Quantum Dots Might Be Key For Teleportation

prostoalex writes "Researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have created a model teleportation system using quantum dots. PhysOrg reports that 'tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots may be excellent media for quantum teleportation, a physics phenomenon in which information — in the form of a quantum state, a very specific mathematical signature of an atom — can be transmitted almost instantaneously to a distant location without having to physically travel through space.'"

Comments

Teleporter death

[AmiMoJo]

This reminds me of a question I never found the answer to: if you teleported yourself, would you die and a clone be made?

From the sounds of TFA, the new "you" would not actually be you at all, just a copy. It sounds like your conscious mind would be obliterated and a new one created, although the new one might not be aware of it.

Re:NOT a matter transporter

[Seumas]

First of all, I don't want a matter transporter. People are going to insist on using it for an alternate form of transportation. That might seem a fantastic idea, but just wait until some underpaid asshole with a hangover uses the wrong coordinates and doesn't beam you into your office cubicle, but sticks you halfway into a concrete wall in the lobby of your office building.

Now, as for actual matter transportation -- and particularly people -- I've always wondered exactly how that would work. I am not one of those morons who believes that we have a soul or some particular part of our body or supposed spirit that makes us who we are. So - does that mean that simply taking my precise atomic makeup at point A and re-assimiliating it with different atoms over at point B will result in a real, actual me? Or would it be me without whatever makes me myself? I mean, soul and spirit bullshit aside, how could every neuron firing in my brain and every receptor and every blood vessel and capilary and memory stored away in my brain ever be re-produced somewhere else? Surely with so many trillions or quadrillions of atoms that make me up, there will always be some loss. So when you transport me from home to the office, I am a lossy me.

And then, of course, the more you transport, the more you become like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Or, if you like another analogy, you go from being Alec Baldwin to Stephen Baldwin to Daniel Baldwin to a pool of primordial goo.

I've also always wondered what would keep someone from just creating many copies of themselves. A transporter would never truly transport you. It would simply map your makeup here and assemble the same thing somewhere else. But that isn't to say that you'd have to destroy the version at point A from which the map came.

So at best, we might some day have matter duplicators. There is no way we would ever have matter *transporters*. If you are going to assemble an orange a mile away, why bother with the energy to destroy a perfectly good orange here, that the duplicate came from? And when it comes to people... can you possibly imagine the indescribable agony you would experience every time you went through the process? They'd confirm that your duplicate was assembled and functional at your destination... and then destroy you at your point of origin. You would somehow be taken apart at the atomic level. Perhaps reduced to a very fine recycleable dust. It wouldn't be harmless and fun like in Star Trek. It would probably be like having a trillion surgical scalpels cutting into you while every inch of your body inside and out felt like it was burning and being shredded and ripped apart.