Scientific American's JR Minkel interviewed CalTech physicist H. Jeff Kimble about quantum teleportation. In the article, Kimble explains in simple terms why recent experiments in quantum teleportation have nothing to do with the Star Trek transporter. As Minkel sums it up, the phenomenon "turns out to be more relevant to computing than to commuiting." From the interview:
Scientific American: What's the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state–a wave function–from one place to another.
