Is it actually possible thread?

[Kiljan Arslan]

This thread is for peolpe to asak questions about if what they read in a book, saw on tv, in a movie, or in a game is possible, or if its total science fiction. I amy not know the answers but the great Sim our resident tech priest may.

[D.B. Cooper]

How close are we to teleporting human beings, if such a concept is even possible? If not, why not?

[ajm317]

How close are we to teleporting human beings, if such a concept is even possible? If not, why not?

We had an extensive discussion about teleportation a while ago:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=98988

[Syron]

teleportation like in the movies most definitely will never happen.

"I can state flatly that heavier than air flying machines are impossible."

- Lord Kelvin (1895)

"Radio has no future;"

- Lord Kelvin (1897)


I'm a never say never sort of person

How close are we to teleporting human beings, if such a concept is even possible? If not, why not?

Currently the "teleportation" technology around can only work on sub atomic particles. Atoms and molecules are far far far far more complex. The technology is a long way from teleporting humans. You also have the fact that you are actually creating a new entity in the destination, simply made up of the exact same type (but not the same) particles as the "original". I however disagree with the "you're not the same crowd" as there is unlikely to be any information required for you to function beyond the sub atomic scale.

Of course however, no one has said Quantum Entanglement is the only way to teleport anything.

[Spartacus the Irish]

- Lord Kelvin (1895)
- Lord Kelvin (1897)

Lord Kelvin didn't have a great track record when it came to prescience...

[Syron]

Lord Kelvin didn't have a great track record when it came to prescience...

Obviously. I was simply pointing out how even a very well respected academics views were shown to be false and in the case of flight, within a decade.

Statements that "X" is impossible, just plucked out of thin air based on their perceived difficulty, have a very long track record of proving to be false.

I pretty sure most of the learned people of the Victorian age would think many of the advances of the 20th century to be purely science fiction.

[Simetrical]

I pretty sure most of the learned people of the Victorian age would think many of the advances of the 20th century to be purely science fiction.

But on the other hand, a lot of their actual science fiction remains as far off as ever. So that's no great endorsement of the feasibility of today's stuff.

Michio Kaku's book Physics of the Impossible might be interesting reading. I've been meaning to pick it up, although of course it's written for more general audiences.

[Chaigidel]

wont ever happen for one key reason.

even if we develop a matter deconstructing teleporter when you got rebuilt on the other side you would not be the same person who went in.

other than that if you could stabilize a wormhole, you could pop around.

but we havent even figured out quantum entanglement principles fully yet so I dont see teleportation ever coming.

teleportation like in the movies most definitely will never happen.

[Bokks]

even if we develop a matter deconstructing teleporter when you got rebuilt on the other side you would not be the same person who went in.

Not to mention the possibility of coming out with an arm where the face used to be...
Ouch.
On that note I saw an interesting movie about teleportation--it was wierd in that dinoaurs were there, which is strange--but it had no only the scientific look at how teleportation would work but also the moral implications.
I described the basic premise and plot, and decided that it was something more for the Arts than the Athenium, but couldn't bring myself to delete it, so it's in the spoilers

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In it you could teleport anywhere in the universe that had this pod thing, but it didn't send you there, it made a copy of you and sent that--complete with memory and everything--to the destination. They actually called the person that was left at the originating pod the copy, or "murmur" or something like that. Well, there was a person whose assignment was to terminate the murmurs, since they were copies and a redundacy was a bad thing, but as they were transporting this really gorgeous woman something went wrong and they didn't know if the transportation worked or not, so he didn't terminate the murmur. They reactivated her (the murmurs are put into a kind of coma sleep) while they were trying to find out what happened and during that time the guy that was meant to terminate her and the woman got to know eachother, and he quickly fell in love with her. But then came the report that it was a mistake on their end, and that this guy had to kill her. Well, know he had his doubts, he was able to easily before because they were in a coma and he was confident that he was killing this residual copy, not the real person. Now he was torn over this duty of his and his love for the person as well as the thought that she had became a different person what with her experiances, as then he began to doubt the dinos when they said that the person had in fact gotten over to the other side. Good movie, it was a b-movie from Sci-Fi channel, and the acting was in some places really bad (as was the animation) but it really made you think.

Anyway, back on track to the real scientific possibility, I've always seen teleportation as basically walking through a tunnel made through time and space, kinda like a mountain but then again completely different. I think it is possible, but not in the way that so many movies and tv shows present it, especially Stargate where first they were frozen by the deep cold of space and completely disoriented, then later completely fine. The actual possibility of it, though, would probably demand on physics that we don't even know about.

Apart from that, how about light sabers?
Even if you could focus light to make a beam, how would you control the length of the bade, or stop light from travelling on forever? Even if you could conrtol that much, light is inherently weightless, or near-so by our perceptions, how would you be able to wield it?

[D.B. Cooper]

Yeah, and there's the question of whether your soul would be teleported over, but that just can't be answered.

I was hoping for some answers along the lines of JUMPER, but that's clearly quite impossible.

[Smasher]

What about a Jedi sword? If you could harness pure energy what would keep it from going off into space or in some random direction?

[Chaigidel]

maybe if we mastered plasmas? you could perhaps contain a jet of plasma in somekind of electro magnetic trap.

[Simetrical]

How close are we to teleporting human beings, if such a concept is even possible? If not, why not?

Very, very far. I doubt we'll see it in the next century; I don't dare to speculate beyond that.

