In our student days, a famous professor told us the following mathematical truth in a popular version of an important theorem: To get from Venezuela to Colombia, you have to cross the border. Since man is man and has legs and feet, until the invention of the space shuttle or United Airlines, this, like few others, has been an indisputable truth enshrined like a shrine within the operating system of every human being: cannot be moved from From point A to point B, other than A, without following a continuous trajectory that starts at A and ends at B. To go from this hill to that hill I have to cross that ravine. You can’t reach San Fernando de Apure without passing through the plains. To get from Caracas to Miami, I would have to go through US immigration and countless other points. To go from work to my bed I have to cross the barricade at Plaza Venezuela, I can go through Petare and through the Strait of Magellan come through Los Tex, but I never go through a door or a door Won’t reach my bed without the window. Every trip usually involves a dilemma, a yes, well…but…, in which the ideal of a destination and the inevitable reality of how and where to get there interact. very cool, wonderful, you want to go to mars… but you’re going to have to spend about four years locked in a horrible interplanetary coffee pot called friendship 4357, with an intolerable co-pilot, who at just two million four hundred and forty nine thousand six hundred and fifty three kilometers will already cause you to throw him out the hatch so that he is lost forever in the depths of outer space. And then comes the comeback… and let’s not talk about the food and stuff.
It is therefore understandable that since ancient times man has dreamed of getting from point A to point B quickly and effortlessly. And this old aspiration does not necessarily refer to achieving tasks such as traveling to other planets or other galaxies. There are also situations in our everyday Earth environment in which such a possibility would be ideal. For example, suppose we need to move a grand piano from one floor of the house to another through a spiral staircase. Wouldn’t it be nice to disappear from where it is and, magically, reappear in its new location?
Well, thanks to recent advances in the field of quantum physics, which until now seemed unimaginable, typical of science fiction books and series, such as star trek, may become a reality in the near future: teleportation; A way of causing an object to disappear and appear from one place, as if by magic, a few meters or perhaps a few million kilometers away, without having to move, without traveling a certain trajectory, without passing through any part. However, the contradiction with mathematical intuition is only apparent and the “magic” of matter must be sought in the mystical truths of quantum physics.
It is a process that can be compared to sending an item from one place to another by fax. A transmitting center analyzes the object being sent, atom by atom, particle by particle. From this analysis, information is obtained about the “quantum state” of the particles that make it up. This information is transmitted to a receiving station at the destination, which uses it to reconstruct the object by “injecting” it into local atoms. In other words, objects are not sent or transferred but information converted into “quantum information” and transmitted to the destination.
The whole process is highly complex and is based on some unusual properties of some subatomic particles, such as the two being in different places at the same time.
Now, how close are we to living in a world similar to the famous Dr. Spock, the pointy-eared gentleman who traveled on Startrek? We believe and aspire that it is far from over. First, let us hope that the miracle of teleportation serves for more interesting things than the boring life those gentlemen led inside that space tome. Second, teleportation experiments are just getting started. Scientists in Austria and Italy have just proven that it is possible to teleport a photon, or packet of light, and are now working on experiments to teleport an electron. Within a few years it is expected to be able to teleport atoms and molecules and even some small viruses. Later, work will begin on the possibility of teleporting the human genome, that is, a DNA molecule, the carrier of the biochemical formula of the human species. And one day, perhaps, an entire human being will be able to teleport.
However, we should not get involved in the typical speculations of science fiction. Teleporting doesn’t mean that one fine day someone will miraculously appear, walking across some bare ground on Mars, or sitting on a rock on Ganymede. We must forget about the cinematography for a bit and think that one cannot be happily whisked away from Earth like this and suddenly appear on Mars, with no one waiting for it. If we teleport an object or a living being, surely on the day it is possible, we should think that just as there should be a technology to send it, there should also be a technology to receive it. When an object is teleported, it disintegrates, the origin disappears, it ceases to exist at the place of origin, becoming a complex packet of quantum information about the atoms that make up the traveler. At the destination, this must be achieved by the necessary technology and necessary materials to recreate it from the original “quantum recipe”. In other words, let’s say we want to teleport to Mars. It cannot be that we are teleported and magically appear there like the Virgin of Fatima; There must be someone waiting for us with all the necessary resources to rebuild us. There must be a receiving station waiting for us; Otherwise, perhaps we will continue to wander in space, turning into information. For this reason, for people to teleport to Mars, other people would have had to have gone before, or perhaps robots, to set up everything needed to get to the teleporters, and these would necessarily have arrived by conventional means. , i.e. space in ships. Later on, thinking about a possible colonization of Mars, we could perhaps start teleporting DNA molecules instead of people, thus creating a nursery for humans on the Red Planet. But, since we cannot create a planet of pure babies, some adults will have to endure the horrific process of being disintegrated and teleported live and perceptible. This would be the only way to get that crowd to the neighboring planet.
Anyway, don’t get lost in sci-fi dreaming for now. Let’s imagine that one of these days teleportation will happen to us here, and it will be enough to take us from our house to Chachito without going through Plaza Venezuela. it will be wonderful.
