Jumper Director Meets the MIT Physicists

Posted on February 9, 2008

Filmmaker Douglas Liman was a physics prodigy who landed a scholarship to Brown University. He never took a physics class and ended up as a successful director. He and actor Hayden Christensen agreed to attend a symposium at MIT with two MIT physicists, Dr. Farhi and Dr. Tegmark, to discuss the physics behind Limon's new SF film Jumper. The hero of Jumper can teleport himself wherever he wants, just by thinking about it. So what did the real physicists have to say?

In real experiments recently, Dr. Farhi told the movie fans, physicists had managed to "teleport" a single elementary particle, a photon, which transmits light, about one and a half miles, "a little less exotic than what you see in the movie." What is actually teleported in these experiments, he explained, is not the particle itself but all the quantum information about the particle.
To accomplish this is no small matter. Among other things, the teleporters have to create a pair of so-called entangled particles, which maintain a kind of spooky correlation even though they are separated by light years. Both of them exist in a kind of quantum fog of possibility until one or the other is observed. Measuring one particle instantly affects its separated-at-birth twin no matter how far away. If one is found to be spinning clockwise, for example, the other will be found to be spinning counter clockwise.
In order to use this magic to "teleport" a third particle, Dr. Farhi emphasized, you have to send a conventional signal between the entangled twins, and that takes time, according to Einstein. "You cannot get that thing over there faster than the speed of light," Dr. Farhi said, to cheers from the crowd.
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Dr. Tegmark said that even inaccurate science fiction movies could inspire scientists to think. You could see something that you think is impossible, he said, but that might start you thinking. "Why is that impossible? It can trigger a train of thought," he said.

Dr. Farhi is bringing us down with his bummer news that there won't be transporter technology by the end of the year, but he and Dr. Tegmark did like the movie. We can't wait to see it.

SCIENCE FICTION