Australian boffins find way to teleport atoms

Sydney : Australian physicists have discovered a method that could see atoms being teleported between Sydney and Perth and, pave the way for possible Star Trek-like travel in the future.

The method involves cooling down a group of atoms and shooting lasers at them, making them "appear to disappear" before using transporting them along optic fibres at light speed to another location where they can be reconstructed, news.com.au reports.

Physicists Murray Olsen, Ashton Bradley, Simon Haine of the Australian Research Council Centre developed this simple method for Quantum-Atom Optics, and for Joseph Hope of the Australian National University.

Dr Olsen claimed that the method was very much like the Star Trek characters' favourite way to get back onto the ship.

“If you cool these atoms down enough ... in a condensate, they all enter the same quantum state. We can use an optic fibre (to transport the signal at the speed of light) into a second condensate, which could be in another room, or another building, or another state," said Dr. Olsen.

He said the method could be being used in laboratories in the next four years, but didn't expect he would ever see humans teleported.

Dr Haine said the team’s method was a lot simpler than previous theories.

Dr. John Close, another scientist at ANU, intends to implement the experiments over the coming years. (ANI)