Imagine transportation 100, 500, or 1000 years from now, assuming Humankind’s problems of intolerance and global warming and food and water supplies are solved. We now have three-dimensional holographic printing. Imagine this so refined that it can go to the atomic level. That one can step into a transportation booh and be transported to another booth anywhere else at the speed of light, electronically. Impossible? Flying, undersea boats, electric lights, sound and video recording and playback, wired and radio information transmission, and mechanical, non-animal propulsion were once considered impossible.
While flying is possible, only the very very rich can afford personal airplanes for transportation. And while most adult Americans have the use of a personal automobile, most people worldwide do not. Even those with personal automobiles do not use them for city commuting. So probably only the very rich will have transportation booths in their offices and in their homes for commuting. Others will use public transportation booths, and costs may rule out use for most for short distances. So commuter rail and rapid transit trains and light rail will still be around. Personal automobiles will still be around because teleportation will be too expensive for random short-distance trips, and some people enjoy driving long distances. Corridor trains will survive for the same reasons
Science fiction alone has done teleportation in as a practical approach, as far as animate objects – let alone conscious humans – are concerned.
Effective full-immersion telepresence over the same range, albeit with latency concerns, is ‘only’ about 750Mbps. There is the same possibility of degrading QoS in data networks as there is for voice, due to the high assured transmission priority for the packets, but in this case the packets can be packed with full data instead of ‘just’ reserved for the few bits of compressed voice, so at least theoretically you could ‘pad out’ low-latency voice transmissions with data of similar latency for another client’s telepresence, and have the ‘best of both worlds’…
… without the problems teleportation has with re-creating living reality at the other end over an information-based network. If you solve those issues, we can start dealing with the issues of unintended multiple reception of the information… George O. Smith had already looked at many of these things back in the '40s.
Imagine transportation 100, 500, or 1000 years from now, assuming Humankind’s problems of intolerance and global warming and food and water supplies are solved. We now have three-dimensional holographic printing. Imagine this so refined that it can go to the atomic level. That one can step into a transportation booh and be transported to another booth anywhere else at the speed of light, electronically. Impossible? Flying, undersea boats, electric lights, sound and video recording and playback, wired and radio information transmission, and mechanical, non-animal propulsion were once considered impossible.
While flying is possible, only the very very rich can afford personal airplanes for transportation. And while most adult Americans have the use of a personal automobile, most people worldwide do not. Even those with personal automobiles do not use them for city commuting. So probably only the very rich will have transportation booths in their offices and in their homes for commuting. Others will use public transportation booths, and costs may rule out use for most for short distances. So commuter rail and rapid transit trains and light rail will still be around. Personal automobiles will still be around because teleportation will be too expensive for random short-distance trips, and some people enjoy driving long distances. Corridor trains will survive for the same reasons as commuter trains and local transportation, but their scope may be reduced in specific markets w
I understand the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and it would have to be solved or resolved, much as the way Relativity resolved the problem of the consistency of the speed of light in two references spaces moving with respect to each other for light omitted in one of the spaces. Teleportation obviously requires a Universe related to our Einstein-Lorenz-Maxwell-Gauss Relativity Physics Universe the way that Universe is related to the Euclid-Galileo-Carteise-Newton Mechanics Physics Universe. Philosophically, I have an idea how this can be done. Imagine some real process of heating or cooling or coloring or lighting or whatever that follows an asymptotic curve. A mathematician can examine a portion of the curve and then determine the straight line, a quantity or measure vs. time, that the curve approaches but never reaches. As science progresses, measurements do become more and more accurate, and the measurement process disturbs what is measured less and less. Turning the philosophical idea into practicality is something obviously for the far future.
Here in Jerusalem, Orthodox-run Hotels that usually have “Shabbat Elevators.” But an Orthodox Jew is not supposed to institute or stop any mechanical motion or stop or start any electrical current of any type on Shabbat. So, obviously, these elevators continually go up and down, stopping at every floor. But that is not enough. Peo
I’m one that thinks Teleportation will never happen. If it was achieveable we would already have more advanced civilizations that were 1,000 of years ahead of us in technology…teleporting to Earth.
I think most business travel, the backbone of the airline industry, is an anachronism that should have disappeared by now, if business weren’t stuck in what used to be called “cultural lag.” Modern communications is as near as we need to get to teleportation – yet, business hasn’t begun to take advantage.
As for teleportation, the real deal – after you, Alphonse. Remember “The Fly”!
