View Full Version : Star Trek transporter: Possible?
Dinosaur
05-13-02, 07:44 PM
A letter to the editors of Scientific American has interested me in conducting an experiment in what intelligent people believe. Emotionally, it seems to me that intelligence is a defense against insanity and belief in nonsense. Intellectually, I am reluctantly forced to realize that intelligent people can be insane and can believe in nonsense.
I have great respect for the intelligence of most of you who post at this site, making me think that this is a great place to try this experiment.
Please stop when asked your opinion, answering it in your mind without reading further. Then read on and consider the same question again. I am interested in knowing how many (if any) change their minds.
I have enjoyed science fiction, fantasy, and occult fiction for most of my life. However, I always tried to draw the line between what might be possible in the future and what just ain’t gonna happen. The Star Trek Transporter and the Teleportation device in “The Fly” made wonderful fiction, but I never believed such devices were possible.
Do you believe that such a device is possible to some advanced technology?
The writer of the letter to SciAm pointed out that here are something like 1.000E24 atoms in a few grams of matter (1 followed by 24 zeros). Now a matter transporter would require scanning and recording the details of the object to be transported. Perhaps 100 basic machine language instructions per atom would be required. This is probably an underestimate for something as complex as a human being.
Say we want to teleport a human being weighing 70 kilograms (about 150 pounds) or 70,000 grams. At 1.00E24 atoms for a few grams, estimate 10,000*1.000E24 or 1.000E28 atoms. At 100 instructions per atom, this is 1.000E30 instructions. Now how fast do you expect computers to get?
Let us work the problem backwards for a while. Assume that future computers use a million CPU’s working in parallel. Now each computer needs to do 1.000E24 computations. If we want to get the job done in a year, the CPU would have to do about 3.17E16 instructions per second, or one instruction in 3.156E-17 seconds. This is the time it takes light to travel about 3.719E-7 inches. I just do not expect computers to get any where near that fast.
So, it seems that it would take more than a year to do the computer processing required to record the necessary data prior to teleporting a human being. The letter writer was more pessimistic, he estimated 22 million years for the computations. I also happen to be pessimistic about the possibility of building the device which uses this data to do the job, but that requires a more esoteric analysis. Just considering the processing time, it does not look possible.
Before reading the letter in SciAm, I was not a believer. I certainly am not one now.
How about the rest of you? Any believers in teleportation who changed their mind? Any who didn’t change their mind? How many never did believe it was possible?
The second vote is mine, Possible But Unlikely. Why do I think that? I am very reluctant to declare anything impossible. We simply don't know enough yet to say certain things are impossible.
Do I think we can be broken down into bits and shot about through magic sunbeams? No. If this stuff ever happens, I expect bodies will be destroyed at one end and rebuilt at the other end according to a plan generated at the transmitter end. Will personality survive this? No idea. But in any case I think the whole thing is unlikely.
Fukushi
06-02-02, 05:09 PM
who didn’t change their mind?
I didn't change my mind,...
I never 'believed',....I'm convinced that the latter is going to happen,...and if not by means of computations/sec than in an other way,...there are various ways of transporting or teleporting matter or bioenergy in my humble opinion,....
please don't ask me why,...experiance perhaps?
Thx
fukushi
Dinosaur
06-03-02, 09:59 AM
Fukushi: Are you suggesting knowledge or experience with some occult nonsense like astral projection, telekinesis, whatever?
Pollux V
06-03-02, 10:02 AM
I think the problem here is thinking in too much of a linear way. Computers, as we know them, may not be the only answer to organizing enough data to send someone from one place to another instantly. You have to keep in mind that the technology we see and use now is not all that there is or ever will be, that there are things yet to be invented that a good deal of us cannot comprehend [at this time].
But, using computers, faster ones, you say that it is possible to transport a person, it would just take a year. There lies your answer. The technology isn't very realistic or useful if it takes a year to get somewhere (unless it may be a distant planet) but it is possible, and that is the bottom line.
It is possible. You just need a hysenberg compensator :D
It takes 400 megaquad of storage space also :D
JimmyJames
06-03-02, 10:30 AM
I believe that transporter technology is possible and I expect it to be invented(whether it be tomorrow or 15 million years from now). I also think that current theory about transporting a human being is a litte off. You would have to send the matter to the reciever not send data or instructions on how to reconstruct the matter. Wouldn't that fall along the lines of cloning? We can all ready transport photons on a subspace level why not (in the future) be able to transport other types or forms of matter (a human being)? Be a little optimistic.
