Quantum teleportation could be theoretically possible using quantum physics, according to a minutephysics video that explains the concept. The technique depends on quantum entanglement, a situation in which one set of particles is dependent on the state of another.
In principle, if scientists create specific sets of particles that can be rearranged into whatever they wish to teleport, they can send partial information about one end of the entanglement — encoded as a quantum state — and thereby produce it in the other end. The video offers an analogy: imagine taking a scan of what you want to transport, sending it to the other entangled particles, and rebuilding it from that.
The practical limit is distance and stability. Scientists have managed to transport a single photon or electron about 100km. The difficulty lies in creating two entangled sets of particles and subsequently transporting one of them without it becoming disentangled.
Transporting anything large, such as a cat — the example the video uses — is a long way off.
The video links the concept to scientists achieving direct counterfactual quantum communication for the first time recently. That method operates using the Zeno effect — freezing the situation by observing it — rather than entanglement. In the experiment, scientists successfully transported information using the phase of light.
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