7 Awesome X-Men That Could Actually Exist (And How You Could Be One Too)

Mention quantum teleportation, and Nightcrawler might be the first of the X-Men to come to mind. However, when Kitty Pryde - aka Shadowcat, played by the supremely awesome Ellen Page - learns to phase the current consciousness of Wolverine into his past self in X-Men: Days of Future Past, she may in fact be using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering of quantum particles.

You know the one, right?

Certain subatomic particles are "entangled", meaning that observing one influences the behaviour of the other. Dubbed "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein in the 1930's, this effect - which occurs faster than the speed of light - is currently used to make Quantum Computers, like Microsoft's LIQUi|> (no, that's not a typo).

Although quantum teleportation - the fax-machine-like transmission of quantum information from one place to another - isn't new, only recently have scientists discovered how to reliably decode the information, using quantum steering. This will ultimately allow us to use quantum entanglement to send information at super speed over long distances, without anyone being able to eavesdrop.

But can this information be sent into the past? Physics says not. Travelling into the future is possible by, say, travelling close to the speed of light or hanging out near a black hole (think Interstellar). After more than 800 days travelling at super speed in space, one ISS cosmonaut was shown to arrive back on Earth 0.02 seconds into his future.

Travelling into the past is a different matter, and one physicists believe to be impossible but, then again, they used to think that about aeroplanes.