Teleportation: Express Lane Space Travel

July 12, 2005 | Source: Space.com

In his new book, Teleportation – The Impossible Leap, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., writer David Darling contends that “”One way or another, teleportation is going to play a major role in all our futures. It will be a fundamental process at the heart of quantum computers, which will themselves radically change the world.”

Darling senses the day may not be far off for routine teleportation of individual atoms and molecules. That would lead to teleportation of macromolecules and microbes…with, perhaps, human teleportation to follow.

To take this idea to its logical endpoint: When nanotechnology is mature, an automated assembly unit could be sent to a destination. On arrival, it would build the required robot explorer from the molecular level up.

“Bona fide quantum teleportation, as applied to space travel, would mean sending a supply of entangled particles to the target world then use what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’ to make these particles assume the exact state of another collection of entangled particles back on Earth,” Darling speculated.

Doing so opens the prospect for genuinely teleporting a robot vehicle—or even an entire human crew—across interplanetary or, in the long run, across interstellar distances, Darling said.