By the way you have a limited perception of the future of computers... but don't we all.
"Don't be so linear, Jean-Luc" as Q says.
James R
06-03-02, 10:36 AM
You might want to look up Arthur C. Clarke's First Law.
JimmyJames
06-03-02, 10:47 AM
.................................................. ...................
I have read Michael's Crichtons "Timeline" .
tht and also my estimations of our progress made me to answer tht someday this technology will be invented.
(in tht book MC used the idea of multiverses, body shrinking to subatomic levels, and destruction of the original body in the process)
I plan to read that book.
Science fiction has a long history of becoming science fact. Everything humans wish they could do, they eventually find a way to do. Hundreds of years ago, they wouldn't have dreamed of what we are trying to do today. Even a hundred years ago, they never thought we'd be able to do the things we are trying now.
It may not be in our lifetimes, it may not be in the next generation's lifetime, but eventually we will find a way to do it. And it will be done. It doesn't even seem to be a question of "Is it possible?" because even things that we thought were impossible have turned out otherwise. Where there's a will, there's a way. We will prevail.
daktaklakpak
06-03-02, 02:11 PM
Scan, record, transfer and rebuild are very unlikey for a transporter to work like that. It just takes too much data to compute in a short time. However, I have a working transporter in my mind. It will be more like a space displacer, or a mini wormhole that connects two fixed points over a large distance.
Whatever the method, I'm confident that we will find a way to effectively teleport objects and eventually people.
IggDawg
06-03-02, 03:49 PM
I would never trust my being to be encoded like that. maybe rudimentary insect or plant life. I mean, what if there's .000000000001 ohms somewhere in the circut that aren't accounted for? if its too warm or cool out wires will have different resistances. A voltage difference might make the computer calculate slightly differently, or might generate enough "static" in teh lines carrying my information to seriously screw me up. I like my spleen like it is thanks. I don't need another one.
-IggDawg
read M. Crichtons "Timeline". There he talked about these kind of errors. Of course he's no science guru, but by observing tht other wild predictions by old time scifi writters (Jules Verne for instance) have come true I wouldn't reject his. There was mentioned smth like pattern errors. Like if there's an error your blood veins in one place of hand may not come together with other places. Immagine human body like a picture. You tear it to two halfs and then put together , only with 1cm to the right of one half. Transmission errors:D. You should always keep a backup of your body:D - laugh or not, but maybe these words in deep future will seem quite ordinary.
Originally posted by daktaklakpak
I have a working transporter in my mind. It will be more like a space displacer, or a mini wormhole that connects two fixed points over a large distance.
Great minds think alike. I am working on a project to manipulate gravity. But playing with hypercharge can have other benefits too. I think the same technology can be used to displace space and manipulate the matter within. As long as the space is contained in a scalar field - the matter within should be fine. But, instead of using high Tesla EM field that can harm living matter, I am thinking to create a dual field that counteracts the contents inside. If that fails, then back to drawing board for mini wormhole scenario....
Another way to do this is to just read the DNA and the memory of a person. Based on the DNA, you can create a duplicate atom by atom from the raw materials at the other side and download the memory. Our company has proposed a DNA to face recognition software to FBI. So in 40 years - who knows what we are capable of?
...Me. I'm interested....why?
Sorry, no can do...I do not wish to expose my Avatar that reflects on the company....unless there is a damn good reason...like saving the planet....:D
Are you offering any?
There was an article about this in Popular Science a few years ago(sorry, I can't remember the date). I don't think that it would be practical for somethnig as complex as a human, what happens when you move? Are you going to stop your heart while you teleport?
I believe it would be more practical to research using the quantum channel mentioned in the article as an instantaneous communications system.
Originally posted by kmguru
Sorry, no can do...I do not wish to expose my Avatar that reflects on the company....unless there is a damn good reason...like saving the planet....:D
Are you offering any? Sounds like you're full of it.
Does this mythical company even exist?
Originally posted by Alpha
Sounds like you're full of it.
Does this mythical company even exist?
Some of us are in high school, and some of us finished college many moons ago and work for a living - in a company.
