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Teleportation — Fact and Fiction
jcatcw writes "Earlier this week actor Hayden Christensen, of Star Wars fame, and director Doug Liman discussed teleportation with MIT professors to compare the reality to the special effects version in the upcoming movie, Jumper. Edward Farhi, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, said, 'It's a little less exotic than what you see in the movie. Teleportation has been done, moving a single proton over two miles. [But] teleporting a person? That is pretty far down the line. The quantum state of a living creature is pretty formidable. That is just not in the foreseeable future.'"
I think you mean space.
Whenever I see discussion about teleportation discussed, I think about Ilium and how in reality when they were teleporting, they were being killed and brought back to life at the other end, they were never the same person, made of the same atoms, just an exact copy.
"Next week, we'll be discussing the differences between general and special relativity with Big Bird from Sesame Street."
"I teleported home one night
with Ron & Sid & Meg
Ron stole Megan's heart away
and I got Sydney's leg."
- Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"Earlier this week actor Hayden Christensen, of Star Wars infamy..."
There, fixed that for you.
But does that really matter? Your atoms are being replaced all the time, just small bits at a time. Scanning and sending data, instead of the actual matter or energy, seems much more plausible. You aren't your atoms, you are the information that your current atomic configuration describes. Have any scars? That scar likely doesn't have a single atom that it did at the time of your injury. It's been copied, bit by bit, atom by atom, over and over again. Teleportation differs only in that it does a whole lot of atom swapping all at once. If the information is beamed correctly, "you" will "arrive" properly.
Normal notions of being, self, life and death don't really apply, at least, most of what people think of doesn't apply and if you break it down, it usually comes down to religious questions, like the soul. If you believe that your body requires a supernatural soul to animate it with intelligence and desires, than teleporation likely isn't for you. If you believe that you are essentially a matrix of interacting atoms, a materialist in other words, than it shouldn't bother you.
If I have a long stick and you hold the other end of it and I thrust my end towards you, you will instantly faster than the speed of light feel it at your end.
Although it's a neat idea as a thought experiment with an infinitely rigid stick, in reality the effect cannot be faster than the speed of light as the force you apply accerlerates the molecules at the end closest to your hand first, which in turn apply an increased force against the next molecules along and so on until the force has propogated through the whole stick to the other end. As it's essentially forces accelerating masses, they must still obey special relativity and cannot move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
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I've always wondered about the same thing. Rather than beam in a team of commandos down to the surface to kill a bunch of guys, why not just teleport the bad guys off the starboard bow?
My other thoughts:
Using it as a cloning/copy tool, (which was done in a few episodes). "Counselor, why don't you go down to the teleporter and copy yourself so we can have a threesome?" or "Scotty! I need you to copy these 20g bars of latinum for me. I need to go back to the surface and tip one of those green strippers."
Using the teleport as a backup tool. "The captain is dead again. What is the latest tape backup? Do we have one backed up BEFORE he became such a bitch?"
Medicine. Why use a scalpel to remove a liver when you can just beam it out? Why do they still have disease when they can just beam everything BUT the virus back to the ship?
Yeah, we spend too much time pondering things like Star Trek. Then again, I guess that's what made it such a great show; it makes you THINK!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I've always had this nagging feeling that by disassembling your brain and moving it, that instant of consciousness would cease to be. You would actually die; in the destination pod, what is essentially a perfect clone is born with your memories. Of course, it would be seamless, and your teleported self wouldn't have any recollection of having died. This would also be impossible to prove, but it's what I choose to believe about this fictional device. Teleportation engineers kill humans!