USAF Studies Teleportation

ArchAngel21x writes "Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation. But scientists aren't so thrilled. The Air Force Research Lab's August 'Teleportation Physics Report', posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful military spending."

Comments

For the love of.....

[BWJones]

Initially I thought this may have some relevance to encryption as there is a phenomenon of quantum teleportation that appears to have some scientific validity and would have significance in military and strategic planning and communication. However, when I actually started reading the article, at first I could not stop laughing until I reached this part:

From the linked .pdf :An experimental program similar in fashion to the Remote Viewing program should be funded at $900,000 - 1,000,000 per year in parallel with a theoretical program funded at $500,000 per year for an initial five-year duration.

What!!!!!???? I am thunderstruck that this recommendation could be made. 1.5 Million dollars for essentially a program that the CIA back in the 1970's decided was full of crap and decided to abandon. By the way, the CIA's program was ill conceived and full of it back then too amounting to a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.

Other conclusions in the document are: "We will need a physics theory of consciousness and psychotronics, along with more experimental data, in order to test the hypothesis in Section 5.1.1 and discover the physical mechanisms that lay behind the psychotronic manipulation of matter." What can I say? The status of basic science education among those who make funding decisions within certain areas of government are pitiful.

Even worse is this statement: "This phenomenon could generate a dramatic revolution in technology, which would result from a dramatic paradigm shift in science. Anomalies are the key to all paradigm shifts! " which has got to be the work of someone with a marketing background and absolutely no self respect in the scientific community. A document like this would be laughed out of the NIH or any other respectable scientific funding agency, but the scary thing is funding like this has always been able to go forward under the guise of military funding in crisis situations where fear abounds. Combine that with no understanding of science and this is what you get. If any of my students came up with something like this, I think I would cry.

Hey, if the Air Force wants out of the box thinkers, I can come up with all sorts of biomemetic and bioencryption stuff for 1.5 Million that would be based in scientific fact with reliable peer review science behind it.

Re:For the love of.....

[Raindance]

Understood and agreed. I've found that bringing discussion of "paradigm shifts" into research is usually just used as a distraction to shift attention away from bad research.

RD

Re:For the love of.....

[Anonymous Coward]

American lysenkoism, such as it is, is the result of giving money to the people who promise the most. It's a collective problem, without any one identifiable person driving the drivel.

I saw this in the telecom industry. Our company had a mania for the "make or buy" decision. That meant, in practice, that the money went to the group that made the biggest promises. Consequently, everyone promised more than they could actually accomplish. Managers knew that, of course, but they went along because they were subject to the same pressures. You could see, year after year, more hyperbole and overstatement creeping into goal statements, mission statements, and everything. It becomes an erosion of honesty, and (like in lysenkoism), one can imagine drifting off into a fantasy world.

In industry, of course, the free market will eventually stop such corporate fantasies. If only because people stop buying the resulting products and the company flounders.

Another example of such over-promising is the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology. Mind you, the ISN is a bunch of competent people doing real research, and I expect them to do great things. Still, they cannot resist making wild promises on their web site, http://web.mit.edu/isn/aboutisn/index.html.

"Imagine a bullet-proof jumpsuit, no thicker than ordinary spandex, that monitors health, eases injuries, communicates automatically, and maybe even lends superhuman abilities."

Uh huh. Lemme see. How much force needs to be applied to stop a bullet in the thickness of spandex? Quite a bit. If you do a minor calculation, you'll find it's completely ridiculous, yet these guys with physics Ph.D.s tolerate this kind of crap as advertisement.

They tolerate it because if they don't, someone else will say it, and that someone will get the money. The Army guys play along. That way, they can presumably point out to congressmen the wonderful things they will get from their research money.

Personally, I think that the root of the problem is that no one is really paid to evaluate these research proposals. It's expected to be done in one's spare time.

Re:For the love of.....

[pilgrim23]

Folks. this is how it works: It is 90 days till the end of the budget cycle. You have $2-3 million left over, If you do NOT have a documented use for that money come Appropriation Day then your budget will be docked by this amount. Budget and the size of your department are all that matter in government land. It matters not one jot what this is spent on, it MUST be spent and it must be spent in a document able way. If the idea is hair brained, stupid, and a waste it may or may not be dredged out of the cesspool of bureaucracy and scrutinized on Slash dot or other forums (like the Congress), but in most cases it just makes another month's pay for a Beltway Bandit "Think Tank" or "Institute". Face it folks: Taxes are never levied for the benefit of those taxed, and the money gained is never spent in a worthwhile way.

Why is this a surprise?

[gkuz]

In a country in which a substantially larger portion of the population believes in the Virgin Birth than in evolution through natural selection, and which has just this week demonstrated that majority, why should anyone be surprised?

Well

[ShooterNeo]

While highly implausible, the whole idea of science is to discover things that one wouldn't expect. If soundly gathered evidence suggests psychic powers or teleportation is real, then we should investigate it. If the facts fit, then no matter how much someone might not desire to accept an explanation (whether it be for or against any phenomena), it is most likely the truth.

Re:Well

[FooAtWFU]

If soundly gathered evidence suggests psychic powers or teleportation is real, then we should investigate it.

The thing is... it doesn't.