Are you implying I'm in high school? Because I'm in college.
Why the hell would you be secretive about the company you're working for?
Originally posted by Alpha
Are you implying I'm in high school? Because I'm in college.
You are....? You fooled me...
Why the hell would you be secretive about the company you're working for?
Why the hell not...any idiot would guess... it is because it is a company that keeps its activities in this area secret until made public.
~The_Chosen~
06-25-02, 10:43 PM
The process of entanglement would be near impossible here, unless super quantum computers are capable of it, if there is such. 10^28 atoms....you basically need another (10^28) * 2 atoms for entanglement to work...
Originally posted by kmguru
You are....? You fooled me...
Why the hell not...any idiot would guess... it is because it is a company that keeps its activities in this area secret until made public. I'm not asking about your activities, I'm asking about the NAME of the company. And you seem to talk freely about it's activities anyway. What was that about a photon stabilizer or some such bull you mentioned in one post in another thread? Sounded like mindless technobabble. You said you did something with a photon generator to stabilize an antigravity field or something.
You still dont get it, do you? In USA, there is such a thing called NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) - that prevents people to even mention company names that they have consulted for in their resumes.
A lot of high technology will sound technobabble to people outside the field and to college students who think they know everything.
I don't think I know everything. I do know a lot, but no-one knows everything.
And I'm aware of the fact that technobabble sounds like valid science sometimes, but take a look at the post you made. (I found it):
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=117967#post117800
Perhaps you can explain what the hell you mean by that? How would a photon generator balance the field?!
OK, so the company you work for gets hired by other companies for consulting? Then what's the name of the company you work under? Not the ones that're hiring you.
Oh! that one. Where does it say anything about any company in that post?
I sometimes consult for Atos Origin Inc. (www.atosorigin.com). They are one of the top European consulting companies. I also do the same for SAIC.com for DoD projects. Now, I am sure you can infer the rest.
So lemme get this straight. You get hired by consulting companies (freelance style) that get hired by other companies for consulting?
SAIC.com sounds interesting.
You still haven't explained your post.
BTW, what does the "km" in your name stand for?
Originally posted by Alpha
BTW, what does the "km" in your name stand for?
Whatelse? "Knowledge Management"
I design KM systems for Fortune 500 companies.
So lemme get this straight. You get hired by consulting companies (freelance style) that get hired by other companies for consulting?
Sounds about right. Sometimes I consult directly to the smaller end client. The reason I have to go through several layers is because, Fortune 100 companies only use very large consulting companies to reduce the amount of vendors they have to deal with. Unfortunately, these large companies usually do not have enough experienced people on payroll all the time. So, they go out searching for people like us.
Sometimes the layer gets to 5 deep. A lot of middleman....I just got a job order from Germany which probably is going trough 2 layers. If I pass that to a friend, that will add 2 more layers. That is the name of the game, since the large corporations do not know how to search for independent consultants using Google. I found a papermill company that has their own contract group. I thought - boy they are smart trying to cut out the middleman. But when I saw the maximum rates they will pay, then I thought what a dumb company, at that rate they cannt even hire a janitor.
So is life....
Interesting.
So what exactly is your area of expertise? "Knowledge Management" is a little fuzzy.
My area of expertise is "Complexity Management". There is a sub area called "Strategic Enterprise Management". You can read up on that at sap.com
For example, for government, it is designing a system, process and infrastructure that allows the case officers/agents to visualize associative information from the background process of data mining and intelligent software processing. This way, they can see the dots as well as connect the dots. While the technology is not a big deal, setting up the infrastructure and process is. There are too many databases with different database structures. Anyway, my job is architecting such systems that would work. It does utilize some bleeding edge technology (fresh off the research labs).
For business, it is setting up a structure that converts data to knowledge so that the CEO level people who do not understand computers can use it to make the right decisions - for increased agility, profitability, revenue and stakeholder value. For example, CBRL uses a small set of this technology (since Nov.1999). You can check their stock and how it is doing vs. others. One company called Stage stores passed the offer and went Chapter 11. So did Global Crossing.
You Killed Jesus
06-26-02, 06:27 PM
It's certainly possible, but I don't think any human being would use it. Why?
Well, if you go into the transporter and get "transported", will you see the end of the journey? Or will it just be something that looks like you, and has your memories/personality? Or would it just transport your body, but it will have no consciousness?
