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Tangled Up in Teleportation

Resource for Grades 9-12

WGBH: Nova
Tangled Up in Teleportation

Media Type:
Video

Running Time: 2m 07s
Size: 7.4 MB

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This media asset was adapted from NOVA's "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap".

Resource Produced by:

WGBH Educational Foundation

Collection Developed by:

WGBH Educational Foundation

Collection Credits

Collection Funded by:

National Science Foundation Alfred P. Sloan Foundation U.S. Department of Energy The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations

Do you ever wish you could be teleported to a faraway place? In this video excerpt from NOVA’s "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Quantum Leap", host and theoretical physicist Brian Greene explores how the concept of quantum entanglement could be used to do just that. Watch as he illustrates being teleported between two theoretical particle chambers in New York and Paris. He explains how, in theory, the quantum state of all his particles can be reconstructed, allowing him to re-emerge in a new location.

open Discussion Questions

  • What are the different kinds of particles that make you up?
  • What does the word "quantum" mean?
  • What does a quantum physicist study?
  • What would you need to build a teleportation machine? How would it work?

open Transcript

ATTENDANT: Welcome to New York City.

BRIAN GREENE Let's say I want to get to Paris for a quick lunch. Well, in theory, entanglement might someday make that possible. Here's what I'd need. A chamber or particles here in New York that's entangled with another chamber of particles in Paris.

ATTENDANT Right this way, Mr. Greene.

BRIAN GREENE I would step into a pod that acts sort of like a scanner or fax machine. While the device scans the huge number of particles in my body—more particles than there are stars in the observable universe—it's jointly scanning the particles in the other chamber. And it creates a list that compares the quantum state of the two sets of particles. And here's where entanglement comes in. Because of spooky action at a distance, that list also reveals how the original state of my particles is related to the state of the particles in Paris.

Next, the operator sends that list to Paris. There they use the data to reconstruct the exact quantum state of every single one of my particles.

And a new me materializes.

It's not that the particles traveled from New York to Paris. It's that entanglement allows my quantum state to be extracted in New York and reconstituted in Paris, down to the last particle.

ATTENDANT Bonjour, Monsieur Greene.

BRIAN GREENE Hi, there.

So, here I am in Paris, an exact replica of myself. And I'd better be, because measuring the quantum states of all my particles in New York has destroyed the original me.


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