The transporter in Star Trek & Transition Particle Teleporter

[Posidon]

Teleportation has been a common staple in science fiction since time immemorial. The book entitled, "The Fly" explores the ramifications involved when man plays God and ends up as a mutant. Since then, there has been many stories on the subject of teleportation through books, magazines, shows, and movies. But the one that made the concept famous was Star Trek. The transporter in Star Trek is one of the most fascinating theoretical technologies on board the starship Enterprise. The concept was created by the late-Gene Roddenberry. He needed his characters to get from the ship to the planet within a short period of time.

 

 

Originally, Roddenberry set out to have his characters on a shuttlecraft, but was unable to afford the necessary budget to do so, hence, the transporter was born. From a creative point-of-view, it served as an excellent plot device, however, scientifically it will never work. To find out why let's examine how the transporter operates. The transporter works by disassembling crew members at the atomic level and converting them into energy. Once the energy arrives at the appointed destination, the process is reversed.

 

 

In the real world, teleportation is already a reality. Within recent advances in quantum teleportation, we can already teleport photons, but what gets teleported is the photon's properties, not the actual photons themselves, that is, they don't move. It merely replicates it. However, according to some scientists, they say that the replicated object would be the same exact one before the procedure took place, that is, it was destroyed and restored. Here is a direct quote from noted physicist Dr. Michio Kaku:

 

"It may take centuries to teleport a human being, assuming its possible. Also, teleporting the quantum properties of an atom is indistinguishable from teleporting the atom itself, since all electrons, and sub-atomic particles, are identical. No expoeriment can detect the difference (remember that the original object being teleported is destroyed in the process)."

 

 

1) Any thoughts on this?

 

 

One major problem with the transporter is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This principle states that it is possible to determine an atom or particle's velocity or position with one hundred percent accuracy, however, we can never know both at the same time. Why? Well, simply put, you cannot observe a particle without disturbing it because you would need to 'touch' it with something, like a photon or some other particle. This will transfer energy to the observed particle. Sort of like shooting pool or playing soccer.

 

 

Another problem with the transporter is that it converts crew members into energy and back from energy into matter. Personally, I don't think that there will ever be a conventional use for converting energy into matter because of the amount of energy contained in one human being. Think about it: if one human can produce thousands of hiroshimas bombs, then you would need thousands of atom bombs worth of energy to create a turkey sandwich. That just doesn't seem practical to me. If that amount of energy were to be released when turning a man into energy, well let's just say there wouldn't be much left of anything for a few thousand miles!

 

 

While we're on the subject of matter and energy, I read an article on the net regarding the conversion of energy into matter. Einstein has stated in his equations that matter and energy are interconvertible. Anyway, an experiment conducted at Stanford University was accomplished at S.L.A.C. (short for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). Here are some links to SLAC's statements released to various publications concerning the experiment:

 

 

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/e144/nytimes.html

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/e144/nytimes.html

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/e144/science1202.html

 

 

Such conversions of particles to energy are called annihilations, that is, they are like explosions: the explosive material is completely destroyed and no memory of its original form remains. Furthermore, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that in any conversion of matter, some energy is inevitably lost. However, you could compensate by disintegrating some rocks and adding in that energy too.

 

 

In my view, when your body is converted into energy, you're destroyed, hence, you die. End of story. What comes out of the teleporter is an exact copy, with all your memories etc, and no knowledge that it isn't you, but it isn't. No one would ever notice the problem, so it only affects you when it happens. Unless, if you believe in souls, there are "conservation of souls" problems to deal with - does the same soul follow the body around? While in an energy state, there is no consciousness, no heart to beat.

 

 

2) The question is, would the person survive the procedure upon being converted into energy and back from energy into matter, or would the individual cease to exist and be replaced with a replica, who was literally born into existence once the energy was reconverted back into matter with the information?

 

 

Even renowned science fiction writer Larry Niven expressed his views on the transporter:

 

 

"I don't believe in bending space to order, and I wouldn't ride in a machine that annihilates me here, then beams away data that allows me to be exactly recreated somewhere else."