I can't see it getting past goods & cargo.
For those that have not worked in Defense or Security areas there can be a culture shock. For those that dont know try this.
If you work for another place, bank or defense and design a security system, then you and that client will not want the world to know, in case some bad dude turns up and demands to pick your brains.
If you work on a system that stores sensitive info. (How to build a nuke ?) Again you do not want the world to know.
On the other hand, all you may have done is install MS-Office on the Receptionists PC, BUT again you may not be able to disclose as if you did then all the bad guys would have to do is find out who worked there and has not disclosed it.
So if you get to work in security conscious places, even if security is not your thing, suprisingly often you are not allowed to say which company you did work for.
More often outside these areas, you can not say what work you did ( NDA = Non Disclosure Agreement) even if you are allowed to name the company. This is so a business competitor cant get a head start.
That is correct allant. Here is another information that we normally get misinformed due to Hollywood. Take for example a security system of a diamond storage area. Such security system if done well, will not have a back door - that is you can not grab the designer to find out the weakness or back-door to bypass the security system. Because it is not there. If something goes wrong, you have to blow up for real and start all over.
x-mart in US has a system that very few people know how it is put together. I am sure they are highly paid to keep their mouth shut.
Anyway - back to the topic.
I still think, the transporter will happen soon but not the way people think - that is one will not be converted to energy and then matter....that is too much energy to handle.
ultravioletten
06-28-02, 10:34 AM
a transporter would consist of 11 basic stages:
scanner (matrix analyser)
input buffer (holographic memory stage)
disassembler (molecular matrix to datawave converter)
analogue datawave processor (compressor)
output buffer
transmitter
receiver
input buffer
analogue datawave processor (decompressor)
output buffer
assembler (datawave to molecular matrix converter)
the type of computer used for the processing is the key to it's success.
a digital computer is out of the question (these could never interpret the data accurately, and far too slow)
an ultrafast photonic analogue processor with holographic memory would be the only way.
theDarkAura
08-21-07, 01:24 PM
This article did not change my opinion, although, the description of the transporter in this article is hokey.
Do I belive that my Laptop can transport anything by analyzing its atomic structure and rebuilding it somewhere else... no... and thats not really transporting... that would be a matter duplicator or something...
Do I believe that there is enough we have not figgured out about the world and how to manipulate it that there is most likely a way to move something from point a to point b in a new and increadably fast way... sure!
This article made me imagine Eddison arguing for DC over AC by stating there would have to be a person flipping a switch 60 times a second for it to work... there are always better and more efficient ways of doing something... the trick is not letting your train of thought and creativity get stuck in the trenches of what exists now, and what people belive to be current limitations...
Tesla was an amazing man, who did amazing things because he was able to think far outside the boundries people tried to tell him existed.
Say we want to teleport a human being weighing 70 kilograms (about 150 pounds) or 70,000 grams. At 1.00E24 atoms for a few grams, estimate 10,000*1.000E24 or 1.000E28 atoms. At 100 instructions per atom, this is 1.000E30 instructions. Now how fast do you expect computers to get?
Surely there would be forms of data compression that could vastly decrease the amount of data required, especially since most of the human body's mass is made up of the same few hundred molecules that are simply used over and over again. About half a person's mass is simply water. Just replacing "put a hydrogen here, an oxygen here, and another hydrogen here" with "put a water molecule here" would seem to immediately decrease the total amount of data that had to be processed to transport a human by about 30%. There are only 20 common amino acids and the same few dozen phospholipids are used over and over.
I'm with Nasor. The SciAm argument reminds me of the creationist argument against the evolution of haemoglobin - it seems to deliberately misrepresent the necessary process.
Mind you, I still think it's pretty impossible. And as other posters have said, there are interesting metaphysical issues involved as well. Perhaps it would be more productive to consider whether the Star Trek replicator is a possible technology?
AvrilFanGZ
09-12-07, 05:16 PM
Let us first remember that the brains we currently think with arent even fully developed. If we either evlove to make concious use of a larger percentage, or focus our studies on developing control of a larger percentage, then perhaps we'd have a much better judgement of what is or is not believable.
