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Researchers Moot "Teleportation" Via Destructive 3D Printing
ErnieKey writes Researchers from German-based Hasso Plattner Institute have come up with a process that may make teleportation a reality — at least in some respects. Their 'Scotty' device utilizes destructive scanning, encryption, and 3D printing to destroy the original object so that only the received, new object exists in that form, pretty much 'teleporting' the object from point A to point B. Scotty is based on an off-the-shelf 3D printer modified with a 3-axis milling machine, camera, and microcontroller for encryption, using Raspberry Pi and Arduino technologies." This sounds like an interesting idea, but mostly as an art project illustrating the dangers of DRM. Can you think of an instance where you would actually want the capabilities this machine claims to offer?
Why was this posted? It's not good art and has no real life applications.
The only situations I can see this having any use in is some sort of security model where you make an object that for some security reason isn't supposed to exist in more than one place. I can see this for the whole "only this key can open the briefcase with the documents/money/etc." situation, for example.
i can.
Can you think of an instance where you would actually want the capabilities this machine claims to offer?
In situations where moving the original object physically to its destination is difficult or cost prohibitive, and there is no further need of the original at the source (maybe it only has utility at the destination). The most obvious case would be from Earth to space, either to a location in orbit, or eventually another planet.
That was an Outer Limits episode...
"BALANCE THE EQUATION!!!!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Their method of destructive scanning allows for internal detail to be accurately reproduced. They aren't destroying it for the fun of it, they're destroying it to see it's internal structure. The DRM-like behavior is just a side-effect.
I would like to interview the first volunteer and find out just how they felt about this destructive teleportation process... Oh, my.
it was made into an episode of The Outer Limits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... The idea was that a human could be teleported to another planet. After the "copy" arrived the original would be destroyed.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First moot retires, and now they want to destructively teleport him?
I'll interview you, before and after.
Any situation where you don't have the details of what is inside the object but you want them.
Take a step away from the "teleportation" aspect and put the sender and receiver right next to each other. One disassembles the item while the other recreates it. At the end of the process you have the replacement item to stick back into where ever you took it from AND a scan of all the layers inside allowing you to produce more should you so desire.
exactly, this is destructive replication. Not teleportation.
That's like saying we're teleporting music files to our drives every day.
But hey..marketing..
Isn't that exactly how the transporter works? Surely they don't actually disassemble the body atom-by-atom, convert it to energy, then stream it to the remote site.
I figured they used a high-resolution scanner to scan the body, then send an energy beam to the remote site to reconstruct an exact replica of the person being transported. After the copy is complete, the original body is no longer needed and is disintegrated.
Leonard McCoy is rolling over in his grave.
it's duplication
which is great!
but why destroy the original? just to call it teleportation? seems ridiculous
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think I've heard this story before.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes. Yes, I can. Let's use this as the new transport mechanism for congresspersons. What a problem-solver!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I wonder if anyone's tried combining some sort of sintering process with an electron microscope... it would be neat to be able to build up a complete molecular model of an object and then be able to reproduce it, layer by layer. It'd take forever, but you could replicate some pretty useful things really accurately. And once you've destructively scanned the item once, you can replicate it as much as the materials you have on hand allow. Great for making backups of mechanical parts, just in case someone stops making that specific part. Not so good if you don't get the printing accurate, as you'd have a part with stress lines most likely.
The only situation I can think of is doing this with people. Obviously the technology isn't there yet. I know for a fact that the world doesn't need any more of me running around in it. You're welcome world!
What actually defines a teleporter?
Does an object need to be smashed down to molecular/particle level and those remnants sent to another place to be reassembled?
Is it sufficient, as in this research, to simply clone the object and destroy the original?
What about live matter? Does the destructive process kill the live matter? If it's a person, does one need to record the death?
Is the Star Trek universe full of clones whose previous iterations back to the original are long dead?
Luckily I hacked the data stream and printed cheap knockoffs from my secret lab in Antarctica ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
While this is a nifty "copyright" idea that I'm sure producers will jump all over, it doesn't actually enforce 1:1 copies or prevent 1:n copies. At the most basic level, I can setup 2x 3D printers side by side and link them to the same servo controller, giving me a 1:2 copy every time and bypassing any encryption or other form of DRM. I could also probably put a recorder on the servo controller output and play it back later, again bypassing encryption or DRM.
