# How about teleportation ?



## ACE977 (Feb 23, 2017)

Do you think this can be applied only to objects, or also to the living beings ?


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

That depends. What is "teleportation"? How does it work, what's the science, what is transmitted and how, does it require a receiving station?


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## ACE977 (Feb 23, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> That depends. What is "teleportation"? How does it work, what's the science, what is transmitted and how, does it require a receiving station?



By teleportation I mean the whole process like in Star Trek.


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## Nick B (Feb 23, 2017)

Ahh, the one that kills you and creates a new persom that looks just like you at the other end. Sadly, you don't get to go on the mission, being dead and all.


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

ACE977 said:


> By teleportation I mean the whole process like in Star Trek.


Well, in Star Trek it works on people. It also isn't explained how it works on Star Trek, and isn't based on any known science.


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## ACE977 (Feb 23, 2017)

Quellist said:


> Ahh, the one that kills you and creates a new persom that looks just like you at the other end. Sadly, you don't get to go on the mission, being dead and all.



Yes, this is the reason for I ask this question !


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 23, 2017)

ACE977 said:


> Do you think this can be applied only to objects, or also to the living beings ?



You can apply it however you like - there's no scientific theory to it.


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

ACE977 said:


> Yes, this is the reason for I ask this question !


This is a philosophical argument that is often made about transferring or copying the mind. It always breaks down to a kind of religious debate because one group always views the original as importantly unique, and any follow on versions as "new". To take that POV you have to believe that there is some sort of inner kernel of absolute "me-ness" that can't be duplicated or transferred. This used to be called a soul, but SF people talk around the problem and just keep going back to "the original", without saying why that is meaningful.


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## ACE977 (Feb 23, 2017)

Brian G Turner said:


> You can apply it however you like - there's no scientific theory to it.



I intend to add realism in my story and despite the teleportation of living creatures and organisms look pretty cool in Star Trek, I want to use it only for transporting objects.
BTW, if you want to teleport an *active electronic device*, this will run properly at the destination ?


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

ACE977 said:


> I intend to add realism in my story and despite the teleportation of living creatures and organisms look pretty cool in Star Trek, I want to use it only for transporting objects.
> BTW, if you want to teleport an *active electronic device*, this will run properly at the destination ?


That's up to you. It is not a real technology, so if you want it to screw up electronics or not, that's your choice as the author.


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## ACE977 (Feb 23, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> This is a philosophical argument that is often made about transferring or copying the mind. It always breaks down to a kind of religious debate because one group always views the original as importantly unique, and any follow on versions as "new". To take that POV you have to believe that there is some sort of inner kernel of absolute "me-ness" that can't be duplicated or transferred. This used to be called a soul, but SF people talk around the problem and just keep going back to "the original", without saying why that is meaningful.



OK, I will ask you this: assuming that the teleportation will become reality, do you will risk to use it in order to travel from point A to point B ?
I will not, because technically I will be dead at the destination. But it is just my opinion.


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

ACE977 said:


> OK, I will ask you this: assuming that the teleportation will become reality, do you will risk to use it in order to travel from point A to point B ?
> I will not, because technically I will be dead at the destination. But it is just my opinion.


Assuming it becomes reality, I would assume that the method of teleportation matters as to whether is "kills" me or not.

Is going through a worm hole teleportation?


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

For that matter, would you "hibernate" by being completely frozen solid? When you were awakened, would that be "you", or were you killed by stopping your mind completely?


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## ACE977 (Feb 23, 2017)

RX-79G said:


> For that matter, would you "hibernate" by being completely frozen solid? When you were awakened, would that be "you", or were you killed by stopping your mind completely?



Hmm.. this is about cryogenics, isn't ? Well, IMO "hibernating" by being completely frozen solid this is only one a technique of slowing down your metabolism. There are creatures on Earth who are burying in the mud in order to resist to the drought.
And honestly I don't know if you travel to a wormhole will involve the teleportation...


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## RX-79G (Feb 23, 2017)

The point being: You can't make up your mind about doing something if you have no real idea how that something is going to work. And even then, you may not find that it truly matters to you.


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## farntfar (Feb 23, 2017)

I often ask myself if I'm truly the same person when I get off a bus, as when I get on.
Especially if I go upstairs.


