Teleportation — Fact and Fiction 348
jcatcw writes "Earlier this week actor Hayden Christensen, of Star Wars fame, and director Doug Liman discussed teleportation with MIT professors to compare the reality to the special effects version in the upcoming movie, Jumper. Edward Farhi, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, said, 'It's a little less exotic than what you see in the movie. Teleportation has been done, moving a single proton over two miles. [But] teleporting a person? That is pretty far down the line. The quantum state of a living creature is pretty formidable. That is just not in the foreseeable future.'"
wouldn't in animate objects be easier then? (Score:1, Interesting)
Theoretically it should be doable although highly intensive energy wise (not worth it). BUT i would think at that point it would just be easier (and possible) to create the object from stored mass by just using a molecular blueprint that could be transmitted. (replicators?)
Death and Rebirth (Score:5, Interesting)
Distance? (Score:2, Interesting)
disassembly never made sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Death and Rebirth (Score:5, Interesting)
How about recreation? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I mean by that, is you are able to identify what in a person's brain (and related nervous systems) that allows them to be their own unique person, and can store that as some kind of information, if that can be sent to a far-off location, to a reusable body or synthetic equivalent. This body could then perform the same role that the original would. You could afterwards read what changed in the meantime to find out what happened.
Of course, like all teleportation/copying ideas, it would challenge our definitions of what makes any of us unique, and the underlying nature of our definition of self.
Ryan Fenton
Post-singularity (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Death and Rebirth (Score:4, Interesting)
If sometime in the future teleportation becomes possible, eventually everyone will be using it. By the time a child is old enough to ponder the above, they will have been teleported hundreds of times. At which point either you don't care anymore, or you don't believe your consciousness is destroyed by the teleportation. (since it would not be evident to the latest copy of you) Then you start getting into weirder things, like if someone teleports you, who has never been teleported before, against your will, could they be charged with murder? It's kinda absurd to think your consciousness somehow transfers with the teleportation.
I think this would escalate to a whole new level if you teleported someone and failed to erase the original, and the two got together and were told to argue it out who needs to live and who needs to die. They'd both have the same conscious train of thought and would probably both want to live and would both believe they were "the real one" etc.
Re:Death and Rebirth... Thinking wrong use here... (Score:3, Interesting)
With a weaponization of such quantum technology, simple bombs or surveillance devices could also be inserted, with quantum self-destruct structures that respond to counter-intel sweeps, or simply devolve/vaporize when the temperature reaches some design-imposed level. This could be to act as a weapon, or to enhance "plausible deniability".
Worse, as a weapon of torture for those who are maniacs or pranksters who get their hands on one, we (or the future people) might read about rulers, bolts, rocks, and other foreign matter being precision-beamed/teleported into people, animals, or even into security or safety glass in buildings.
Imagine this as the perfect bomb: taking OUT or comproMISING structural members of any building, fortification, dam, tower, transmission/reception site, etc. If used on skyscrapers, the toll worldwide would be, well, ummm, "mind-bending". Who the hell would want to go to work in Chrysler Building, or Petronas or Taipei 101 KNOWING that whole floors are collapsing in for no outward (visible/believable) reason. Oh, the reason would definitely be from outside (assuming the teleporter is not transported into the building...)
And, no, I didn't read this in any books. I've been for decades wondering why in Star Trek we've NEVER seen the Federation or non-Fed use of the teleportation technology to undermine the target ships. Always (with exception of I think one Voyager episode) using phasers, quantum or older torpedoes, outright bombs, etc. The transporter was always used as a utility insertion/extraction/rescue/logistics device, not as a weapon. Had I had one, and had enemies who could not localize me, I'd certainly consider using such as device. But, I'm not a time traveler, don't have enemies (that I know of) who'd want me dead RIGHT NOW, and I (right now) deem certain acts as crossing the line. Even going after certain presidents would not be worth it. Too many unforeseeable consequences might unfold. I wouldn't want to be personally responsible for it (unless I could see into the future and KNEW that I'd be saving more innocent lives (not innocent by or for government reasons, but by higher truths and most politicians would care to believe) than harming.
Hopefully, teleportation technology continues to elude physicists. And, don't tell me about all the "good" things it could do. For one, the things might consume enormous amounts of energy. If they do, then that energy could be harnessed instead for removing a lot of pain, suffering, starvation, hunger and joblessness. But military and government bean counters and strategists all have agendas. Basically, if I'd stumbled upon teleportation tech, I'd probably destroy it and hope it was the ONLY copy. So, better hope I'M not the one some alien encounters. No one government can be trusted with such technology. Not at THIS point in our evolution. Hell, not even 2 or 5 or 25 governments. NON can be trusted.
Nuff said?
Re:Death and Rebirth (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an episode of ST:TNG which dealt with that idea, when a transporter beam was deflected by the oddball atmospherics of a hostile planet and the Riker who was beaming up got doubled
Re:Larry Niven's prior art (Score:4, Interesting)
Quantum Teleportation != FTL communication! (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Go out and buy two identical rubik's cubes.
2. Put them into identical configurations.
3. Send one to the other side of the planet.
4. Now, create any new configuration you want, but record the steps you take. (e.g. Rotate top 90 degrees left, etc.)
5. A person on the other side of the planet with the other cube can now recreate your cube precisely if you call them up and tell them the steps you took.
In quantum-land, there are some rather huge differences, which I'll talk about in a moment. However, the crucial thing to get out of this necessarily imperfect macroscopic example is that this kind of teleportation relies on preparing identical rubik's cubes in advance, classically transporting one of them to the receiver, and communicating via classical channels when actually performing the teleportation. At NO point can information travel faster than light (FTL). i.e. Quantum teleportation does *not* break causality. However, you will note that you can, potentially, communicate a very complex rubik's cube configuration with a very small ammount of classical data, provided you choose your initial state and operations intelligently.