As of now, my belief is that we are only limited by our imagination. Once we imagine something we can attempt, its just a matter of time before we accomplish it. Right now we can only build with the eliments we have here on earth and what we can synthesize in a lab... and we can only apply what we understand of earth's physics and comprehend things using what senses we currently have. Now, what if we exceed these earthly limitations??
Note that our species really started to develop when we created a means of recording things. The alphabet allowed for this, and then we could store data in a library of knowledge, and now thats extended to the internet where anyone can access an overwhelming amount of data. Dare I say limitless amounts??
The key to accomplishing things we think are impossible lies in developing our brains. Just being able to read faster and maintain accurate memory could be a simple first step. If we could pass down this ability through heredity and our species evolved to just do this naturally, then we'll know what we're capable of; Then we'll have enhanced our ability to 'learn.'
Pandaemoni
09-12-07, 05:33 PM
Let us first remember that the brains we currently think with arent even fully developed. If we either evlove to make concious use of a larger percentage, or focus our studies on developing control of a larger percentage, then perhaps we'd have a much better judgement of what is or is not believable. =
We use all of our brains, we just don't use all of it at once. The "10% of your brain" thing is a myth.
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html
It's always possibly that we will evolve into a more intelligent species later on, but there's no dormant special powers or extra intelligence that's somehow "waiting" to be unlocked in the average person.
I do not think brain will develop by itself based on nature. The natural development depends on natural stresses such as asteroid stike and other disasters. However, the brain can be developed by us through gene manipulation.
Presently, you can boost your brain capacity using chemicals - turbo charge it so to speak, but to really improve, gene manipulation is necessary and that can be done to the future generations. It is like you have a Pentium II, you can only boost the speed. To get to Xeon or beyond, you need new design.
Until we get to a 10 or 100 or 1000 times the brain capability, we may not invent certain things, even though we can imagine the result.
I think, we naturally went from Pentium II to III after the last ice age. But going to a 64bit quad core and beyond will depend on us. If we can not get there, that is, there isa limitation to organic life forms, may be we should start thinking about silicon based life....
A transporter is possible but highly unlikely for the time-being. You'd have to stabilize space-time form. At the tiniest sub-atomic level, the fabric of space and time becomes so unstable that it starts to behave like a foam (called the quantum state: space-time foam). Within this object, there's wormholes.
You need to stabilize the space-time foam long enough to make one of the wormholes permanent. The way to do that is to apply enormous amounts of energy (nothing at the moment can apply this amount of energy, in fact you'd have to build a particle accelerator in SPACE to achieve that kind of energy). After you get the wormhole stabilized, you'd have to enlarge it using negative energy.
Since it is already theorized that we live in a multi-dimensional multi-verse, how about jumping through a dimension? Create a space-time bubble around the object and send that object through that dimension.
Whatever gizmo is used, I am sure, it will not take too much energy to move matter from Point A to Point B, simply because we will find a way similar to people jumping vs. people moving in height using a helicopter vs. people moving in X-axis at 75 mph using a car. All those movements do require energy more than one human power, but it is within our scientific achievement.
We are yet to find out what say 100 Tesla or a 1000 Tesla will do to space-time. Who knows, we will find a phase transition and new physics....
Arachnakid
09-22-08, 12:32 AM
The second vote is mine, Possible But Unlikely. Why do I think that? I am very reluctant to declare anything impossible. We simply don't know enough yet to say certain things are impossible.
Do I think we can be broken down into bits and shot about through magic sunbeams? No. If this stuff ever happens, I expect bodies will be destroyed at one end and rebuilt at the other end according to a plan generated at the transmitter end. Will personality survive this? No idea. But in any case I think the whole thing is unlikely.
That was my thought. If the transporter was something like the replicator, it might work, but they would need the material to build people and good already on the ship, and that to me makes it highly unlikely. It could be useful for people, but shipments of goods would probably still have to be physically loaded and unloaded.
I doubt it is possible.
The atom configuration after dissasemblement would be near impossible. We can't even track all the atoms in a dice, never mind some sophisticated device capable of reassembling all the particles of the human body.
If I wanted to get into this field of study what degree program should I enter into and which schools could anybody recommened?
If I wanted to get into this field of study what degree program should I enter into and which schools could anybody recommened?
Physics, material science, and electrical engineering
Hey, Thanks for the info. This is the field of study I want to get into and this will help a lot.
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