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## farntfar (Feb 23, 2017)

And when I say I ask myself..........?


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## Stephen Palmer (Feb 23, 2017)

iirc, it has been shown that the amount of data storage required to keep a record of a trillion trillion trillion* atoms then reassemble them is beyond the computing power of the universe.

* estimate.


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## farntfar (Feb 23, 2017)

Stephen Palmer said:


> beyond the computing power of the universe.



But does that power include the brain of Spock, Stephen?


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## Stephen Palmer (Feb 24, 2017)

I can't remember where I read this. I suppose if you googled "why teleportation couldn't work" a link could be found...


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## Dave (Feb 24, 2017)

farntfar said:


> I often ask myself if I'm truly the same person when I get off a bus, as when I get on.
> Especially if I go upstairs.


I've a better example. If you travel on a long haul flight, when you land you are are a fraction of a second younger than if you had stayed at home in bed. Are you then a different person?

Anyone interested in Transporters should read Lawrence M. Krauss "The Physics of Star Trek" and Richard Hanley "Is Data Human: The Metaphysics of Star Trek."



RX-79G said:


> Well, in Star Trek it works on people. It also isn't explained how it works on Star Trek, and isn't based on any known science.


Actually, their use of technobabble such as 'Heisenberg Compensators' means that they do think that they actually copy the quantum entangled state of each and every atom and then reproduce them again in another place. The TNG episode in which a copy of Riker is created but the original also exists would also confirm that.

Two problems with that already identified:
1. 





Quellist said:


> Ahh, the one that kills you and creates a new person that looks just like you at the other end. Sadly, you don't get to go on the mission, being dead and all.



2. 





Stephen Palmer said:


> iirc, it has been shown that the amount of data storage required to keep a record of a trillion trillion trillion* atoms then reassemble them is beyond the computing power of the universe.
> 
> * estimate.


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## farntfar (Feb 24, 2017)

Dave said:


> when you land you are are a fraction of a second younger than if you had stayed at home in bed. Are you then a different person?



Would that not be true also of the bus journey? A smaller fraction of a second perhaps, but still a fraction.

Indeed I would go further. 
I just walked briskly to the baker's and back, and I feel like a new man.
Farntfar the breadless is no more.


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## Nick B (Feb 24, 2017)

The difference is that in time dilation, you are the same body, there was no change there, only a change in the time lapsed. We are all travelling at different rates of time, simply by being even a tiny difference in distance from the gravitic centre of the Earth. Basic time dilation. I don't thinkthat is the same as having your body dismantled and a new one made elsewhere.

I wouldnt get in a ST transporter unless I was actualy going to die anyway!


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## farntfar (Feb 24, 2017)

Quellist said:


> I wouldnt get in a ST transporter unless I was actualy going to die anyway!



I sometimes think something similar about the bread.


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## Vladd67 (Feb 24, 2017)

Iirc in ST:TAS a couple of times members of the crew were cured of some infection by going through the transporter. The idea being the pattern on file in the system did not include the alien parasite, or what ever it was, so when they rematerialised they were problem free. Even as a kid I felt that was a bit of a cop out solution.


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## Mirannan (Mar 2, 2017)

As far as I can see, there are four forms of teleportation, none of which (of course!) we yet have for macroscopic objects:

1. Magical teleportation; no explanation given, laws of physics not only broken but shattered. (Also psionic, which is really the same.)

2. ST-type teleportation; object is disintegrated, reformed at destination. Splits into two subtypes, in which the object is turned into an energy matrix (ST) and in which the object is scanned (destructively or otherwise, two subsubtypes) and reformed from available material at destination.

3. Space distortion, forming a gate of some sort; examples include wormholes, Stargate gates, various forms of jumpdoor.

4. (rather rare in fiction) Teleportation using future physics (as in, plausible but as yet and perhaps always unknown) which rewrites reality (one novel uses the term "descriptors" by tweaking fundamental numbers related to position. (Moving Mars)

Only 2. above has the problem of "have you just killed the teleportee". It really depends on whether you think a completely identical copy of a sapient being would be the same, which is not really a scientific question but a theological one. Maybe we'll find out, when someone stepping into a ST transporter arrives stone dead with absolutely no damage.