In theory I could then take the 2nd copy and put it in the "scanner" and repeat infinitely. (Although I'm sure the resolution would degrade rather quickly in practice)
It is going to be *EXTREMELY* difficult (I would venture to say impossible) to come up with an effective DRM for 3D printing, especially in the near future.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
You wouldn't teleport a car.
You could teleport the key of his jail cell to an inmate, destroying the evidence that you stole it in the process.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Spock: Captain, I'm receiving an odd error message from the 3D printer transporter ...
Kirk: What's the error message say?
Spoke: It says, 'PC load letter.'
Kirk: PC load letter! What the fuck does that mean???
Bark less. Wag more.
This is not teleporting, any more than getting a hard copy of your word document out of the laser printer is teleporting. Teleportation of physical objects implies that something is deconstructed on one end, and then reconstructed in the same state as when it left using the same matter.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Where there's no way to get important data on how the object is put together without destroying it. Which is somewhat believable if you're talking about living material, which would actually have to be reproduced at the molecule-level, including velocity of all molecules, electric forces, etc.to create a living copy. It's becoming more believable about electronics. It's hard to see how you could copy something with a 14 nanometre resolution that with a non-destructive external scan.
But even this process wouldn't be moving the damn thing. After all there's no reason you couldn't create two copies of the destroyed object.
Always get your receipt!
So if I converted your body to energy, and beamed it to the moon, then converted it back to matter, you would not consider that to be teleportation?
If I had to transmit your particles that would be very limiting, as particles with significant mass won't accelerated to the speed of light. Might be faster to put you in a rocket and transport you the old fashion way.
I think the flaw here has more to do with the process not producing an object in the same state except position. Than with your arguments from your narrow definition of teleporting.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Physical reality is that data can be copied without changing the original. This project attempts to change that by only giving people access to a certain aspect of reality through an access layer. This is hence DRM ported to the physical world and just as despicable.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Replicator2 and a hammer?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Is attaching a FAX to a paper shredder considered prior art?
will it work on a suitcase of drugs?
Somehow, I think transporters where Picard has to shoot his other self twice, after each away mission (first, when he returns back to the ship, and then secondly from orbit -- or only the later if he wants to be a lazy ass) would sorta ruin the whole utopian vibe.
Of course, there was that episode with two Rikers but at least things didn't turn out as violent as they did in The Prestige.
It's called wiring money.
I guess you don't believe in emergent behavior.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
well that would be copying at a different place.. and then what would stop you from making two copies? making it a copying process and not teleportation.
if you want to say that there isn't likely to be real teleportation then duh... it's just magic scifi anyways. if you were to convert the state of the object into information then you would need to have artificial limitations to stop you from making two copies once you have the information.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This thing only duplicates items that were originally made by a 3D printer that uses that same material.
That is to say, I don't want a teleported camshaft that is printed with a 3D printer that uses chocolate for the printing material.
Well actually I do want that, but I would not put it in an engine.
Nor do I see how something made of materials that aren't available as 3D printer matrix materials could be teleported.
Watch the 2001 episode of The Outer Limits, "Think Like a Dinosaur," if you want to know where this path leads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
the artificial limitation would probably be the technical limitation. storage space and bandwidth. taking a person apart piece by piece... seems pretty fucking fatal if done anywhere in the vicinity of non-instantly.
and the positional data for each atom... that's a shit ton of information to transmit, and write.
really? faxing is pretty rare these days.
If you can pull in the information and use it, you can record it while you're doing it. Then you can make as many copies of Yeoman Rand and Lieutenant Uhura as you like, in the hope of getting lucky with one of them.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This might be useful for fitted goods, like body armor. Take measurements of a soldier while they are in basic, get the armor prototype finished before they deploy, and then encode/ship the armor. The fact that the encoding process is destructive is of no matter. When the soldier gets to his/her deployment, print off their gear, or the pieces that can be assembled into the gear. If they need any replacements, just keep shipping the printing materials out. The logistic details of shipping square blocks of material around is probably far easier than shipping individual goods.
yeah, but we're talking all the data that makes a you a you, in less time than it takes your body to realize it's dead.
think about it, you're basically talking ablating a person and capturing each bit that's blasted off.
some of those bits are serving the purpose of keeping other bits in the bits pile that is you.
some of those bits flow like blood.... wait.
There are a lot of problems with star trek like teleportation. You can't measure both energy and time of a particle accurately either. Which is a pity because I would want my brain's state to be transmitted perfectly and not a jumbled mess. Even if my brain was only a single particle (an accusation I have received), it would be altered in more than position through any teleportation process.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire