The sci-fi dream (or utter fantasy) of getting from one place to another instantaneously continued this February 14, with the opening of Doug Liman's film Jumper, based on the novel by Steven Gould. We asked quantum physicist H. Jeff Kimble of the California Institute of Technology to explain how physicists understand quantum teleportation, which turns out to be more relevant to computing than to commuting
What's the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another.
How does teleportation get around the disruption of the quantum state?
clipped from: www.sciam.com 