While growing up, most of us have seen cartoons, tv-series and even films that have demonstrated how cool teleportation through portals can be. Many video games have also used portals and teleportation as gameplay mechanics, to further stroke our curiosity about their possibility in the real world. Turns out, a scientist might have discovered a possibility of portals and teleportations working in real life through quantum teleportation or a potential wormhole.

According to reports and new studies, a scientist has come up with an excellent experiment that could potentially create the first-ever traversable wormhole or a natural bridge across spacetime. Hatim Salih, a quantum physicist and honorary researcher at the University of Bristol’s Quantum Engineering Technology Labs, has proposed a possible way to create a traversable wormhole through a process called ‘counterportation’.

Quantum wormhole study

It’s no secret that many space scientists have constantly been looking for other habitable planets in our galaxy and beyond. Scientists have also been thinking about ways of making space travel a reality. Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle they face is the enormous distance between different stars and galaxies. It’s this hurdle that Salih wants to get rid of, thereby creating a roadmap for travelling long distances across space in the blink of an eye.

In a conversation with Vice, the scientist explained the process by saying: “Imagine if someone’s consciousness, like a strong AI, is copied into a quantum object. If you counterport each one the qubits, transport them from one place to another—and if this thing has a subjective experience—then it possibly could tell you what it feels like to go through a wormhole.”

In simple words, counterportation is a combination of two words: counterfactual and transportation. It describes a way to send messages between two points without exchanging any particles.

This really does sound like the plot of a cool sci-fi film, doesn’t it? Well, believe it or not, Salih thinks that the technology to create such a traversable wormhole is already available out there. “The key thing is it uses current technology and currently available components. The hope is that within the next three to four years, we will have built this thing,” he says.

What is quantum teleportation?

Quantum teleportation is a process in which the quantum state of one system is transferred to another system, without physically moving the original system. Usually, teleportation is commonly portrayed in science fiction as a way to transfer physical objects from one location to another. At the moment, quantum teleportation only transfers information, wherein the sender does not have to know the particular quantum state being transferred.

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(Hero and feature image credit: Courtesy Pixabay and Pexels/Alexander Andrews)