In recent years, physicists across the globe have worked to make a reality of a phenomenon once associated only with science fiction.

The phenomenon is known as “teleportation” on the TV show “Star Trek.” In the real world, experiments that may one day make it possible recently were concluded in Denmark by Eugene Polzik.

These experiments determined that macroscopic objects, in this case, trillions of cesium atoms, could be entangled, manipulated and measured at a distance, without direct contact.

This type of entanglement illustrates future ramifications of quantum physics. If viewable elements can be affected at a distance by manipulating other elements, then theoretically larger objects could be entangled, which may someday lead to quantum teleportation of these objects.

However, the public shouldn’t expect Scotty to beam Kirk aboard the Enterprise any time soon.

“I don’t think it is likely at all that we will see anything like “Star Trek” teleportation within our lifetime,” said Stephen Martin, associate professor of physics at NIU. “It’s theoretically possible, but technically, it would be unimaginably hard, so hard, I can virtually guarantee it won’t happen in our lifetimes.”

While teleportation of humans is only a distant possibility, Martin thinks that Polzik’s experiments will have short-term effects.

“It is likely that [the experiments] will lead to advances in new types of computation and communication, and encryption and encoding theory,” Martin said.

These advances in communication relate to the computer industry. Quantum computing could lead to computers capable of handling and deciphering huge amounts of information at greater speeds than any modern computer, through the use of “quantum bits.” Current computing is based on bits of information that are displayed as ones or zeroes; however, “q-bits” would allow for greater flexibility of information than is currently possible, according to Martin.

The recent atom experiments were conducted at the University of Aarhus, under Polzik and his colleague and were reported in a September issue of the magazine “Nature.” These experiments involve quantum entanglement, an area of study that falls into the murky field of quantum physics.

The understanding of the field is growing and describing the workings of quantum physics is very difficult.

“Quantum mechanics is the area of physics that deals with what governs very small sizes of phenomena, the physics of individual atoms and molecules,” Martin, associate professor of physics at NIU, said. “It makes several predictions that from our everyday experiences seem very unusual.”

The experiment by Polzik is a continuation of experiments begun in 1998 at CalTech, but with greater results.

‘’It is the first result where two macroscopic material objects have been entangled,” Polzik said in a telephone interview with Reuters news service.

“Entanglement is a feature of quantum mechanics that allows particles to share a much closer relationship than classical physics permits,” according to PhysicsWeb, a Web site dedicated to current happenings in the field. “A measurement on one part of an entangled system reveals the properties of the other part, even if they are physically separated.”

Polzik’s experiment consisted of two glass cells lying end-to-end filled with cesium atoms, according to PhysicsWeb. The team shone rays of light into the cells to initiate the spinning.

“The laser sets the spins of the atoms, meaning their individual magnetic fields, in the cylinder, and makes a correlation in the two sets,” Martin said. “This correlation between these two separate pieces of gas is then governed by quantum mechanics in such a way that you can measure the properties of one sample to predict what happens in the other sample.”

Restating Albert Einstein’s description of quantum entanglement, Martin described these current experiments as “spooky action at a distance.”

“I think it is a significant event because they have managed to illustrate quantum effects on fairly large sized samples of materials, large meaning, [in this case], around a trillion atoms,” Martin said. “This is very large compared to anything that had been done before to demonstrate quantum properties, but it is still extremely small compared even to an amoeba.”