The Next Century of Transportation: From Horse-drawn Carriages to Flying Taxis to Teleportation
"What if we told you that the future of transportation lies not in faster and more efficient vehicles, but in teleportation networks? While this may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, recent advancements in quantum mechanics have made it a possibility. Imagine being able to instantly transport yourself from one place to another without the need for any physical vehicles. The implications of this technology are vast and could revolutionize not just transportation, but also industries such as tourism, logistics, and more. But how would this work, and what are the challenges that would need to be overcome to make it a reality?
Before discussing the future of transportation, it is important to understand how transportation has evolved over time.
The History of Transportation
Transportation has come a long way since the first steam locomotive was built in the early 19th century. From horse-drawn carriages to automobiles and airplanes, the modes of transportation have evolved rapidly over the past century.
Before the advent of modern transportation, people relied on horses, donkeys, and other pack animals to move goods and people over land. The first steam-powered locomotive was invented in 1804, and by the 1820s, steam-powered trains were in regular use. This revolutionized transportation, making it faster, cheaper, and more reliable.
In the late 19th century, the internal combustion engine was invented, and the first automobiles were built. Cars quickly became the preferred mode of transportation for many people, leading to the construction of highways and the development of suburbs.
The airplane was invented in the early 20th century, and commercial air travel became a reality in the 1950s. This allowed people to travel long distances quickly and easily, and it helped to fuel economic growth.
Today's transportation landscape
Today, we have a wide range of transportation options available to us. Cars, trucks, and buses are still the primary modes of transportation for most people, but trains and airplanes are also widely used. We also have bicycles, scooters, and other small vehicles that are growing in popularity, particularly in urban areas.
Electric vehicles are becoming more common, as people look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Self-driving cars are also on the horizon, with companies like Tesla and Google working on developing autonomous vehicles.
The future of transportation
In the next 100 years, we can expect transportation to become even more advanced. Here are some of the predictions for the future of transportation:
1. Personalized transportation
In the future, we may see more personalized transportation options, such as individual pods that can transport people directly to their destinations. These pods could be self-driving, reducing the need for a human driver
2. Space travel
While space travel is still in its infancy, it could become a more common form of transportation in the next 100 years. Companies like SpaceX are working on developing reusable rockets that could make space travel more affordable and accessible
3. Sustainable Transportation
As concerns about climate change continue to grow, we can expect to see more sustainable transportation options in the future. This could include electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and other low-emission vehicles.
4. Teleportation
The concept of teleportation has long been a staple of science fiction, but recent breakthroughs in quantum physics and technology have made it a very real possibility. Imagine a world where you can travel instantly from one place to another, without the need for planes, trains, or automobiles. That's the world that teleportation networks could bring.
So how would this work? Essentially, teleportation is the transfer of information from one location to another. In quantum teleportation, this is done by entangling two particles and then using one particle to transmit information about the other. The result is that the second particle effectively "appears" at the new location, without physically traveling through the space in between.
Scientists are already experimenting with quantum teleportation on a small scale, and while it's still in the experimental phase, the potential for large-scale teleportation networks is very real. Just imagine the possibilities: commuters could teleport to work, reducing traffic congestion and carbon emissions. Long-distance travel could be accomplished in an instant, opening up a world of possibilities for business and leisure. And of course, there would be no need for airports, train stations, or highways.
Of course, there are many hurdles to overcome before teleportation networks become a reality. For one thing, the technology is still very much in its infancy and it's unclear how long it will take to develop the necessary infrastructure. There are also questions about the safety of teleportation, particularly when it comes to the transfer of biological matter (think: Star Trek transporter accidents).
But despite these challenges, the potential for teleportation networks is too great to ignore. It's a bold vision of the future of transportation, but if we can make it a reality, it could change the way we live, work, and travel in ways we can't even imagine.
Quantum entanglement is very misunderstood. Partly because commentators often use inaccurate phrases like "this particle over here can affect that particle over there instantaneously", implying faster-than-light communication. Quantum mechanics (of which entanglement is a natural and necessary part) says no such thing. Nothing affects anything else. Nothing travels faster than light. Nonetheless, Einstein was right when he said it is "spooky".
Quantum mechanics is a piece of mathematics that describes the behaviour of systems remarkably well. At its heart, a system is described by a complex function, the so-called wave function (the word "wave" is somewhat an historical misnomer). The wave function contains imaginary numbers. It is not real. It cannot be observed. But you can calculate what it is for a system. This imaginary entity occupies all of space, and you can calculate how it evolves over time. What it represents is probability. If you know the wave function at any moment you can use it to tell the probability of measuring some property that you can observe - like the position of a particle or its momentum or spin.
How does the mathematics work then? Well, the wave function is constructed from a set of underlying "pure" states. For example, an isolated electron can only have its spin 100% up or 100% down. Don't worry about what up or down mean. The important point is that these might be considered "pure" states. The actual wave function at a point in time is constructed as a sum (superposition) of these possible states. You might deduce it is 20% up plus 80% down. Or 50% up and 50% down. What it means is that if you measure the spin you can use those numbers to predict the likelihood of seeing up or down in your experiment. Once you measure it you know whether it is up or down. You have "selected" one of the pure states through a measurement.
That might just sound like mathematical cookery. You might figure in reality it was up or down all along. You just didn’t know which. Well, the mathematics, borne from experiment, really does imply that the system can only be described as a mixture of states until you make a measurement. The outcomes of certain experiments would be different if this were not the case. Read up on Bell Inequalities for details. You may also ask, what about other measurables like position? Following the same logic, the state of the system must be a sum of all possible positions and not necessarily up/down-ness. And that is true. You can build the same complex state function as the sum of the pure states of any observable. Think about that. It means if you select a pure spin state via a measurement then the representation using pure position states must now be different. Measuring spin will change what will happen if you now measure position! Starting to sound a bit spooky?
Now, in reality, everything is entangled with everything else. Entanglement happens whenever things interact (exchange conserved quantities such as energy, momentum, charge, spin). Interactions happen all the time. In fact, the trick to doing quantum experiments is to isolate (unentangle) 1 particle and then entangle it with only 1 other. This has to be done with great care. Let's suppose you managed to create 2 entangled electrons through some interaction. Spin conservation may mean they must have opposite spin. If 1 is spin up, the other must be spin down, and vice versa. These up/down and down/up configurations are now the pure states. The actual state (according to quantum mechanics) is a sum of these two. It may be 50% up/down plus 50% down/up. Just as with the single electron case, if you make a measurement, 1 of these 2 pure states is "selected". You either select up/down or down/up. I.e. if you measure the first electron and the spin is up, you know you've selected the up/down pure state. The other electron must therefore be down. That is all quantum mechanics says. No more, no less. Also, as with the single particle case, you can do some freaky experiments with it. Read up on the delayed choice quantum eraser as an example.
The reason Einstein thought it is spooky is that the fabric of our Universe seems to be a thing that is spread out over all space (and time) and is some blend of all the possible alternate realities we might get from a measurement. If we make a measure then 1 of these blended realities is "selected". That selection occurs over all space instantaneously. Certainly spooky to me. It sounds like some signal is propagated instantaneously from the place where the measurement happened. But quantum mechanics says no such thing. It simply says a pure state (that itself occupies all space) is selected.
What people find wholly unsatisfying is that quantum mechanics says absolutely nothing about what that reality actually is or how the state selection happens. Quantum mechanics is silent on this. The maths works but what it means is not understood by anybody. This is the so-called "measurement problem", or the "interpretation problem", in quantum mechanics.
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Rob Williams
PhD in Physics, Keele University (Graduated 1990)