Teleported

Scientists in China recently announced an engineering breakthrough for quantum teleportation.

The preceding sentence is not science fiction.

This bizarre phenomenon relies on a couple of esoteric, tough-to-understand concepts from physics. One is the “quantum state” of a particle or system: the condition of a few key attributes of subatomic particles. Think of it as the “setup” of the system. The other is “quantum entanglement,” a process Albert Einstein famously called “spooky action at a distance.” If two particles are “entangled,” they share properties – quantum states – no matter how far apart they are. Measure the state of one particle, and the other one instantaneously displays the same measurement.

For a few decades, we’ve known “teleportation” of quantum states is possible. We can create entangled partners and beam the state of one particle to its partner, effectively transporting the info from one spot to another. It’s not the full-fledged, sci-fi teleportation of matter, but it fundamentally differs from normal transmission of data via light waves (radio, fiber optics, etc.), so we call it “teleportation.”

This notion might seem impossible, or at the very least spooky, but we’ve actually shown it works experimentally. On small scales, scientists have proved that two entangled particles share states and have teleported info from one to the other. Until recently, scale was a problem. Researchers could send quantum info on single channels, but the Chinese team created a method to use 100!

Using 100 light beams in a 10×10 grid, they teleported the quantum states from one particle to another. The encoded message showed a “Q,” which was transported to the other particle.

This technology is a long way from Star Trek’s “beaming up” or the human superposition and conveyance in the modern show Dark Matter.

We can’t currently transport mass from one place to another quantumly, and the idea might even violate the universe’s physical laws.

Until we get there, we have to rely on conventional transportation. This article is the 747th in the project’s history, a number modernly associated with airplanes.

Boeing manufactured the 747 airliner between 1968 and 2023. Four jet engines provided the plane with a cruising speed of 550 miles (900 kilometers) per hour. That’s 85% of the speed of sound, but well below the threshold of light-speed teleportation. The 747 moves at 0.000082% of the universe’s speed limit.

Still, if you could time travel to 1826 and tell a human that you could fly from Paris to London in half an hour on a 747, the feat would probably feel like teleportation. Flying anywhere at all would be astounding, but the technology has also opened up travel options that would have been unfathomable before.

A few years ago, for example, we explored how some intrepid explorers fly Boeing 787s to Antarctic ice runways!

If traditional transportation isn’t enough, and waiting for science fiction to arrive has you impatient, we can already transport around our planet at the speed of light.

At least metaphorically.

A website fittingly called Teleported allows computer users to beam to spots videographically entangled around the globe. It’s essentially a web of live feeds at interesting locations. Hit a button, and you can teleport to a random site.

I started in Le Havre, France, the port at the mouth of the Seine, before zipping to ol Donyo Waterhole in Kenya, where elephants lapped liquid in the nighttime while Kilimanjaro loomed in the distance.

The site currently connects to 305 webcams across the globe. Not all of them point to locations focused on the outdoors, but most of them do.

You can travel to geographical areas or choose by topic. Gaze upon giraffe paddocks, mountainous panoramas, ocean waves, or spots prone to the northern lights.

You can even teleport to my favorite peak, Maine’s High Point, Katahdin, or out of this world to the International Space Station.

As I type, Katahdin’s camera seems to be graced by a spider. Even arachnids love this mountain.

Studies show that being in nature provides positive mental health benefits.

The Japanese have a word for outdoor therapy: Shinrin-yoku. The term means “forest bathing.”

Examinations of Shinrin-yoku show that the practice reduces cortisol, the stress hormone, and rumination.

Stuck inside without the benefits of forest bathing? The studies suggest that simply looking at images of nature can produce health benefits!

So, the prescription is clear.

Harness teleportation to improve your mental health.

We can’t physically jump from point to point yet, but we can take advantage of the gifts that technologies such as Teleported can provide.

Scotty, beam us over!