Scientists have for some years been able to ‘teleport’ quantum states from one place to another. Now Seth Lloyd and his MIT team say that, using the same principles and a further strange quantum effect known as ‘postselection’, it should be possible to do the same backwards in time. Lloyd told the Technology Review: “It is possible for particles (and, in principle, people) to tunnel from the future to the past.”
Postselection is a vital part of the nascent science of quantum computing. In traditional computing, if a user needs to determine which set of variables in an equation leads to the answer being true, the computer must try every combination until it hits upon one that works. In quantum computing, due to the weird parallel behaviour of subatomic particles, it seems to be possible to simplify the procedure by running all possible variations simultaneously, and selecting only the combinations that make the answer true.
