Teleportation

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Part of me imagines what the world will be like if we could teleport ourselves.

I think it'd be great, means I could go to Rhode Island at will......... but sadly, we're years from having this technology existing, if at all.

One assumption regarding teleportation is that while it would seem instantaneous to the person being teleported, to an outside observer, time in transit could never be less than the distance teleported divided by the speed of light. Thus, a person teleporting to the AB Centauri system would arrive ~4.366 years after his departure from Earth, even though the person being teleported would observe that no time had passed at all. The return trip, of course, would then take another ~4.366 years.

To put it another way, a person teleporting from AB Centauri to spend the winter (~3 months) in the Earth's Caribbean region, would not be seen again on his homeworld until nearly 9 years had passed since his departure!

Of course, this is all speculation, since teleportation above the quantum level has not been demonstrated, and that here are no known habitable worlds in the AB Centauri system.

I think it would be great too, but I don't think it's possible. I'm with McCoy on this one. You can't capture something and transplant it to another location. What force could do that?

You basically have to destroy a person in Location A after uploading their molecular data to a computer, then use that data to reconstruct the person entirely in Location B. Aside from technology and logistics issues, this brings up several philosophical questions. Is the reconstructed person in Location B really the same person? Can your consciousness live in the computer while uploaded? And what about the fact that you could hypothetically use this technology to make endless clones of yourself?

what would happen if a fly got caught [along with the human] in the teleportation chamber?

god i hate that movie

I've always liked Orson Scott Card's take on teleportation. It requires a super, SUPER computer with artificial intelligence, though. The idea is that the computer "imagines" us, outside of reality, and so we are there. We all subconsciously know where all our particles are, and so we hold ourselves together, in our original states. "Outside," we are equidistant from every point "inside" of reality, so it's easy to step back in, wherever we want, instantaneously.
Whether or not this is at all executable, I don't know. But it always made the most sense to me.

I always wonder if this could involve a Wormhole or Gateway instead of vaporizing the person.

I certainly hope so. Though some say that going through a wormhole would stretch you out, infinitely, I still think it's a more viable possibility than copying or vaporizing. Perhaps there could be a device attached, that would speed up the farther parts of you, and slow down the closer ones, so you keep the same shape. Or some kind of a force field, perhaps.

does the concept of a holographic universe allow for teleportation/time travel?

Ironically, SG-1 used the wormhole as a medium to "teleport" gate travelers. Otherwise, the bandwidth (and power) needed to send a solid object through would be insanely large.

Quantum States have been teleported, but not matter itself. If matter is every teleported the process will disintegrate the -real you- and transmit information from which a copy can be made. What ends up at the other end is a copy of you and it might not be error free. Think of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.

ruveyn

In the real world, wormholes require the application of exotic matter, otherwise the wormhole would collapse as soon as ordinary matter passed the event horizon.

This exotic matter is so for only an obscure mathematical concept, and has not been produced, even in a laboratory.

That sums up my main concerns, I'd never use such an apparatus if it became available. And assuming consciousness was kept, which I doubt, making more copies is perfectly possible if the data is kept, so what would happen there? Why would my consciousness transmit to only the first copy and not to the other ones? Or would we all share one? Consciousness not being kept is the more elegant solution.
Gateways look like a more interesting concept. But I don't think I'll see working teleportation technology within my lifetime

Thank you. I can't believe I forgot about that. That drove me crazy for so long, that I just started blocking it out when watching SciFi.