Why can’t people teleport? | WIRING

Let’s face it: No one likes to travel.

Whether you’re traveling to an exotic vacation spot or traveling to work on a daily commute, no one likes the part they have to travel to. Those who say they like to travel probably mean they like it adult. That’s because being somewhere can be a lot of fun: seeing new things, meeting new people, getting to work earlier, going home early, and being able to read physics books. Real traveling the part is usually dragged: prepare, hurry, wait, hurry more. The saying “it’s a journey, not a destination” clearly meant he never had to sit in traffic every day and was never stuck in a middle seat on a transatlantic flight.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a better way to get to places? What if you were, just Appear where do you want to go without going through all the intermediate places?

Teleportation has been in science fiction for over 100 years. And who hasn’t closed their eyes or jumped into a machine and suddenly dreamed of finding the place they want? Think about the time you would save! Your vacation can start now, and not after a 14-hour flight. We could also reach other planets more easily. Imagine that you send settlers to the nearest habitable planet (Proxima Centauri b, four light-years away) without having to spend a few decades.

But is teleportation possible? And if so, why do scientists need so much time to make that a reality? It will take hundreds of years to develop, or can I expect it as an app on my phone soon? Set up your phasers to the fullest, because we’ll let you know the physics of teleportation.

Teleportation options

If the dream of teleportation is to be here one moment and be in a completely different place the next, then we are sad to say that this is impossible at first.

Unfortunately, physics has pretty strict rules anything it happens immediately. Anything that happens (an effect) must be a cause, which requires the transmission of information. Think about it: in order for two things to be causally related to each other (like you disappearing here and you appearing somewhere else), they have to talk to each other somehow. And in this universe, everything, including information, has a speed limit.

Information must travel through space like everything else, and the fastest anything the speed of light that can travel in this universe. Actually, the speed of light was to be called the “speed of information” or the “speed limit of the universe.” It is the same idea that is at the core of physics and the cause and effect.