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.....

[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.

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?

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...

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.

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.