Question:
Quantum teleportation of a human?
m t
2009-05-03 18:19:58 UTC
two questions:
1) For quantum teleportation of, lets say, a human, one would require two auxiliary masses of equal mass to the human being transported. (one at the desired destination and one that will interact with the human and is entangled with the one at the destination. Do these auxiliary masses need to be composed of the same atoms as the human or can they be anything?
2) What are some limitations that prevent us from using quantum teleportation on macroscopic objects such as humans? (i.e. where does our technology have to improve so that this can be done?)
Three answers:
Biofreak
2009-05-03 20:02:04 UTC
Quantum teleportaion (QT) is not yet at the point where we can teleport people. In fact, it is no where close.



So far a few things have been teleported: the state of photons, the state of ions, and the state of clouds of rubidum (I think, though it might be cesium). The thing that makes these three systems similar is that we have exquiste control over the quantum state of these systems. Having control over the quantum system is anything but trivial and these systems are some of the very few systems we can control.



To perfom QT on a human, we would need equally exquiste control over the quantum state of a human. (Actually, we would need better control than we do over those other systems because the fidelity, or the accuracy with which the teleportation was done, in those experiments was somewhere between 60% and 80%. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't step into a teleporter that would only get me 80% correct on the other side!) Now the idea of QT would, in theory, also work for a human if we could demonstrate that type of control, but we have no idea WHATSOEVER as to how to do that. That is a problem that our technology is no where close to solving. If that happens, it will not be for centuries. And at this point, guessing how we would accomplish that would be like a caveman predicting how computers would work. But, even if we were able to control the quantum state of a human, there are some huge issues we would have tto solve on top of that, that we do know today.



The first issue is that quantum behavior is not evident in macroscopic objects, like humans. Whether or not it will ever be evident is a debatable, but probably not. The problem is that humans are too big. And the bigger something is, the faster its quantum state decays (probably). For something as big as a human, the quantum state would decay away so incredibly fast that there are no words to adequtely describe how fast it would be. We are talking billionths of billionths of billionths of a second, probably less. So your QT protocol would have to enact on that time scale, which is simply not possible.



The second problem is that a human has a lot of information that would have to be transmitted. If you know QT, then you know that there is a quantum channel, but there also has to be a classical channel, over which information is sent using classical means. That means a portion of the information in the human (the non-quantum information) needs to be sent using something like light pulses or electrical signals. A human is about 70 kg. That is more than 10^27 atoms. Lets say one bit of classical information has to be sent per atom (though it would no doubt be much more than that). That is 10^27 bits. A typical computer has a few-GHz computer chip in it, which means it can do about 10^9 operations per second. Let's say an operation is sending a bit of information for this QT protocol. That would mean it would take a typical computer 10^18 seconds to send the information for a human during QT. That is about 30 billion years, or twice the age of the universe. That's a long time. Let's say that instead of just your computer, everyone in the world had a computer and they were all using it to transmit this information for QT. That would still take more than 5 years. To transmit that information in 1 second, every single person on earth would have to have 150 million computers each and they would all have to be working on this teleportation. And 1 second would still be much much much .... much much slower than the human quantum state would decay.



And on top of those two issues that sound impossible to solve, we still have no idea how to control that quantum state of matter for even a single atom, let alone a whole human. So the technological hurdles to QT for a human are... unthinkably large. And very likely impossible.



Now, having said why this will quite possibly never happen, let's go over your first question. Unfortunately, since we have no idea how to control the quantum state of matter, we have no idea what would need to be done to accomplish QT of a human. But I would think it is unlikely that you would need the atoms to be the same in both the human and the desitnation, and you would most certainly not need the atoms to be shaped like a human. QT does not require that the entangled carrier of the quantum information be the same as the thing being teleported. You can map the quantum information from the item to be teleported to any other quantum system (if you know how to do that mapping) and then map it back. A good example of this is the recent work by the Maryland group, where the state of an ion was mapped to a photon and then mapped back to an ion in the destination zone. The photon carried the ion's quantum information. Similarly, photons or something else could carry the human's information. You just need to know how to map a human onto a group of photons and then back again (and that is something we will not know for centuries, if ever).



But you do need to have a human and a medium of matter at the other end to map onto. That matter could just as easily be a soup of protons, electrons, neutrons and photons, since there is likely no need to have the matter already in atomic form (that would make the propblem about 10^27 more complicated). In fact, the matter at the destination might as well just be energy, since matter and energy are equivalent. You just need a way to make atoms (and molecules... and humans) out of that energy.



Anyways, that's about all anyone could say, since this technology is no where near being realized, or even hypothesized. I wish I could give you a better answer than that, but there is just no way of knowing how, or if, this will ever be realized. I'm guessing it will not.



To end, let me jsut say that quantum teleportation would be overkill for teleporting a human. Quantum teleportation teleports the quantum state of the object. The quantum state of a human is changing neraly infinitely fast, so the exact quantum state need not be maintained. So you could be much more careless teleporting a human and the human would never know. But any type of teleportation will run into the problem of too much information to be transmitted and no way of turning humans in to energy or some other transmittable item, and then back again.
?
2016-05-26 10:29:09 UTC
CHRIST IS THE SAVIOR. Therefore He is the Solution, the All-Solution to everything including the problem of finding out the spin of a particle, the spin of a Mirror-Girl whose face is catching the light from the Sun. There is no doubt that atheists and Christians are both right since there is enough room for both on His Cross. Current theories tell us that ALL elemental particles are connected one to another, not as a string of particles, but as a Radiant Star of Strings. However, at the level of the human eye, it looks just as if everything was separate from everything else. Your mind is convinced that it can not possibly be connected to my mind. Little_morph_annie knows better --that is what she is talking about::: the *caress*. The caress is the sublime moment when everything comes in contact with everything, allowing for the quantum theory to :::kick::: into action. An electron can be here, a girl can be there... all because of the power of Love. Love is the solution, love is Christ, and I love you all. My advice to you, Olive Flower, is to take a big jump.
was up
2009-05-03 18:31:51 UTC
NEGATIVE ITS IMPOSSIBLE. OTHER WISE YOU"D HAVE A NOBEL PRIZE RITE NOW.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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