The reality of Quantum Land (This will most likely confuse you. For that, I apologize.)
The pair of identically configured rubik's cubes are meant to be an analogy for an entangled pair, which is the most crucial thing to have in any quantum teleportation scheme. (You can make entangled pairs out of many things, such as photons or electrons. However, these things are typically tiny and simple. Complex Atoms, molecules, etc. don't work so well.) Where the analogy breaks down is entanglement, which is something we just don't see in macroscopic objects. The key idea behind entanglement is that you can place two things into a state that is not separable (i.e. You cannot describe one things state without also describing the other simultaneously), and any operation on one of them will have an effect on the other no matter how far separated the two things are. (NOTE: This does NOT allow FTL communication.) The problem is that quantum operations on entangled states are probabilistic rather than deterministic. If the sender performs operations, measurements really, on her half of the entangled pair and a new particle that is to be teleported, the receiver needs the results of those measurements to do anything useful, such as reconstruct the particle the sender had. Those results *must* be communicated from the sender to the receiver via classical channels.
Another big thing to note about quantum teleportation is that it, currently, is applied to indistinguishable particles. When you copy a rubik's cube, the copy is made up of complex molecules in a configuration that is unique. If you can magically examine the structure of any two real world rubik's cube you can tell them apart. They are distinguishable. A pair of photons in the same state, on the other hand, are indistinguishable. When you perform quantum teleportation, the copy that comes out at the sender's end is an absolutely perfect copy of the original because it has the exact state of the original and the particles themselves are not distinguishable. The state of the original, however, is changed when it is measured in the teleportation process, and there's no way to recover it. Effectively, the original is destroyed and a perfect copy comes out at the other end.
So there you have it. Quantum teleportation isn't really like a Star Trek transporter at all. It actually a lot stranger than that, and much more difficult to grok. (especially the entanglment part) Again, I apologize for not being able to come up with a way to explain entanglement without throwing a lot of math at you. (I'm not sure you can really understand it without the math.)
My concern with teleporting a living person (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does it matter that you "die"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it matter that you "die"?
Well yeah, because you actually die. What do you think, that because some machine created a carbon copy of you you'll be somehow magically linked to it? No, that's if as you grew a twin/clone and then killed yourself. You die, you're getting killed, the way you chose, and life goes on for your copy, who is a copy of you, but not you.
And actually you don't actually have to get killed when you get teleported, you're "telecopied", you're only killed for the sake of not spamming the universe with copies of yourself.
Re:Does it matter that you "die"? (Score:2, Interesting)
About a year ago, I tried to answer that question and I came up with an interesting answer. Excluding religious answers (ie assuming everything in the universe is physically based), your consciousness has to be somewhere physically. There are two places where this could be (one of which I just thought of incidentally). Either it resides in matter, or it resides in an energy field (like an electric field for example). If it is in a field, then that probably means your conscious state is an artifact of the surroundings. I don't like this idea because we walk near strong energy fields all the time without feeling affected (something would budge!), but I don't think it is impossible.
The other idea is that it has to reside in matter. What level of matter though? My guess would be that it would be a fundamental property of elementary particles like mass or charge (something like that can't just appear out of higher order, there has to be something basic that it arises from). If that is true, and the state is changed based on its interactions with other particles nearby, then you can have transient particles, ones that just wander by, taking on an organized consciousness. It also means they can lose this property by acquiring another spontaneously (such as when they exit your body).
Since consciousness is a fundamental property like mass, spin, or charge, there must be a set of variables that describe it. This means is that consciousness is a singular state that evolves in time in a way that should be possible to describe mathematically (at t0 consciousness parameters = and at t_F they = for instance according to some law). This also means that as you disbelieve this, the next instant those parameters could change and you could be lung or a rock with no memory of your past. IE: you are the parameters, and if the parameters are different, you would not know how it would be like to have a different set.
The upshot of this is that (IF IT IS TRUE OF WHERE THERE IS NO PROOF.... YET?), since everyone is just transient particles, human affairs are transient things that could last anywhere from nanoseconds to years. It also means that when a human representation dies, some of those particles will retain their representation for some time, others will reconfigure immediately, etc. It means that the physical-chemical model of humans is right and there really is no such thing as morality because no human is conscious, they are just chemical automations AND everyone survives a human's death anyway, albeit with a different state (until they meet an antiparticle?).
Anyway, the way this would resolve the teleportation thing is that, if it's true, it does and doesn't matter that you're made of different stuff. It matters because none of the old particles will be in the same state anymore. However, they wouldn't have been in that state very long anyway and would have been replaced.
Food for thought?
PS: I didn't really review this carefully so if something is unclear just ask.
Re:My concern with teleporting a living person (Score:3, Interesting)
In a relativistic sense, FTL communication would actually end up sending information back in time rather than in "real time" and cause all hell to break loose with causality; see this "tachyon pistols" thought-experiment [sheol.org]
Re:My concern with teleporting a living person (Score:2, Interesting)
___
Just the contrary. Actually they would rebuild the body without the cancer, the anemia etc and only the brain from the current consciousness-state, the rest of the body would be built according to the recording done when the subject was 21 year old.
IOW immortality.
Re:My concern with teleporting a living person (Score:2, Interesting)
This point was addressed at length in the 1960 sf novel by Algis Budrys, "Rogue Moon":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Moon [wikipedia.org]
The trick in the novel is, the original is *not* destroyed. Instead, the *copy* is (after a time) destroyed. I can recommend it, although I have not read it for about 30 years; Wikipedia says it lost the Hugo to "A Canticle for Leibowitz".