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Anyone that does physics/chemistry, I got on confusing question

Right so at work, me and my manager were discussing electrons (as you do), and he told me about the "Quantum Leap". The quantum leap is the phenomena where photons excite electrons to move up energy levels, which I knew already. What really caught be by surprise though, is when he mentioned electrons "disappearing and reappearing in higher energy levels (so their next outer shell)" When I asked him, he said that its based on factual evidence from experiments that they actually disappear and reappear, and that it doesn't happen at a speed which can't be observed (which was my assumption). He said that when electrons change energy levels, they do not move through space.

Soooooo I'm here thinking that they teleport, well it seems to me like the do anyway. If that's the case then if humans can understand how they do it, im sure they can develop means of teleportation in the future? Could that be true?

I mean, so many things that are invented are observed in nature first so it could be true right?

Any thoughts??
(edited 10 years ago)
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Anyone?
The general jist of the argument seems okay - the electrons do move from one energy level to another ''without travelling in between them'' i.e. they can only exist in certain discrete levels. We're a very long way off from teleportation, however, since it's not possible to know an objects position and it's momentum at the same time and there appears to be no way around this inherent property in nature, afaik.
(edited 10 years ago)
Your manager is right, particles on the quantum level do indeed seem to teleport and really interesting phenomena like quantum entanglement shows that particles (like a pair of electrons) can somehow respond to each other instantly even if they're at opposite sides of the universe.
Despite this, I don't think we're close to human teleportation at all, we're big and fleshy and our wave character is negligible. It might someday be possible however, never say never when it comes to science.
Just to add to the two replies already here.

It's never a good idea to extrapolate quantum mechanical effects into the visible macroscopic world.
An electron in an atom is a significantly different entity to a person.

When you talk about "appear" and "disappear" you are talking in terms of the macroscopic, everyday world.
An electron doesn't "disappear" and "reappear". It exists in two possible states and there is a definite probability of finding it in one or the other of them. You cant "see" the electron so it can't "disappear". As a a result of quantum mechanical theory, it cannot exist in any energy state in between these two. The probability of finding it there is zero. So it moves from one to the other but its existence between those two events is indeterminate for a brief fraction of time.

Now back to the familiar macroscopic, everyday world. If you are sitting in a chair and want to be teleported to a chair on the other side of the room, you need to bare in mind that these two energy states are not the only two allowed, and that you are permitted to be in any of the billions of energy states between the one chair and the other. So you will not "disappear" from the one state and reappear in the other, because you will have gone through billions of intermediate states in which you have a near 100%* probability of being observed.

So teleportation, though it may be possibly be possible one day for other reasons, cannot be justified on this particular quantum mechanical idea.

* So near 100% that it is to all intents and purposes a certainty.
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Original post by Stonebridge
Just to add to the two replies already here.

It's never a good idea to extrapolate quantum mechanical effects into the visible macroscopic world.
An electron in an atom is a significantly different entity to a person.

When you talk about "appear" and "disappear" you are talking in terms of the macroscopic, everyday world.
An electron doesn't "disappear" and "reappear". It exists in two possible states and there is a definite probability of finding it in one or the other of them. You cant "see" the electron so it can't "disappear". As a a result of quantum mechanical theory, it cannot exist in any energy state in between these two. The probability of finding it there is zero. So it moves from one to the other but its existence between those two events is indeterminate for a brief fraction of time.

Now back to the familiar macroscopic, everyday world. If you are sitting in a chair and want to be teleported to a chair on the other side of the room, you need to bare in mind that these two energy states are not the only two allowed, and that you are permitted to be in any of the billions of energy states between the one chair and the other. So you will not "disappear" from the one state and reappear in the other, because you will have gone through billions of intermediate states in which you have a near 100%* probability of being observed.

So teleportation, though it may be possibly be possible one day for other reasons, cannot be justified on this particular quantum mechanical idea.

* So near 100% that it is to all intents and purposes a certainty.


Thanks for that. My knowledge is physics does obviously not go as far as yours, I'm more on the biological side of things :smile:

When I was reading about this before I posted this, someone said that "if you believe that to get from one point to another, you must travel then indeed it is impossible to think that electrons are capable of disappearing and reappearing, though if you take that thought away then it is indeed possible"

Now I'm not entirely sure what he meant by this but in his long comment, he seemed pretty convinced that the electrons do not travel.

I don't think we understand electrons well enough yet do we? I mean even though electrons do have mass, albeit it's really really really tiny - if we fire them in a specific direction, we can not guarantee where it'll land- that's something else I read.

And just another point, when you said that the electron does move from one place to another, does it travel through space? If so, it would be faster than the speed of light right?
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Original post by Plantagenet Crown
Your manager is right, particles on the quantum level do indeed seem to teleport and really interesting phenomena like quantum entanglement shows that particles (like a pair of electrons) can somehow respond to each other instantly even if they're at opposite sides of the universe.
Despite this, I don't think we're close to human teleportation at all, we're big and fleshy and our wave character is negligible. It might someday be possible however, never say never when it comes to science.


How do you mean respond to eachother? And how why would they need to at such a great distance apart? Could you elaborate on that? :smile:
Electrons enter a quantum leap accelerator and vanish. They find themselves trapped in a higher energy level, facing mirror images that are not their own, and driven by the electromagnetic force to change matter for the better. Their only guide on this journey is Al, a gauge boson from their own time, who appears in the form of a photon that only the electrons can see and hear. And so electrons find themselves leaping from level to level, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that their next leap... will be the leap home.
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Original post by RunningScotsman
Electrons enter a quantum leap accelerator and vanish. They find themselves trapped in a higher energy level, facing mirror images that are not their own, and driven by the electromagnetic force to change matter for the better. Their only guide on this journey is Al, a gauge boson from their own time, who appears in the form of a photon that only the electrons can see and hear. And so electrons find themselves leaping from level to level, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that their next leap... will be the leap home.


Mirror images.. Are you referring to anti-matter?
Original post by SHOO
How do you mean respond to eachother? And how why would they need to at such a great distance apart? Could you elaborate on that? :smile:


Say for example you have a pair of electrons, one must be spin up and the other spin down to make the total zero right? So if you separated the electrons an infinite distance apart and forced one of them to change spin, the other one would also change spin instantly (to bring the total back to 0)
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Original post by Plantagenet Crown
Say for example you have a pair of electrons, one must be spin up and the other spin down to make the total zero right? So if you separated the electrons an infinite distance apart and forced one of them to change spin, the other one would also change spin instantly (to bring the total back to 0)


Wow :O

So, the pair of electrons will always spin in the opposite direction? Obviously this is all hypothetical, I mean it would be extremely hard to firstly seperate electrons and then force a change in the spin right? Or has this been done before?
Original post by SHOO
Mirror images.. Are you referring to anti-matter?


Not really, I was just taking the intro to Quantum Leap and randomly replacing names and nouns with energy-level related stuff.

I get pretty bored on Sundays.
Original post by SHOO
Wow :O

So, the pair of electrons will always spin in the opposite direction? Obviously this is all hypothetical, I mean it would be extremely hard to firstly seperate electrons and then force a change in the spin right? Or has this been done before?


From what I know it's a real phenomenon. Read about it here

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