Is Teleportation Really Possible?

[Gold Barz]

It is, according to this article on Space.com.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050708_teleportation.html

I don't think this is possible, either that or we are light years away from it.

 

[cDimino]

light years arent really a measure of time :-)

 

[Gold Barz]

It was a figure of speech :)

 

[CaptainQuaser]

I am hoping to do research on teleportation in the near future . . .
I would like to see it in my lifetime, sure I'm a dreamer, but reality is created by our dreams.

 

[selfAdjoint]

The situation at present is that they have "teleported" photons and electrons. I put the word in quotes because they actually destroy the particle at its old location and recreate "it" at a new one. And I put "it" in quotes because with elementary particles there are issues of "what do you mean, same particle?"

 

[Deek]

The situation at present is that they have "teleported" photons and electrons. I put the word in quotes because they actually destroy the particle at its old location and recreate "it" at a new one. And I put "it" in quotes because with elementary particles there are issues of "what do you mean, same particle?"

That's not teleportation, that's just recreation. Which is a pretty good idea for cloning or such, but doesn't really satisfy the theory of teleporting.

 

[Gold Barz]

Yeah, but that's just the present.

 

[Deek]

Yeah, but that's just the present.

What? Elaborate.

 

[Gold Barz]

I meant that's what our current technology could do, "re-create" not really teleport that actual "thing" that was teleported.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I meant that's what our current technology could do, "re-create" not really teleport that actual "thing" that was teleported.

Quite right. But AFAIK, there are no theories that would support anything better than that.

Once I had this idea for a science fiction story. This is NOT REAL PHYSICS! Just bafflegab for a story.

You are at a station in the far outer parts of the solar system. The technicians prepare your body using "technology" that's not described to convince every fermion in your body that there are no position states available except in a certain direction. The fermions have been raised above ground state first. This direction is a line from the solar system to the neighborhood of another star, and it is carefully arranged that the other end is at a lower gravitational potential (deeper in that star's gravity well) than your end and all the line in between the stars. So now the fermions want to relax and collapse their position observables and the only place that's lower energy is the other end of the line, so that's where you go. Interstellar collapse.

And what about the bosons? They come and go, so when you get there your body has had a many times over max radiation dose. I forgot to mention that the story was to be noir.

 

[turbo]

Quite right. But AFAIK, there are no theories that would support anything better than that.

Once I had this idea for a science fiction story. This is NOT REAL PHYSICS! Just bafflegab for a story...I forgot to mention that the story was to be noir.

Noir indeed! "Let me send you to a star"..."I can do it, but did I mention that nobody I've sent so far has bothered to write home?" "Darned ingrates!"

 

[selfAdjoint]

In the story, which I never wrote, the guy wakes up in a hospital in the remote system and is told, "The bad news is, you died; the good news is we are so skilled these days we could resurrect you".

 

[Unknowing]

What is the difference between re-creation and teleportation as long as you get there?

Wasn't there also the idea that all the molecules in your body might conspire on a quantum level to take these same set of repeated improbable paths, miraculously moving you to a new location instantaneously?

 

[cDimino]

What is the difference between re-creation and teleportation as long as you get there?

YOU wouldn't ever get there. That is to say, you would be destroyed then recreated, by this method at least. Wether or not it would actually be YOU is beyond me. This is also assuming they could destroy you piece by piece and recreate you. Kind of like in that one fiction novel by Michael Crichton, Timeline.

 

[setAI]

I have been debating the question of "would an uploaded/teleported copy of you BE you?' for nearly 20 years now- to summarize a summary of thousands of pages of arguments: YES- for two main reasons:

1- the brain ALREADY goes through a perpetual 'natural copy' process where EVERY particle of matter is replaced in the brain every two months [ http://www.sci-con.org/articles/20040601.html ] and this process is a very fuzzy/inexact trace of processes and functions- not of exact structure- the human brain and it's deepest states are inexact emergent functions of the relationships between neuronal states triggered by signals- so a technological process which reads and encodes your matter configuration/process information and reproduces/continues that structure elsewhere or using a different substrate actually preserves your 'identity' much more accurately than simply living in your biological body-

2- the physical nature of our spacetime- and the nature of matter as propagation of quantum information- demonstrates that any copy/upload/teleported version of your brain/body's processes is physically EQUIVALENT to simple motion- matter is identified as the wave-shapes in the water and not the water itself- propagation of matter's information means that prior states of matter are in a way 'naturally deleted' by spacetime- imagine walking into another room and an 'original' version of you still standing in the room you started from! if the universe didn't delete it's old versions every object would have a stream of previous versions behind it!- any technological copy/teleportation process is merely a nonlinear way [relative to the spacetime's metric] of moving your information through spacetime-

 

[T10]

I read a book a while ago, called "The physics of Star Trek" which in depth looked at the concept of teleportation.

The destruction of an object at place A, and recreation of it at place B is very problematic, since assuming that the advance society will have the ability to contain the energy released from destruction of a macro object (say a person), the problem arises in recreation.

Before recreating the person, you would need to store the specific information about every single atom, its spin, and its relation/position to surrounding atoms on a harddisk, memory stick or whatever. Problem is, the amount of data increases exponentiously as the size of the object increases, and to store all the data about the object size of a human, would require a storage device with more than a galaxy's worth of atoms.

(lol, maybe compression would evolve when we get there).

Lastly what kind of data throughput rates are needed to upload all that info to recreation site, and you are still bound by speed of light, for transfers.

Lastly, do you want to be killed, and recreated?

