Why can’t people teleport? | WIRED

Let’s face it: Nobody likes to travel.

Whether they travel to get to an exotic vacation spot, or travel for work on a daily commute to work, no one really likes the part they have to travel to. People who say they love to travel probably mean they love arrive. This is because being somewhere can be really fun: seeing new things, meeting new people, getting to work earlier so you can go home earlier and read physics books. The real thing travel part is usually dragging: preparing, hurrying, waiting, hurrying a little more. Whoever said “this is the trip, not the destination” obviously never had to sit in a traffic jam every day and never sat in the middle seat on a transatlantic flight.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a better way to get to places? What if you could just appear where do you want to go without going through all the places between them?

Teleportation has been part of science fiction for more than 100 years. And who hasn’t dreamed of closing his eyes or jumping into a car and suddenly being where he wants to be? Think about the time you would save! Your vacation can start now, not after a 14-hour flight. We could reach other planets more easily. Imagine sending colonists to the nearest habitable planet (Proxima Centauri b, four light-years away) without having to spend decades in transit.

But is teleportation possible? And if so, why does it take scientists so long to make it a reality? Will it take hundreds of years to develop, or can I expect it as an app on my phone soon? Set your phasers to stun, because we will teach you the physics of teleportation.

Teleportation options

If your dream of teleportation is to be here at one point and then be in a completely different place the next, then we tell you with sadness that this is impossible.

Unfortunately, physics has some pretty strict rules whatever happening instantly. Everything that happens (consequence) must have a cause, which in turn requires the transmission of information. Think about it: in order for two things to be causally related to each other (like disappearing here and reappearing elsewhere), they need to talk to each other in some way. And in this universe, everything, including information, has a speed limit.

Information must travel through space, like everything else, and as fast as possible whatever can travel in this universe is the speed of light. Indeed, the speed of light had to be called the “speed of information” or the “speed limit of the universe.” It is baked into relativity and the very idea of ​​cause and effect that underlies physics.