Basically, there are two ways to teleport stuff:

1. Take careful notes and make an exact copy at the other end. A variant on this idea uses "quantum teleportation", which uses entanglement to reproduce exact quantum states. This one we're very far away from being able to do: the states involved are too unstable for us to produce them in such large bodies. I don't know much about how this works.
   
   Another variant would just classically analyze your tissues, which would lose quantum information but possibly it wouldn't be important. In this case, you'd have to do incredibly precise analysis of the entire body essentially all at once, and have fairly incredible reproduction skills at the other end. Here you're making a clone, basically, and destroying the old copy. The required technology for this would therefore be the capability to analyze an arbitrary object so completely as to be able to recreate an indistinguishable copy. That's not happening anytime soon, if ever.
2. Twist space up so that you can just walk through: make a wormhole. It's not clear yet if wormholes are possible to begin with.

wont ever happen for one key reason.

even if we develop a matter deconstructing teleporter when you got rebuilt on the other side you would not be the same person who went in.

Nobody will care, if you're not distinguishable.

teleportation like in the movies most definitely will never happen.

That's not clear at all.

Not to mention the possibility of coming out with an arm where the face used to be...
Ouch.

It doesn't seem as though this would necessarily have to be a risk. Certainly not for wormholes, which require no reconstruction of any kind. (Those also allow travel, effectively, faster than light, which is nice.)

Apart from that, how about light sabers?
Even if you could focus light to make a beam, how would you control the length of the bade, or stop light from travelling on forever? Even if you could conrtol that much, light is inherently weightless, or near-so by our perceptions, how would you be able to wield it?

Light sabers presumably aren't literally made of light. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be powered by the Force or something. In principle I suppose you could try doing something with interference, shooting many weak beams that positively interfere only within a given region to create extremely strong light there that will chop stuff to bits. I don't see it as a plausible type of weapon.

maybe if we mastered plasmas? you could perhaps contain a jet of plasma in somekind of electro magnetic trap.

Whatever energies would be required to create and contain the plasma would probably be better used as weapons themselves. If you plan to just smack it into stuff, it's going to cool down and turn to gas awfully fast unless you have some way to replenish it. If you can make plasma like that, how about you just turn your enemies into plasma and skip the middle man? Anyway, your enemies could use electromagnetic fields themselves to repulse it.

[Ummon]

Nobody will care, if you're not distinguishable.

Will nobody?

Do not murder.

That is why science is meaningless without ethics, philosophy and religion, and obviously the opposite is true as well, religion is maimed without science.

[Bokks]

Another fantastically amazing post by Simetrical! I will be a bit of a hog, though, and just respond to the responce of my question... This does not mean, though, Sim, that I haven't read and digested your other points about quantam mechanisms and the full nature of wormhole theory.

Light sabers presumably aren't literally made of light. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be powered by the Force or something. In principle I suppose you could try doing something with interference, shooting many weak beams that positively interfere only within a given region to create extremely strong light there that will chop stuff to bits. I don't see it as a plausible type of weapon.

Well, as a nerd like I would know (and the scary part is I'm not sure how I know, I just kind of osmositized the fictional knowledge) that lightsabers are made from a central power core that emits a beam of super concentrated light though two crystals that focuses that concentrates that light even more, make it effectively a "lazer sword" as Anakin calls it in episode I and other individuals in the original trilogy. This would demand that one can focus the light to bend in on itself, or it would just continue on forever. The prospect of shooting multiple weak beams is interesting, but then again it wouldn't really be able to cut through much that way. Lazer "theory" would explain this ability, but then again there's the additional fact that they can repel eachother, making lightsaber duels possible. This of course goes completely against lights nature, it would either pass through each beam or diminish eachother with a super bright core where the two blades have met. There's also the fact that such a blade would have no weight, making such spectacular duels even more impossible due to the lack of a center of gravity and/or fulcrum point that a regular sword has, since the only thing that a person could hold on to is the handle itself. Darth Mauls lightsaber would be easier to use, the handle itself is larger, but that is the only one like it that they showed.

:hmmm:

[Simetrical]

The bulk of people will not care. Some will fret, but if it's useful, they'll just reassure themselves that clearly their soul is preserved, because they notice no difference, and move on with life. Only a few weirdos will do more than worry about it a little, especially if teleportation becomes widespread.

The concerns are groundless with wormholes, anyway.

[Ludicus]

The bulk of people will not care. Some will fret, but if it's useful, they'll just reassure themselves that clearly their soul is preserved, because they notice no difference, and move on with life.

The memory of the copy is probably the same (we are speculating), but the original is dead, completely dead -forever.
So, people will care about it...in my opinion.

[Ummon]

The memory of the copy is probably the same (we are speculating), but the original is dead, completely dead -forever.
So, people will care about it...in my opinion.

Now, the difference (as to memories) might be difficult to observe, but I also suspect, that this is not certain.

[Simetrical]

Not if it's sufficiently useful and causes no tangible harm. People mostly aren't going to be willing to believe in philosophical zombies, who have no soul but act just like an ordinary person. It wouldn't agree with their conception of a soul as the root of things like thought and choice. At least, I don't think they will. At any rate it's not a scientific question.

[Ludicus]

Not if it's sufficiently useful and causes no tangible harm.

Well,it is not a scientific question by now, but it is very interesting anyway.
That "if" is a big "IF"; I think we will never know.
The "copy" is not a zombie, of course. It is a duplicate, the perfect "clone" with the same memory.
I am talking about the brain/neuronal memory, not about souls.
This is what really matters- it causes, more than probably, tangible harm (the death) to the original brain, to the original memory.
But we are speculating.