Teleportation-possible or not?

[Harmony]

Are there any theories or laws which prove that teleportation is impossible without the presence of wormhole?

 

[Wizardsblade]

There is the old star trek style teleporter that converts matter to energy and then reasymbels the energy into matter. As far as I know this has not been proven physicaly imposible.

 

[Vast]

Lawrence Krauss illustrated what would be needed to teleport someone onboard the Starship Enterprise, in his book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060977108/?tag=pfamazon01-20as in ‘beam me up Scottie’.

First you’d need to scan someone:

Scanning an object 40,000 kilometers away with atomicscale resolution. I find that in order to do this, the ship would need a telescope with a lens greater than approximately 50,000 kilometers in diameter! Were it any smaller, there would be no possible way even in principle to resolve single atoms.

Maybe they need a bigger ship for this task?

Next comes storing and retrieving the data. This also is no easy task, Krauss calculates the amount of information contained in a human body to 10^28 kilobytes. If we go by today’s standards, of a 10 gigabyte hard disk

If each disk is about 10 cm thick, then if we stacked all the disks currently needed to store a human pattern on top of one another, they would reach a third of the way to the center of the galaxy-about 10,000 light-years…

And there’s still the problem of how much energy is required to dematerialize a person using Einstein energy to mass relation. Millions of times the temperature at the center of the sun.

Not looking good for this particular technology.

 

[JesseM]

Lawrence Krauss illustrated what would be needed to teleport someone onboard the Starship Enterprise, in his book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060977108/?tag=pfamazon01-20as in ‘beam me up Scottie’.
First you’d need to scan someone:

Scanning an object 40,000 kilometers away with atomicscale resolution. I find that in order to do this, the ship would need a telescope with a lens greater than approximately 50,000 kilometers in diameter! Were it any smaller, there would be no possible way even in principle to resolve single atoms.

Maybe they need a bigger ship for this task?

That's only if you want to teleport someone standing at some random position on a distant planet though--it's simpler if you just imagine scanning someone up close and personal in a teleportation chamber, then reconstructing them in another. Not that I think this will be feasible either anytime soon!

And there’s still the problem of how much energy is required to dematerialize a person using Einstein energy to mass relation. Millions of times the temperature at the center of the sun.
Not looking good for this particular technology.

Well, it's not really necessary to convert the person to energy, is it? You just need to have some way of scanning all the information about the position and momentum of all the different particles in their body (within the limits allowed by the uncertainty principle), it doesn't even matter if you leave the "original" around or not after being scanned, although if you do, you'll have a duplication device rather than a teleportation device. But if you do decide you want the original destroyed, there's not much difference between converting them to energy or just instantly vaporizing their head with a laser or something, all that really matters is that it's fast enough so the person doesn't experience remaining the original after being scanned.

Of course, if you want to do quantum teleportation, where the person's exact quantum state is transferred from one location to another, the demands are a little more stringent, but I still don't think the original system is converted to energy, I think the state of the original system just gets randomized somehow (maybe the original person would be transformed into a uniform gas made out of the same particles?)

 

[Vast]

That's only if you want to teleport someone standing at some random position on a distant planet though--it's simpler if you just imagine scanning someone up close and personal in a teleportation chamber, then reconstructing them in another. Not that I think this will be feasible either anytime soon!

Well I guess that could work too, but I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea where to start with regards to carrying around your own personal teleportation device.

Well, it's not really necessary to convert the person to energy, is it? You just need to have some way of scanning all the information about the position and momentum of all the different particles in their body (within the limits allowed by the uncertainty principle), it doesn't even matter if you leave the "original" around or not after being scanned, although if you do, you'll have a duplication device rather than a teleportation device. But if you do decide you want the original destroyed, there's not much difference between converting them to energy or just instantly vaporizing their head with a laser or something, all that really matters is that it's fast enough so the person doesn't experience remaining the original after being scanned.
Of course, if you want to do quantum teleportation, where the person's exact quantum state is transferred from one location to another, the demands are a little more stringent, but I still don't think the original system is converted to energy, I think the state of the original system just gets randomized somehow (maybe the original person would be transformed into a uniform gas made out of the same particles?)

So what you’re saying is the ideal approach would be to scan the subject and then instantly vaporize them? Well that’s sounds good in theory, as it avoids having many duplicates of yourself running around.

I think in Star Trek they use a method of heating the subject up to 1000 billion degrees, And this is what Krauss addresses in his book, by the dematerialization process of breaking down matter to the quark level. Still I think your method of scanning then vaporizing would be the way to go.

 

[Wizardsblade]

I know the scan and vaporize idea would be the way to do it but can you imagine. You will want to make sure you made it to the other destination before you got vaporized... "So you are ready to be teleported" asks the technician. "Sure" you reply. "Ok, you have made it" says the technician and you realize your about to be vaporized! Gulp. Hehe. At least the other you won't remember that part.

 

[selfAdjoint]

The method of transmitting the quantum state and destroying the original is the way they do it with photons and electrons. You do want to keep the energy questions apart from the information transport; it is much more efficient to get the reconstruction energy from a local source rather than try to transmit it.

 

[EnumaElish]

How does this all mesh with the uncertainty principle? Is it theoretically possible to extract all the necessary information to replicate all particles in their original locations and speeds?

 

[Wizardsblade]

How does this all mesh with the uncertainty principle? Is it theoretically possible to extract all the necessary information to replicate all particles in their original locations and speeds?

As of yet we do not have a "Heisenberg Compensator" and at our current technology level I do not think we can even conceive of a way to over come the uncertainty principle=)

 

[JesseM]

How does this all mesh with the uncertainty principle? Is it theoretically possible to extract all the necessary information to replicate all particles in their original locations and speeds?

See the link on "quantum teleportation" in my last post, or this wikipedia entry on it--although you can't find each particle's exact position and speed (it's not even clear if particles have a definite position and speed at a given moment, most interpretations of quantum mechanics would say they don't), you can transfer the exact "quantum state" of a system from one location to another, destroying the state in one location and recreating it exactly in another. You can't copy the quantum state, though, recreating it at a distant location while preserving the original--something called the no-cloning theorem proves that the laws of QM don't allow this.

 

[EnumaElish]

... you can transfer the exact "quantum state" of a system from one location to another, destroying the state in one location and recreating it exactly in another. You can't copy the quantum state, though, recreating it at a distant location while preserving the original--something called the no-cloning theorem proves that the laws of QM don't allow this.

I am imagining Capt. Kirk being beamed up by Scottie. As his particles are copied, trasported and reconstructed in the ship's teleport, they are being gradually destroyed at their original location. Do you think his sense of being (consciousness, identity, conscious and unconscious personal history) would be continuous at the point in time at which teleportation occurs? Will he really say "thanks Scottie, I was this close to turned into breakfast on that horrible planet; get us out of here as fast as you can"? Or will he say "now I can start my life over as a postmodern painter"?

 

[Vast]

Do you think his sense of being (consciousness, identity, conscious and unconscious personal history) would be continuous at the point in time at which teleportation occurs? Will he really say "thanks Scottie, I was this close to turned into breakfast on that horrible planet; get us out of here as fast as you can"? Or will he say "now I can start my life over as a postmodern painter"?

Effectively the whole person is teleported; body and mind. (No Soul unfortunately) This of course raises issues regarding the nature of the soul and its existence, but for all practical purposes, if a person is teleported then you have essentially created another identical person, atom for atom. What happens to the soul of the original person? is there now two souls?

So yes, the transition will be continuous for the subject, (similar to waking from a coma and not having noticed any missing time)