Teleporation

Teleportation refers to the transfer of an object or its information from one location to another. In everyday language it is often imagined as material disassembly and reassembly at a distance. In physics the term commonly describes the transfer of quantum information—the exact state of a quantum system—rather than the instantaneous transport of macroscopic matter.

Quantum teleportation uses a pair of entangled particles shared between sender and receiver. The sender performs a joint measurement on the particle to be teleported and the entangled particle, then transmits two classical bits to the receiver. Based on these bits, the receiver applies a corresponding operation to the distant particle, recreating the original quantum state. The original state is not copied, and no information travels faster than light, since the classical message is required.

Experiments have demonstrated quantum teleportation with photons, and more recently with ions and solid-state qubits. Distances have increased from laboratory scales to tens or hundreds of kilometers using optical fibers and satellite links. Practical quantum teleportation forms a key part of quantum communication and distributed quantum computing architectures.

Beyond quantum teleportation, physics has speculated about transporting macroscopic objects via mechanisms such as wormholes or spacetime shortcuts. These ideas rely on speculative physics and require conditions (such as exotic matter) not yet realized. In fiction, teleportation devices typically disassemble matter, transmit information about its structure, and reconstruct the object elsewhere, a concept not supported by current science.

See also: quantum entanglement, no-cloning theorem, quantum communication, wormhole theory.