Teleportation scares me. Does anyone remember the story in playboy and the movie “THE FLY” about the individual who gets in the teleporter and unbeknost to him a fly is also in so when he gets regenerated, he is part fly. Great story. But no thanks. After you Alfonse.
begin with complex expensive objects, like electron microscopes and tiny ristwatch-computers. Then plant life. The mice and fish-in-tanks. Then trained animals, dogs,horses. Do they rememeger their masters and training? Then monkeys. Then the first human voliunteer, with extensive knowledge testing beforfe and after.
It odd that you suggest there would be any form of physical transportation if teleportation (a la Star Trek) existed. Why would you need to physically transport either a person or cargo. (Could you teleport to the bottom of an ocean or to the moon)?
And even if teleporation didn’t exist, mature 3d-printing may even negate the need to physically transport finished product as long as the raw materials and design information is available as the destination.
Another thing to consider is the need to commute to work. Remote access to data and processing and conference calls are ubiquitous, negating the need to be in the same room even if in the same building, and I frequently particpate in conference calls with people on the west coast, east coast and Israel. We typically share a screen but there is no need for video-teleconferencing although that is also available at my workplace.
Does “teleporation” actually disassemble an object into particles that are physically relocated to a destination and reassembled? Or is a replica of the object created at the destination (a la 3d-printing)? if so, what happens to the original ?? !!
As an old “Star Trek” fan going back to 1966 let me say the original purpose of the show’s “transporter” was to be as a plot device and a time saving measure, i.e. it was used to get the principal actors in and out of various situations without having to go through the trouble (and special effects expense) of showing the starship or a shuttle craft landing on a planet surface, a very real concern at the time since the TV network that bought the show wanted lots of “planet” stories.
However, before they adopted the transporter the shows producers verified that it was theoretically possible for such a device to exist, though it was a bit of a stretch. Even though it was science fiction “Star Trek’s” producers wanted to keep the show as believeable as possible. Probably the reason, if not THE reason, it’s held up for so long.
I address Greg’s last paragraph. (Would have reproduced only that on here, but – old complaint now – forum mechanics will not let me edit it down.)
From a story I read some time ago in the Wall Street Journal, we’re talking disassembly/reassembly, which gives most people pause. (After you, Alphonse.) Calvin and Hobbes, on the other hand, created an all-new person along with survival of the
ive been reading Beyond Our Future in Space which does a very good job discussing specific genes causing some people to have a strong desire to explore which promoted man’s migration from Africa and likely to be reason some people wish to leave the Earth. It covers a lot of history and other topics very concisely.
Today, while reading about propulsion systems, there was actually a section on teleportation (a la Star Trek). It did report that when a technical advisor to Star Trek was asked how it worked, he said very well (as a time saving device in the TV series). The book did not attempt to suggest how it might be possible
It did discuss the need to convey the state of 10^28 particles making up a human body and experiments with quantum entanglement to communicate information over long distances. It did comment on the disassembling/destruction of the body at the origin site and questioned the meaning of “self”.
If the mass of the body is converted to energy, E=mc^2 suggests it would be an extremely large amount of energy. Again I would suggest if it were possible to even identify the composition/state of all the particles in the body, it would be far easier to simply communicate that information to the destination and replicate the body with the ensuing social issues already suggested.
But there’s more to it than just getting all the state numbers correct; you also have a time-defined relationship BETWEEN particles that is not defined by their internal state. (And which invokes Heisenberg concerns if you perturb anything when determining the numbers…)
So it’s simultaneous determination, and then re-creation, of the necessary information for the 10^28 particles … some of which are moving in several respects relative to others, and together as molecules … within some reasonably short window of time, with spatial definition of each particle (relative to what reference frame, and how determined?) to some reasonable submultiple of ‘effective’ interatomic distance.
THEN transfer all this information via quantum entanglement, and implement it physically in the required volume of effective spacetime … with scaffolding or other equipment ‘getting out of the way’ of the assembly without perturbing it…
You can’t tell me this is going to be cost-effective, any time, anywhere, even absent the safety and quality-assurance concerns…
I forget the title and author now, but there was a scifi story that focused on the “what to do with the original” question. The system scanned you, and printed out a new you at the destination. But that left the original “you” still in existence. Your original was sedated, then once reception at the other end was verified, they killed the original and broke it down chemically for raw material.
In the story, a problem arose when reception of the duplicate person was not verified right away (stuck in a buffer or something), but the original woke up after the sedation wore off. The transport operator developed a rellationship with the original, but then a belated, reception OK signal arived, and his dilema was to kill this person he now liked.
Oh, the transporter was licensed alien technology, and NOT killing the original would be an act of war. Or something…
I suspect that once transporter network is implemented, the dining service will be terrible.