 

[setAI]

T10- I suggest you look into QUANTUM COMPUTING- any storage/transmission problems with the large amount of data involved are entirely made moot- the entire Hubble Volume has been calculated as only representing 10^90 bits of information [S Lloyd et al] this is equivalent to a 300 qubit quantum computer [ n qubits= 2^n classical bits] which is only 300 entangled particles and the whole QC could theoretically someday be engineered too small to even see without a microscope! one tiny little human's quantum state information [current state and full histroy] is an infinitesimal protion of this-

besides Quantum Information theory suggests that a QC of ANY size can be configured as a universal quantum computer- allowing a tiny QC to act/be just like an infinite quantum computer [an n qubit QC computes all possible quantum states of 2^n bits- which means some of those computations express the quantum states of simulated spacetimes where all the matter is configured as a quantum computer- thus those computed states of 2^n bits exactly coorespond to a QC with 2^n QUBITS- this virtual quantum computer can compute states of 2^2^n bits- and thus one of those states correspond to a QC of 2^2^n QUBITS- ans so on ad infinitum]


"When a quantum computer solves a problem by dividing it into more sub-problems than there are atoms in the universe, and then solving each sub-problem, it will prove to us that those sub-problems were solved somewhere - but not in our universe, for there isn't enough room here. What more do you need to persuade you that other universes exist? " ~David Deutsch

 

[cDimino]

In the footprints of god by Greg iles is all about whatever you're talking about; I suggest you read it if you haven't already

 

[ohwilleke]

The phenomena known as quantum teleportation does not involve moving matter at all.

More importantly, you need to entangle the source and destination atoms. Thus, you can't get to somewhere you haven't been yet. You need a sophisticated sending and receiving machine at each end (very untreklike).

Also, there is even doubt that you can send information superluminally, and if you want to do this on some comprehensible energy budget, your poor of source atoms need to be roughly in the same distribution of quantity as your source atoms, thus you'd need a pretty good idea about what you were going to send in advance.

A more plausible approach would be to make a computer model of your brain alone based on your neural structure, send that at the speed of light to a destination computer, and have the destination computer put the received brain in a robot.

 

[Gold Barz]

Then you are basically sending "your" memories, "your" personality, etc to another body?...

 

[ohwilleke]

Yes. But I Need Ten Characters To Parse.

 

[ziggwarth]

I'm not convinced that the "new you" that is created is actually.. you when using the method mentioned previously in the post (store all the information about the atoms' position, rotation, and everything then send the information over to the receiver which recreates you).
Let's take this example, and assume your original do NOT get destroyed in the process, but the machine just sends your information to the receiver.
Then the new you would have all your memories, your personality (behaviour, taste etc.), your look.. no one can see the difference between your new and old I.
But you will still be in your original body. And I don't think it matters if the original body is destroyed. That doesn't change anything.

 

[Garth]

But it would make the ultimate photocopier would it not?
Just my luck to try it when there's a paper jam...

Garth

 

[ziggwarth]

But it would make the ultimate photocopier would it not?
Just my luck to try it when there's a paper jam...

Garth

Yeah, it would probably function great as a copy machine, but as for _moving_ people, I don't think it's possible. Copying, yes, moving, no, at least not with "you" still being "you".
Maybe we'll see some advances in this field some day so we actually may have a teleporter that IS a teleporter, not a copy-the-person-and-destroy-the-old-one-teleporter. :p
That's probably not possible with today's knowledge of science (is it?), but never say never. :)

EDIT: Another problem with the "copy-and-destroy-teleporter": Isn't it so that it's impossible to measure both speed, rotation AND position of an atom at the same time, accurately? "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" I think it's called.

 

[Danger]

Some people will get into a theological debate about it eventually. Being an atheist, I have no problem with the concept of duplication. After all, when quantum fluctuations are considered, you're a new 'you' every microsecond. People who believe in a 'soul', however, or separation of mind and brain, will surely try to ban the process on the basis of it not being transferrable. Along the same line, once the information is stored it could be used to create more than one copy. Which one would be the 'real' you?
The transfer, if all information is eventually storable, would still be restricted to 'c', so you're looking at over 3 years travel to the nearest star system. What concerns me is that even with the highest frequency laser set to the tightest possible focus, the beam spread would still be so huge that only a tiny fraction of the information would actually hit the target zone. Maybe if there was some 'holographic' technique wherein all parts contain all information, it could be workable, but I don't think it's possible.

 

[Spin_Network]

It is, according to this article on Space.com.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050708_teleportation.html

I don't think this is possible, either that or we are light years away from it.

This will never attain to the level of the Digital Camcorder! which already takes information from one external source and projects it at another location

 

[Yaaks]

A Believer of the Uncertainity Principle or Quantum Uncertainity says, 'Teleportation' is not quite possible...
'Quantum Teleportation' as u say it does not qualify to the common notion of 'Dematerialing and Rematerialing ' at the destiation as u have quantum entanglement involved.It is not fisable, i should say, since u have to send ur entangled twin to the destination by Regular means first..
btw, how do you quantize ur memories and thoughts to have to have it transferred to your distant entangled twin..

 

[Chronos]

It seems it would be hugely difficult to remotely reassemble every atom of an object in the precise configuration that existed prior to teleportation. It seems more likely you would have to reassemble the entire spacetime continuum enveloping the object teleported. That could seriously complicate matters.

 

[Yaaks]

The total number of particles that have to participate in 'Quantum Teleportation' is too great to have the transfer of information with total syncrony, since there are n number of factors tht influence each particle that participates in entanglement...
The result may be Disastrous!...
Not a fisable idea,,, i would like to say again..

 

[Danger]

Not a fisable idea,,, i would like to say again..

And since you did say it again, I realize that the first instance wasn't a typo. Just for clarification in future posts, the English spelling of that is 'feasible'. You're doing well, though.