Growing up, most of us were taught that there are three states of matter: solids, liquids, and gasses. Today, I am proud to introduce a new state of matter that most of you have not heard of, and that may be the key ingredient in successful teleportation.
Bose Einstein Condensate or BEC is the coldest substance known to humans in the entire universe. In nature, the coldest temperature ever recorded was 3 K (-270 degrees Celsius). Only able to be produced in the lab, BEC dips to the frigid temperature of one billionth of a Kelvin. In this state, atoms begin to tumble down to their lowest energy state, so that all their atoms vibrate in unison and are coherent. Each atom's wave function overlaps with one another creating a gigantic "super atom."
Physicist Dr. Aston Bradley of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Atom Optics has used BEC to teleport supercold rubidium atoms and applies a beam of matter (also composed of rubidium) to the condensate. The atoms in this beam also want to tumble down to their lowest energy state so they shed their excess energy in the form of a pulse of light. The light is then sent through a fibre optic cable with the quantum information necessary to reproduce the original atoms when the exit the cable.
This new for of teleportation is very promising since it does not deal with quantum entanglement and appears to be working in further testing and experiments. Although humans may never be able to teleport this way - seeing that they would freeze to death in BEC - non-living substances may be able to be teleported in the near future.
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