Thursday, October 2, 2014

Teleportation

I am a complete science nerd.I am just going to start with that. Now to the good stuff:
I like quantum mechanics a lot. I like talking about possibilities, and lately the thing that's been on my mind a lot is teleportation.
I was talking with a friend, and we were discussing the likeliness of it happening randomly to a person. Technically, it's possible. Quantum particles, which is pretty much anything smaller than an electron, have the ability to randomly jump around. Sometimes, they can go from somewhere right here to somewhere right there without crossing it physically.
In English we call it teleportation.
It's pretty cool, right? But the thing is, that only quantum particles are small enough to do it. So now we're getting into quarks and such and it's getting really really tiny. (Quarks are the things that make up protons, by the way. There's 7 different kinds, Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top, and Bottom. Yeah. It's pretty cool.) Anyway, I want you to imagine the probability of one of the billions of billions of billions of billions of electrons in the whole universe teleporting, is in you. The probability is tiny! And that's of one electron in your body moving a little ways away.
Now; it would be super awesome if one of your electrons, or quarks, or whatever make up quarks left, but it wouldn't make a big difference. That's not what causes cancer, or makes the sun burn, or anything else amazing or detrimental. So now let's think about an entire atom just up and going. All the electrons. All the quarks. And everything that makes up quarks (because some of them aren't quantum particles and thus not capable of teleportation, but they're made up of quantum particles, probably.) Imagine a billion over a billion over a billion over a hundred. That's probably pretty close to the probability of that happening.
BUT!! That's just the thing. The fact that there is a tiny tiny tiny possibility of that happening is two times amazing!! A whole atom traveling somewhere faster than light! Just because we're talking about atoms I have to mention--atoms are really small. This means nothing. This isn't like half of a golf ball or something, this is really really really really small. I remember it with this cool analogy:
An atom is to a base ball what a golf ball is to the earth.
That's really small. So now that we have our one atom that's teleported, it still doesn't mean much. Especially because this atom didn't even make it there without almost blowing apart. There are electrons everywhere, the protons aren't stuck together, it's a mess. Teleportation isn't all perfectly aligned like I'd love it to be.  But, let's remember, there's always the microscopic chance that they are still perfectly formed.
Now we must return to moving up the scale in size of teleportation. Now one of your atoms is gone--you wouldn't even notice the difference. Your pool isn't half empty, the computer you're reading an amazing essay on is still working, but probability, probability!!! What's the biggest number you can possibly imagine? Bigger than a google-google-google? Times it by three, put it over one hundred, and then you probably have the probability that anything is going to teleport anywhere. Then times it by nine and there's your chances that it will still be in perfect form and not just a smear in the cosmos.
WHAT?!
Go back to your number over a hundred. That's a possibility. It will almost certainly not happen, but we can't rule out the possibility.
Well, you kind of can.
So, if you like other nerdy science things like this, then comment a question you have and I'll post something about it!

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