Re:Well

[khayman80]

I agree that this is a serious waste of taxpayer money- this kind of pseudo-scientific bullshit has no place in any government organization.

However, most scientists that discuss teleportation don't talk about simultaneous teleportation. That *would* definitely be impossible due to relativity, like you mentioned.

In reality, quantum teleportation is a legitimate scientific topic (that's what I study, as a matter of fact). It's possible because the teleportation isn't instantaneous- it happens at a speed less than or equal to the speed of light. The reason it is called teleportation is that quantum effects are used to make a particle disappear from point A and reappear at point B (a suitable time later) without crossing the intervening space. Cool, huh?

This effect has already been demonstrated for photons, and limited effects have been demonstrated for single atoms. Whether or not it will ever be possible on a larger scale is a matter of debate... but it isn't a debate about relativity.

Re:Well

[halfelven]

There is good science to suggest that the conservation of energy is real. This has been tested repeatedly.
There is also good science to suggest that the theory of relativity is real, every day in particle accelerators across the world it's used to make predictions that turn out.
The combination of conservation of energy, and relativity suggests that on any largish scale, there can be no teleportation.

In the 19th century, there was "good science to suggest" that, given a strong enough rocket engine, objects can be accelerated to speeds bigger than 300000km/s. There was also "good science" that suggested that the space is flat and euclidian.

What i'm saying is, your argument boils down to "our present knowledge is perfect, thereby anything contradicting it cannot exist."

I am not saying that said teleportation project is sound and sane. I am saying that one should look at whatever paradigm he/she adheres to with caution.
Too often i see people otherwise rational that seem to imply that psychic phenomena are made impossible by the simple fact that a million newagers believe in them ("if a pothead believes in X, then X does not exist"). A million newagers may have an irrational belief, yet that does not make certain things impossible.

Again, i am not implying anything, i just don't like it when people take a transitory scientific paradigm as dogma.

With the current administration...

[myowntrueself]

With the current, rather theocratic US administration, I'm surprised they don't try training field medics in faith healing...

Hey, if they want to waste money...

[jd]

I'd be more than happy to conduct research into anti-gravity, photon torpedos, inertia damping systems, faster-than-light warp drives....

Just pay me a few million, and I'll do whatever research into fantasy physics that they want. I'll even throw in a few Powerpoint presentations for good measure.

If the choice is between spending billions on reserching quackery in the military, or spending the same money on bringing US education up to decent levels, I think the education would be money better spent. We might even end up with politicians who know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.

But if they're determined to throw money away on absurdity, then the least they can do is throw some of it in my direction. I think I could find better uses for it than anyone the USAF could hire from the Psychic Hotline.

Re:Hey, if they want to waste money...

[killjoe]

Think of it this way. Every million spent on quackery is one less million to spend on bombs. Of course without enough bombs we can't make the people of falujah obey allawi but that's another discussion altogether.

It's a joke

[ajs]

Has to be a joke. Read the PDF. The name of the sub-contractor is "Warp Drive" and the end of the document contains discussions of "negative energy" and all kinds of totally bogus junk that looks like it was culled from a Star Trek script.

Seriously, this is some fan-boy trying to rile up the millitary conspiracy theorists (and apparently doing quite well).

Until the DoD comes out and says, "yes, this is ours and we published it in all seriousness," please stop believing everything you read on the Internet.

Closed minded psuedo-intellectuals

[aristotle-dude]

Any scientist worth anything would at least look for some evidence for or against rather than dismissing out of hand like the lot of you.

I'm quite frankly tired of the hypocrisy I see on ./. On the one hand you accuse the christian right of being bigoted or closed minded while in the same breath demonstrate how close minded and bigoted you are.

Want to see who you are complaining about? Look in the mirror.

Science is supposed to be a tool for discovery, not a religion like some of you make it out to be.

Is aids research a waste of money because no cure has been found yet? Are all studies that reach a dead end a waste of money or do they provide us with valuable insight?

There is no such thing as chaos

[DigiShaman]

Some would say that there really is not such thing is chaos in the universe. But rather, the notion of chaos is nothing more then order beyond comprehension. That said, maybe consciousness has some form of predictable order to it and thus we really don't have free will. If this is the case, the being psychic is nothing more then a higher level of thought for the sub-conscious process more of the chaos around us.

Just a thought ;)

Scientists have one major flaw

[bigberk]

(And I say this as an Electrical Engineer). Established, respected experts in a field are among the most reluctant to consider radically new ideas. Major shifts in science have occurred when some young oddball found a new way to look at an old problem, or an outsider to the field found a new link that was never considered before. Consider the significant (albeit slow) revolution in medicine that is increasingly acknowledging the mind/body connection. Placebo treatments that actually have physiological healing effects; patients that exert conscious control over the failing processes in their bodies.

Now I'm not saying that necessarily this teleportation stuff has any merit. I just want to point out that if you're quick to say "what crap" then you might have fallen into the trap that leads minds to stagnate; that is, to believe that existing human knowledge is complete.

If there's one thing we can bet on, it's that human knowledge is far from complete and we are far from understanding the true nature of things. We are naive creatures with limited understandings of things. Perhaps the military is more willing to gamble funding in new directions, because unlike academics their main goal isn't to protect their researching asses for the rest of their lives. Their goal is to develop new tools that the enemy doesn't have.