 

Mr. Niven has wrote his theory on teleportation in one of his stories:

 

 

"But I needed a theory that would allow instantaneous transportation and would still leave a passenger intact. What I came up with was a kind of super-neutrino. The displacement booth converts its cargo into an elementary particle of no rest mass, a relativistic mass equal to the weight of the cargo (for conservation of matter), an internal structure complex enough to carry the quantum states of every elementary particle in the cargo, and a neutrino's ability to pene_trate almost any barrier. I called it a transition particle."

 

 

3) Is this a more realistic version of teleportation?

 

 

Posidon

[Buffy]

A lot of the same points were made in "The Phyxics of Star Trek" by Lawrence M. Krauss. Its pretty clear that the key issue is could you replicate it exactly, given that Heisenberg says we can't determine the exact state of anything, and even if we could the computing power and energy required would theoretically be enough to ensure that just a few teleportations would consume the entire energy in the universe. Its also not clear that you'd need to destroy the original to place the copy somewhere else (although annihilating the matter from the original body might prove to be a good source of some of the energy you'd need!), and of course we don't know that the "current state" of all those particles is enough to replicate *everything*. We used to think you could replicate a dinosaur or human with just dna, but now we know that all those proteins running around are important too.

 

Bottom line: there's way too little known about most of the issues to even begin to discuss this intelligently. Its just speculation, albeit *very* interesting and good fodder for SciFi....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Raelian1]

Teleportation is possible. Already scientists are teleporting particles. Eventually, we will be able to design spacecraft that can teleport all over the universe.

[reallytired]

The fact that you would be a whole new set of identically constructed atoms coming out the other side of the transporter does not necessarily mean that you die.

 

Your body now and your body in ten years time will be made up of entirely different sets of atoms, and hence a different object, but you will still be the same person. What I mean is that though you change you still retain the same 'self' ( body, memories, soul - whatever) over the years.

 

With the transporter idea you could argue that your 'self' is present at all stages. It is present in the original, its present in the replica and it is present in the signal/data itself that is being transported.

[Queso]

Teleportation is possible. Already scientists are teleporting particles. Eventually, we will be able to design spacecraft that can teleport all over the universe.

 

this is interesting.

can scientists transport particles to a place with another transporter? or can they transport them ANYWHERE?

it's hard to think that we will ever be able to teleport somewhere without another teleporter. like an exit pad or something.

[TJTodd]

Yeah, If a particle is transported to X. It is only One particle so nothing has to be reorganized, It doesnt seem right that a complex organism or something of many millions of particles could reorganize itself back to its original state of matter after being converted into energy without some kind of computing device to make sure that the object being transportated reformed correctly.

[C1ay]

Just break a few DNA strands in the process and you're all set for cancer to set in...

[infamous]

Beam me up Scotty.

[Monoxdifly]

In the real world, teleportation is already a reality. Within recent advances in quantum teleportation, we can already teleport photons, but what gets teleported is the photon's properties, not the actual photons themselves, that is, they don't move. It merely replicates it. However, according to some scientists, they say that the replicated object would be the same exact one before the procedure took place, that is, it was destroyed and restored. Here is a direct quote from noted physicist Dr. Michio Kaku:

Wait, you mean real-world teleportation works more like a faximile?

[tetrahedron]

An episode of the Outer Limits reboot from the 1990's entitled 'Think Like a Dinosaur' had intelligent, advanced reptiloid aliens which have come to earth and are sharing their technology with us. One of the gadgets is a teleportation device that allows them to come to earth from their home world and humans to visit them there. It also didn't actually teleport the original, just the information, allowing synthesis of the entity at the other end. And since they had laws about existence of more than one of any entity, this required distintegration of the original while still in the machine. So when the visitor comes home, he/she is actually the THIRD incarnation, with two deaths in between. Of course this being a scifi drama something goes wrong, and the original survives, thinking that the teleportation has failed, until the third incarnation shows up, and demands the death of the original. They then get into a fight to see who will prevail and survive.

 

Jess Tauber