We Thought Energy Had to Travel Through Space. It Might Not.

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The vacuum of space is a chaotic sea of quantum fluctuations. Some have said that this vacuum energy can be harvested to build our future starship engines, or manipulated to build warp drives. It can't. But it is technically possible to move real energy through the quantum vacuum without it passing through intervening space. Quantum energy teleportation may be as close as we get to transporter beams. But how close is that?

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd

Written by Christopher Pollack & Matt O'Dowd

Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria

Directed by Andrew Kornhaber

Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour

Executive Producer: Andrew Kornhaber

Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez

Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing

Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

Spacetime is a production of Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.

This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.

© 2025 PBS. All rights reserved.

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