Teleportation: Express Lane Space Travel

Space.com ^ | 08 July 2005 | Leonard David

[Crazieman]

No, the way quantum teleportation is described - to create a copy, the original must be destroyed.

Period.

[Brett66]

The whole disassembled/reassemble method isn't practical, but perhaps a stargate of some sort would prove to be workable, or at least it would present fewer engineering obstacles.

[Shalom Israel]

Can someone save a copy of me during the teleporation process? Right?

That depends. Quantum entanglement comes under a sort of conservation law that the original is always destroyed as the copy is made. It's the "spooky" part of spooky action at a distance: a mysterious "something" about the original really does "transfer" to the destination, and that "something" really can't exist in both places simultaneously. If you want to call it "soul", you might feel better about using the teleporter. :-)

I for one will do it--but I certainly won't be the first one to do it!

[inquest]

This may seem like a stupid question (though you never know with modern physics), but would this quantum transfer happen instantaneously, or would it be limited by the speed of light?

[Phsstpok]

Larry Niven wrote a great series of short stories dealing with the social impacts of a working teleport system.

what happens to the airline industry?
what happens to cars and that industry?
what happens to the airports and roads?

What about alibi's for crimes?

What about national identity if you can live literally wherever you want?

How do you protect against burglars (keep the transporter outside, of course)?

You ever seen the phenomenon of a crowd showing up at an event where news cameras are showing things live? Imagine if that crowd can be drawn from all over the world, instantly. Niven called them "flash riots." He even invented a gang that capitalized on these flash riots to loot and pillage in an organized way. They called themselves the Permanent Floating Riot Club.

What I really love is that Niven then wrote a series of essays about the physics of a transporter. For example, he postulated that the conservation of momentum laws would still apply, so if you got into a transporter at the equator (which would be rotating around the Earth's center at 1,000 miles per hour) and got out in NY (smaller diameter circle around the Earth's center) you would need to come out of the transport booth running at a couple of hundred miles per hour. Hopefully the door is open and facing the right way.

The stories are in his known space collections. Good stuff.

Me, I prefer dimensional portals. I don't want my atoms disassembled and scattered all over the universe. I'm a big fan of Bone's McCoy's attitude on the transporter.

[Shalom Israel]

would this quantum transfer happen instantaneously, or would it be limited by the speed of light?

It would be instantaneous. That's one of the reasons that Einstein objected to that whole "quantum mechanics" thing.

[mikrofon]

For the most part, it’s an exotic amalgam of things like .... polarization, as well as uncertainty principle, excited states and entanglement.

'Sounds like something from a soap opera...

[sharktrager]

Cool idea, but you can go first. I'll just watch.

Scared Bunny Blog
Not for the timid

[Fiddlstix]

GEEEZ!! What a revolting thought. Maybe they should leave it alone.

[MarkeyD]

I was watching SG1 last night. Samantha Carter said "Your molecules are disassembled, transported through subspace, and then reassmebled on the other end".

[MarkeyD]

[inquest]

So is that what the article was referring to when it said, "Over the last few years, however, researchers have successfully teleported beams of light across a laboratory bench"?

Were these beams teleported instantaneously?

[TheForceOfOne]

I'm surprised that angle hasn't been used by the lib media yet.

NY Times exclusive:
Bush uses Gitmo prisoners as lab rats for Teleportation experiment, shades of Dr. Josef Mengele the "Angel of Death".

[Young Werther]

In Arthur Clarke's "Profiles of the Future" he also states that the resulting object at the origin is duplicated at the destination. Ergo two of you.

However, he does say that as far as energy matter conversion is concerned, should you have available "cheap energy" al la dilytheum crystals on the Enterprise, then Capt Picard's Earl Grey tea or Deanna Troi's marvelous ball gown is easily assembled once the item's description exists in the memory bank.

Of course the computers of 1962 when Profiles was first published were gargantuan compared to today's laptops and the memory cores of 1960s mainframes were "o" rings of magnetized steel that were the size of the "o" previously mentioned. A megabyte of memory would fill a basketball gym and now my 528 Meg memory for my digtal camera is smaller than a postage stamp!!!

Never! I don't know but ....isn't it fun to speculate?

[varon]

ROFLMAO

[Brett66]

I saw that too, but that's not how real wormholes would operate, you would go in and come out without any molecular reassembling. It's distinctly different physics than the Trek transporter, it has a margin of believability, the Trek transporter is hopelessely impossible.

[Hugin]

Niven's space series has a lot of great speculation on the effects of possible new technologies. Probably my favorite sci-fi writer.

Organbanks--with organ transplants becoming routine, murderers are condemnted to execution and having their organs harvested. Since there are not enough murderers to meet the demand, soon rapists, robbers, etc. are also given the death sentance. The effect is that many fewer of those crimes are committed, and demand is still not met. Eventually all crimes including misdomeanors have the death penalty, resulting in a nearly crime-free society. Except for...

Organlegging--with such a demand for organs, it's natural that there would be a black market selling bootlegged organs. Kidnapping for vivisection is a crime lcrative enough to be worth the risk of going to the organbanks. And..

Wireheads--people who have electrical implants put into the pleasure centers of their brains. Better than drugs. Hardcore wireheads will sometimes starve to death because they are unwilling to unplug from the power source long enough to eat. Naturally there is a war on wires.

Corpsesickles--thousands of seriously ill people who froze themselves cryrogenically to be thawed when medical science can cure them. Well now it can, and they are. But their assets are worthless and they are economically obsolete. They are given a brief interview to deterine if they can contribute anything to society worth the cost of curing them. If not, they are sent to the organbanks.

Pretty cool stuff for having been written 30 years ago.

[stan the beaver]

NOOOOOooooooooooooooo!! Too hideous to contemplate!!

[petro45acp]

Galaxy Quest BUMP!!!!!!!

[Darkwolf]

However, he does say that as far as energy matter conversion is concerned, should you have available "cheap energy" al la dilytheum crystals on the Enterprise, then Capt Picard's Earl Grey tea or Deanna Troi's marvelous ball gown is easily assembled once the item's description exists in the memory bank.

Yes, but what's going on there is that an object without consciousness is being created out of atoms. The one time this point about humans was touched on, briefly, was in The Fly (1986) when the scientist mentioned that he had to "teach" the machine about "the flesh". As we don't really know what "the mind" is (as opposed to the brain), we don't know how to assemble it.

Back to your point: The tea is simply a NEW cup of tea being created on order. By the same token one could order up and have a new YOU created. On the one hand maybe it would copy all of your memory; on the other, it could be a clear slate that looks like you. But if we're talking ripping you apart and reassembling you, in the middle of those two stages, you die.

Sure it's fun to speculate, that's why I've started reading and writing SF again after a long time. Too much boring mainstream "realistic" fiction is bad for you! :)