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## SilentRoamer (Mar 2, 2017)

just to add to this. There is the episode in ST when Riker gets copied. So it would seem that in ST you are the real you but also a copy of the real you because they were the same Riker up until that point.

I love when science magic gets treated to a logical analysis.


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## Dave (Mar 2, 2017)

Mirannan said:


> 1. Magical teleportation; no explanation given, laws of physics not only broken but shattered. (Also psionic, which is really the same.)


That one is a commonly used one: *Jaunting. *I believed Alfred Bester was first to use it in _The Stars My Destination_, but was willing to be corrected on that front. Copied in _The Tomorrow People_ TV series (both old and new versions) and then again in the film _Jumper _(which appeared to be the start of a series that never happened.) 
Then I just read this (interesting): Teleportation in fiction - Wikipedia
According to that _Jumper _was first a book, which is the back-story to the film (the film did seem to leave much unsaid.) It also says that the origin of all magical teleportation are the *djinns *from _The Arabian Nights _stories and but it also mentions Vietnamese, Tibetan and Hebrew stories, as well as Wagner's _Der Ring_. Much more of a history of use than I had thought.


Mirannan said:


> 2. ST-type teleportation; object is disintegrated, reformed at destination. Splits into two subtypes, in which the object is turned into an energy matrix (ST) and in which the object is scanned (destructively or otherwise, two subsubtypes) and reformed from available material at destination.


I thought the origin of this would be _The Fly,_ however the link already given has an Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger story and _The Engines of Dawn_ that predate it.

What about 3. and 4.? When are the first uses of those do we think?


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## Dennis E. Taylor (Mar 2, 2017)

Stephen Palmer said:


> iirc, it has been shown that the amount of data storage required to keep a record of a trillion trillion trillion* atoms then reassemble them is beyond the computing power of the universe.
> 
> * estimate.



On the other hand, if you could encode data on the substance of space at the planck length, you could encode the state of every atom in the universe in a cubic micrometer of vacuum.


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## Mirannan (Mar 2, 2017)

Dave said:


> That one is a commonly used one: *Jaunting. *I believed Alfred Bester was first to use it in _The Stars My Destination_, but was willing to be corrected on that front. Copied in _The Tomorrow People_ TV series (both old and new versions) and then again in the film _Jumper _(which appeared to be the start of a series that never happened.)
> Then I just read this (interesting): Teleportation in fiction - Wikipedia
> According to that _Jumper _was first a book, which is the back-story to the film (the film did seem to leave much unsaid.) It also says that the origin of all magical teleportation are the *djinns *from _The Arabian Nights _stories and but it also mentions Vietnamese, Tibetan and Hebrew stories, as well as Wagner's _Der Ring_. Much more of a history of use than I had thought.
> I thought the origin of this would be _The Fly,_ however the link already given has an Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger story and _The Engines of Dawn_ that predate it.
> ...



Gates; probably late 1950s or early 1960s. Many SF writers of that period used various forms of teleport gate. Type 4; the only example I know of is in Greg Bear's Moving Mars. In reality, this shades into type 1, because the "physics" used has about the same amount of basis as ST technobabble - not very freaking much.

It's also notable that if you can rewrite the fundamental descriptors that are the reality of matter, then you also have the ability to do various other things than teleporting - some of them extraordinarily violent.


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## RX-79G (Mar 2, 2017)

I think you could make the argument that people magically appearing places goes back a lot further than Alfred Bester. Greek mythology far back.

Well's time machine is a sort of teleporter. It moves through time as well as space, but that doesn't put any prohibitions on using two time jumps to make just a movement through space.


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## Dave (Mar 3, 2017)

As I mentioned already, I think _The 1001 Arabian Nights_ stories (older than Greek) which are Persian, or possibly even Indian in origin, include Aladdin that has a djinn that can magically appear and disappear.


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## RX-79G (Mar 3, 2017)

Dave said:


> As I mentioned already, I think _The 1001 Arabian Nights_ stories (older than Greek) which are Persian, or possibly even Indian in origin, include Aladdin that has a djinn that can magically appear and disappear.


I stand corrected.


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