
The researchers found that the rhythmic oscillations in the brain were entirely driven by the patient’s memory along with the brain’s learning process. The results have shown that these oscillations have information about how fast and how far the patients travelled during the teleportation process.
Although the study was limited to just <a href="http://humanspatialcognitionlab.org" target="_blank">virtual teleportation</a>, the brain’s ability to carry information related to the speed and distance of the teleportation is telling, and may reveal much in relation to how the brain can process the experience of being teleported in real life.
Of course, this is early work, and we are still a rather long ways from teleportation in humans, but the work reveals much about how our brains function and process information.

New research shows that teleportation doesn't break our brains. In fact, our brains can tell how fast the teleportation process was and how far one traveled

Research Shows That Our Brains Are Ready for Teleportation

We can't teleport our bodies, but our brains are ready. 

Prof. Tongcang Li at <a href="http://Purdue University">Purdue University</a> and Dr. Zhang-gi Yin at <a href="http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/newthuen/" target="_blank">Tsinghua University</a> just proposed the first scheme to use electro-mechanical oscillators and superconducting circuits to teleport the internal quantum state (memory) and center-of-mass motion state of a microorganism.
Sound a little complex? Then let&#8217;s break it down a bit.
They want to move the memories of a living organism and effectively &#8220;teleport&#8221; them from one place to another. However, notably, when we talk about the &#8220;memory&#8221; of a living creature, we’re not talking about memories about its life. Rather, we are talking about the memory of the creature’s existence at an atomic level &#8211; its internal quantum state.
They also proposed a scheme to create a <a href="https://futurism.com/how-to-observe-schrodingers-cat-without-killing-it/">Schrödinger&#8217;s cat state</a> in which a microorganism can be in two places at the same time.
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&nbsp;
In their study, the physicists propose to put a bacterium on a electro-mechanical membrane oscillator that has been integrated with a superconducting circuit. This will be done in order to cool the microorganism. <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11434-015-0990-x?dom=pscau&amp;src=syn">A study published earlier this month</a> has shown that, at these temperatures, it’s possible to put an oscillator membrane in a superposition state. As a result, the team suggests that the same thing would happen to the bacterium sitting on top.
Quantum superposition and teleportation of the organism&#8217;s center-of-mass motion state can be done by using superconducting microwave circuits. The internal states of a microorganism can be entangled with its center-of-mass motion and be teleported to a remote microorganism.
Since internal states of an organism contain information, this proposal provides a scheme for teleporting information between two remote organisms.
&#8220;We propose to simply put a small microbe on top of the aluminum membrane. The microbe will also be in a superposition state when the aluminum membrane is in a superposition state. The principle is quite simple,&#8221; <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/16/experiment-to-put-microbe-in-two-places-at-once-quantum-physics-schrodinger">Li told Ian Sample at</a> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/16/experiment-to-put-microbe-in-two-places-at-once-quantum-physics-schrodinger">The Guardian</a>.
In <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-01-physicists-scheme-teleport-memory.html">the press release</a>, they explain, &#8220;With a strong magnetic field gradient, the internal states of a microorganism, such as the electron spin of a glycine radical, can be entangled with its centre-of-mass motion and be teleported to a remote microorganism. Since internal states of an organism contain information, this proposal provides a scheme for teleporting information or memories between two remote organisms.&#8221;
<h5>Superposition theory and the proposed scheme</h5>
Currently, scientists have been experimenting with quantum ground cooling and the superposition of atoms, molecules, and electrons. However, quantum superposition of an entire organism has not been realized.
Tongcang Li and Zhang-gi Yin proposed setup is a quantum-limited magnetic resonance force microscope. It will manipulate and detect the quantum states of electron spins. It will also allow some isolated electron spins that could not be read out with optical or electrical methods to be used as quantum memory for information.
Li adds, &#8220;We propose a straightforward method to put a microorganism in two places at the same time, and provide a scheme to teleport the quantum state of a microorganism. I hope our unconventional work will inspire more people to think seriously about quantum teleportation of a microorganism and its potential applications in the future.&#8221; Yin says &#8220;Our work also provides insights for future studies about the effects of biochemical reactions in the wave function collapses of quantum superposition states of an organism.&#8221;

Quantum teleportation between two microorganisms could be happening in the near future. 

/Teleportation

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