SO
P H V SIC S Of THE IMPOSSIBLE
porter room, as if one could compensate for the laws of quantum
physics by adding a gadget to the transporter. But as it turns out, the
need to create these Heisenberg Compensators might have been premature. Early critics and scientists may have been wrong.
TELEPORTATION AND THE QUANTUM
THEORY
According to Newtonian theory, teleportation is clearly impossible.
Newton's laws are based on the idea that matter is made of tiny, hard
billiard balls. Objects do not move until they are pushed; objects do not
suddenly disappear and reappear somewhere else.
But in the quantum theory, that's precisely what particles can do.
Newton's laws, which held sway for 250 years, were overthrown in
1925 when Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrôdinger, and their colleagues developed the quantum theory. When analyzing the bizarre
properties of atoms, physicists discovered that electrons acted like
waves and could make quantum leaps in their seemingly chaotic motions within the atom.
The man most closely associated with these quantum waves is the
Viennese physicist Erwin Schrôdinger, who wrote down the celebrated
wave equation that bears his name, one of the most important in all of
physics and chemistry. Entire courses in graduate school are devoted
to solving his famous equation, and entire walls of physics libraries are
full of books that examine its profound consequences. In principle, the
sum total of all of chemistry can be reduced to solutions to this equation.
In 1905 Einstein had shown that waves of light can have particlelike properties; that is, they can be described as packets of energy called
photons. But by the 1920s it was becoming apparent to Schrôdinger
that the opposite was also true: that particles like electrons could exhibit wavelike behavior. This idea was first pointed out by French physicist Louis de Broglie, who won the Nobel Prize for this conjecture.
(We demonstrate this to our undergraduate students at our university.
We fire electrons inside a cathode ray tube, like those commonly found
P H V SIC S Of THE IMPOSSIBLE
porter room, as if one could compensate for the laws of quantum
physics by adding a gadget to the transporter. But as it turns out, the
need to create these Heisenberg Compensators might have been premature. Early critics and scientists may have been wrong.
TELEPORTATION AND THE QUANTUM
THEORY
According to Newtonian theory, teleportation is clearly impossible.
Newton's laws are based on the idea that matter is made of tiny, hard
billiard balls. Objects do not move until they are pushed; objects do not
suddenly disappear and reappear somewhere else.
But in the quantum theory, that's precisely what particles can do.
Newton's laws, which held sway for 250 years, were overthrown in
1925 when Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrôdinger, and their colleagues developed the quantum theory. When analyzing the bizarre
properties of atoms, physicists discovered that electrons acted like
waves and could make quantum leaps in their seemingly chaotic motions within the atom.
The man most closely associated with these quantum waves is the
Viennese physicist Erwin Schrôdinger, who wrote down the celebrated
wave equation that bears his name, one of the most important in all of
physics and chemistry. Entire courses in graduate school are devoted
to solving his famous equation, and entire walls of physics libraries are
full of books that examine its profound consequences. In principle, the
sum total of all of chemistry can be reduced to solutions to this equation.
In 1905 Einstein had shown that waves of light can have particlelike properties; that is, they can be described as packets of energy called
photons. But by the 1920s it was becoming apparent to Schrôdinger
that the opposite was also true: that particles like electrons could exhibit wavelike behavior. This idea was first pointed out by French physicist Louis de Broglie, who won the Nobel Prize for this conjecture.
(We demonstrate this to our undergraduate students at our university.
We fire electrons inside a cathode ray tube, like those commonly found