Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

Teleporting microbes and microbes being teleported

Francisco Miraval

A team of scientists presented last week a proposal for an experiment that would allow a microbe to be in two places at the same time, being this the first experiment with a living organism of a quantum teleporter (like the one commonly used in Star Trek). But another recent scientific report makes me think that somebody out there is already teleporting microbes to earth.

Dr. Tongcang Li, of Perdue Univesity (Indiana) and Dr. Zhang-Qi Yin, of the Center for Quantum Information at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) say they are ready to make a “radical demonstration of quantum theory” putting a microbe in two place at the same time and allowing the microbe to change places instantly.

According to the proposal by Li and his colleagues, the experiment is based on the principle of “superposition” of quantum mechanics that allows objects “to be in two different states at once.” That principle, in turn, is the base for quantum computers. And everything is based on the real and thought experiments by Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum theory.

In their paper, Li and Yin say they will put a microbe in a “superposition of spatial states”, emphasizing this will be the first experiment of this kind involving a living organism.

Even with the help of the most prominent experts in this topic and using the best equipment available today, Li and Yin say they need at least three years to prepare the experiment. And when they actually do it, for the time ever a living organism will teleport from one place to another in no time at all.

This experiment, of course, is very small compared with the tele-transporter used in Star Trek and other science fiction series, but let’s remember that the first flight by the Wright brothers in North Caroline on December 1903 lasted only 39 seconds, flew no higher than 6 feet, and landed 852 feet away. Yet, only 66 years later the crew of the Apollo XI mission was walking on the moon.

Nowadays, techno-scientific progress is no longer measured in decades and probably not even in years. For that reason, we can assume that very soon after Li and Yin’s experiment we will see a real teleporter for humans.

However, perhaps the teleportation of microbes is already happening. According to a report published earlier this months by Professor Milton Wainwright, of the Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham (England), images of particles floating in the stratosphere reveal the presence of tiny “living entities”, that is, microbes.

Wainwright says the microbe found and photographed in the stratosphere is an “alien microbe” with “no relation to anything found on Earth”. A microbe, then, from another world.

I wonder, then, if somebody at a distant and unknown place is teleporting microbes to the stratosphere around Earth either with benevolent or with nefarious purposes. With so many spectacular new experiments and scientific discoveries, such a question is no longer as nonsensical as it used to be.

Go Back