(Image source: intl.startrek.com)
You know the funny story about how teleportation made it into the Starship Enterprise series? When Star Trek: The Original Series (or just Star Trek), as it is actually called, flickered across the screens in 1966, there was no telling how popular Kirk, Spock, Pille and Co. would one day be. On the contrary: Hardly anyone believed in the success, which is why the coffers of the production team around series creator Gene Roddenberry were anything but bulging.
Savings had to be made at every nook and corner. In order to save on complex and expensive visual effects such as landings on planets, the famous transporter room was devised without further ado. Maybe you let yourself be a little bit of the film The fly
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Be that as it may, the teleporter is now firmly linked to the crew of the various Enterprises and other Federation ships. And probably most will think of Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Archer or DS9 Commander Sisko when talking about it.
But how much of teleportation is actually science? The Austrian Anton Zeilinger, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics just a few days ago, provides the answer.
Quantum teleportation is not the same as teleportation
Zeilinger is considered a pioneer of quantum information science and received the highest award for researchers for his experiments with entangled photons and entangled quantum states. In 1997, he and his team succeeded in proving quantum teleportation.
But the term quantum teleportation can be quite irritating, because it has little to do with what most people think of as teleportation. Unlike the science fiction model, quantum teleportation does not transfer energy or matter, just information about the state of one quantum object to another. This means that there must already be an entangled particle at the destination. In addition, quantum teleportation can only transmit information at the speed of light, because this has to be done via traditional technologies such as radio.
This is quite the opposite of teleportation in science fiction, where people and objects are instantaneously beamed over huge distances to any destination. Almost like in a science fiction film, however, scientists have now shot at an asteroid:
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Almost like in a movie: NASA wants to crash a spaceship into an asteroid
And another disappointment: Due to the factors mentioned above, quantum teleportation is also not a precursor to teleportation from Star Trek. At least for the time being, what is probably the most elegant form of travel remains pure fiction.
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