Teleporting - will it ever be possible?

What do you think? The idea of somehow disassembling an object and then reassembling it at another location is a real mind blowing theory.

I've heard of Quantum entanglement, which some scientist believe will one day lead to teleportation, but I wonder if it will ever really be possible?

Imagine not having to drive from one state to the other just to visit some relatives. Or not having to catch the train to work? Never having to pay for postage ever again, no need for any sort of vehicle, ever.

Perhaps one day our future generations will look back into the history books and say to each other "How funny was it that back in the 21st century, people actually had roads that they used to travel on? And travelling from A to B took X hours instead of a split second."

When will it become reality?

And just to add to that - if we do ever manage to teleport things, what happens when we teleport humans? Quantum teleportation is one thing, but how would our souls, thoughts, personalities be transported?

Do we get transported as a blank canvas? I'd hate to be the guinea pig for this.

I think it will be possible one day, but I see the last post as being the major problem. There will be many scientific breakthroughs along the way before we are able to accomplish this. And when I say scientific breakthroughs I mean that they will revolutionize the world on a scale comparable to past discoveries.
There are a lot of problems to address and there are many fields covering such topics that will one day be unified to make this happen. There have already been experiments with transporting photons, but people...

Perhaps the creation of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge? I know this has been theorised by many scientists to no avail, but what are people's thoughts on using some sort of worm hole created by man?

[edit on 14/6/2004 by Tim356]

Originally posted by Tim356
And just to add to that - if we do ever manage to teleport things, what happens when we teleport humans? Quantum teleportation is one thing, but how would our souls, thoughts, personalities be transported?(...)

Humans are only matter anyway. Anything that we feel, think, know/remember, etc. is purely a material phenomenon located in neurons. Immaterial doesn't exist as such. Even love, as an example, which is something that most will agree is immaterial, is a chemical reaction produced in our brain, triggered by our brain only... Sad maybe? Maybe, yes, but after all, we're all only matter.

This is just my opinion, and I don't want to go to war with religious people, but this is in accordance with what I think: the belief that god exists is a reaction in our brain. I don't believe in any kind of god other than the idea that someone has of that god.

[edit on 14-6-2004 by SpookyVince]

But how can you explain memories and dreams etc. The conscious and subconscious? Surely they're not matter too?

memores are actually matter. They are some protein connections in the brain that connect certain other memories in the brain which creates the way we think. and dreams are just stimulation of certain memories. so they are matter, i mean what else could they be.

You can never say never what not possible one day can be made real the next. It would br great but just zip to the shops and back even if there in say france

I belive some people have teleported a photon.

www.padrak.com...

Although this is a long way away from teleporting humans its a start and yes,I think its a 100% fact that in 100-500years they will be doing it.

Originally posted by Tim356
but how would our souls, thoughts, personalities be transported?

"Whatever speed the body travels, the soul always travels at the speed of an ackturon megacamel" - Douglas Adams

So with automobiles and air travel at the moment, our souls are probably wondering unprotected and very lost. It would be even worse with teleportation. Well that's just a slightly humourous speculation, but it makes you think.

Teleportion will take up tremendous amounts of energy.

I'd imagine when u teleport the body the brain is going to be there too so the mind remains.

Originally posted by Vowles
I belive some people have teleported a photon.

Yup, sort of. They just transfered the quantum signature of one photon to another. Effectivly teleporting it.

Two things stand in the way of teleportation. One, Handling all the data, and two, reading all the data fast enough for it to be worth it.

Transporting a single cell would take insane amounts of computing power and data storage. Until quantum computer are functional technology we stand no chance of teleportation on a large scale.

I don't think we'll be able to teleport living things, and teleporting inanimate objects will rely on complimentary technology, ie some kind of computer/ modeling device. What the experiements and theory in quantum entanglement show is that you can teleport data, so what we'll most likely end up with is a completely secure method of communication, and beyond that, teleporting objects by way of a digital 'blueprint' which can be interpreted and assembled at the receiving end.

Here is a pretty good article on Quantum Teleportation.
www.aip.org...

Personally, I do not think that I would want to be teleported. The reason is this.... Yes�Athey can teleport our physical being probably.... but what about out spirit or energy force. Will it travel along, will the person at the other end be the same energy force or spirit? Reminds me of the movie Pet Cemetary....

So with automobiles and air travel at the moment, our souls are probably wondering unprotected and very lost. It would be even worse with teleportation. Well that's just a slightly humourous speculation, but it makes you think.

I don't think that is a good analogy because teleportation would involve disassembling the body.

As for souls excetera, I don't want to get in an argument about this, but for people that claim its all material, I was wondering if they could explain consciousness at a material level and how this material nature of consciousness is not reproduced in other animals...The fact is we don't know everything about the brain, yep, thats right, so its all assumption.

Also, if we take Einstein's simple equation E=mc2, then would it be possible to somehow transform ourselves into energy rather than data and control the direction of that light to a certain point in the universe, if you catch my drift?

I think if it did happen it would be along this mechanism or that of a wormhole, the whole data thing would become much too complicated and may be a futile exercise.

Well converting matter into energy is how Star Trek transporters are suppose to work.

We will never be able to 'teleport' human beings (or anything else) by disassembling matter, sending it to another location and reassembling it. How would you disassemble an object at the subatomic/quantum level? What would the matter be disassembled into and over/through what medium would it be transported? How does this raw data(whatever it is) be converted into matter and reassembled at the quantum level? It's impossible. You have to remember that the quantum teleportation experiment involved photons not matter. Moreover, the photon wasn't 'teleported' anywhere; a seperate photon just assumed its same quanutm state.
Although 'teleporting' matter in this fashion is truly impossible, I believe that near instantanous transmission of matter is feasible. Not through any futuristic high-tech device but with advances in theoretical physics. Wormholes, space-time curvature, unified field theory etc. I think that loopholes/exceptions will be found in the laws governing our universe that will allow matter to be transported from one point in space to another. It won't be like quantum teleportation or Star Trek, the matter will be transported intact and not as bits of matter or energy. Transport will probably only occur between set locations previously visited by more conventional means were a transfer point would be established. I say this because successful travel will almost certainly require extremely accurate information about the point of origin and the destination; their relative and absolute positions in 3 dimensional space and space-time for longer distances.

*ponders*

Being disassembled at a sub-atomic level, then being transfered as an beam of energy to be reasembled from a sub-atomic level sounds kinda painful to me.

Would we be councious during the 'teleporting' phase? I mean, when we aren't matter. . . Maybe we could just figure out a way to live life as energy. . . Forget all this 'matter' stuff. . . Working, bathing, pain. . . All useless when we're energy.

The only problem that i can see with human teleporting, is that The subjects DNA could be tragicly rearranged!

The very basic principle isn't much different from downloading an mp3.

But as for the question of transporting the soul: what if the end resuld was a being that was physically exactly the same as me, with the exact same personality and memories, but it wasn't me. You would never know. You would die every time you were transported, and no one would ever know it.

Though it'd be nice and save a lot of time, I highly doubt we'll ever see human teleportation.


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