[pointless argument] Why are teleporters impossible

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the feasibility of teleportation as commonly depicted in science fiction, particularly focusing on its implications for the laws of thermodynamics, especially the first law. Participants explore theoretical scenarios involving teleporters and their potential violations of physical laws.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Exploratory

Main Points Raised

  • One participant argues that a teleporter would violate the first law of thermodynamics by allowing energy to be created or destroyed, presenting scenarios involving falling objects and air compression between teleporters.
  • Another participant suggests that additional energy could come from the teleporter itself, depending on the type of teleportation, and claims that many problems associated with teleportation are not fundamentally unsolvable.
  • A third participant posits that the first law could be restated to indicate that a workless teleporter is impossible.
  • One participant challenges the speculative nature of the discussion, asserting that it does not align with classical physics.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the implications of teleportation for physical laws, with no consensus reached on the feasibility or implications of teleportation as described.

Contextual Notes

The discussion includes speculative scenarios that may depend on specific definitions of teleportation and the assumptions underlying the proposed physical laws. The nature of the teleportation being discussed (e.g., UC teleportation, quantum teleportation, wormholes) is not fully clarified, which may affect the arguments presented.

quantum1423
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I was thinking of a kind of teleporter common in science fiction: the door that when you enter, you pop out somewhere else. This kind of teleporter violates the first law of thermodynamics!

Energy cannot be destroyed or created. If we put two teleporting doors like this:
Code:
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and arrange them so that a ball falling through the lower teleporter will go back up and continue to fall, the ball will fall faster and faster without bound, violating the 1st Law.

Another violation of the 1st Law:
If we put two doors like this between vertical walls:
Code:
|--------------------------------------------------|
|                                                  |
|                                                  |
|                                                  |
|--------------------------------------------------|
and drop the top door down, the air in between the doors will be compressed. As there is no conceivable way the air can do work on the teleporters, eventually the pressure will approach infinity, an act obviously requiring more than the gravitational potential energy of the top door.

P.S. if anyone knows about it violating some other law, please reply to this post!
 
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Additional energy comes from teleporter itself. The details depend on the kind of teleportation you are talking about. In UC teleportation, the energy difference is accounted by having stock material start out at higher potential. In quantum teleportation something similar happens with the system that receives teleported state. With wormholes, there is going to be a gravitational field within the wormhole itself that has to be opposed by something in order for you to get across in the first place.

There are a lot of problems with teleportation, but none of them are fundamentally unsolvable. Keep in mind that quantum teleportation has been performed experimentally already, and rapid prototyping devices can be viewed as rudimentary UCs.
 
In fact, I believe that after teleporters are invented, the First Law can be restated as:
There cannot be a workless teleporter.
 
This is overly speculative. It's certainly not classical physics - or even physics.
 

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