PARTICLE PHYSICS SCIENCE FICTION A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z                    HOME ABOUT CATEGORIES SITE MAP COPYRIGHT ADVERTISE CONTACT entire Web this site teleportation Also called teletransportation, the process of moving from one place to another without traveling through the intervening space. Teleportation is well known in science fiction, most famously in the form of the transporter in Star Trek. The term embraces both psychic teleportation, a subject not taken seriously by most scientists, and physical teleportation. The latter is now a scientific reality in the form of quantum teleportation. See also US Air Force teleportation study. A brief history of teleportation When teleportation goes wrong. The Fly (1958) The term "teleportation" was coined by Charles Fort (after whom the term "Fortean," for an anomalous phenomenon, derives) in his book Lo! (1931). The idea of a matter transmitter first appeared much earlier than this, however, in Edward Page Mitchell's story "The Man Without a Body." Arthur Conan Doyle developed a similar theme in one of his Professor Challenger tales, "The Disintegration Machine" (1927). In Special Delivery (1945), George O. Smith describes how transmitters scan an object atom by atom and then take it apart, storing the particles in a "matter bank." The information and energy released during the breakup are then beamed to a second station that uses raw materials in its own matter bank to recreate the body perfectly. E. A. van Vogt, in The Mixed Men (1952) and Algis Budry, in Rogue Moon (1960), also used tapped the possibilities of the technique. Not only did teleportation afford writers a quick way of getting their characters from A to B, but the perils and possibilities of the device itself offered new narrative potential. George Langelaan's short story "The Fly," which formed the basis of the classic 1958 horror film of the same name, explored the dire consequences of a teleportation gone wrong. Scientist Andre Delambre, while researching matter transmission, suffers the gruesome effects of dematerializing at the very moment a fly enters the teleportation chamber. His molecules mingle with those of the fly, and he bgins a slow and agonizing transformation into a giant insect. By the 1960s, "transfer booths" for personal international and interplanetary jet-setting had become SF de rigeur. Clifford Simak put them to good use in his novel Way Station (1964), while Larry Niven featured them in his award-winning book Ringworld (1970). And then, of course, there was Star Trek with its sparkling transporters able to "beam up" crewmembers in the wink of an eye. Making teleportation real Recommended book Today, far from being a science fiction dream, teleportation happens routinely in laboratories all around the world in the form of quantum teleportation. This is restricted at present to tiny particles, such as individual photons, or to quantum properties of atoms. But the question naturally arises as to whether it will ever be possible to teleport larger objects and even human beings. The issue here is one of complexity. Teleporting an electron or an atom is one thing, but an average human body is made up of about 7,000 trillion trillion atoms. How could the instantanous quantum states of so many specks of matter be made to dematerialize and reappear perfectly in a different place? Human teleportation isn't going to happen tomorrow, or, barring some stupendous breakthrough, in the next few decades. However, that needn't stop us from thinking about the consequences if it ever does become possible. In fact, a number of philosophers have already used teleportation, and teleportation incidents, to delve into the mysteries of personal identity. Who gets teleported? One of the features of quantum teleportation – the only form of teleportation that allows the creation of a perfect copy of the original someplace else – is that the original is destroyed. Does this matter? One argument says it doesn't because a perfect copy is as good as the original. At the atomic level, all particles are identical. Also, the stuff in our bodies is constantly being replaced anyway. Even without teleportation, atoms and molecules are continually streaming into and out of your body, so that over time every bit of matter of which you're made is exchanged. According to one estimate, you're completely replaced at the cellular level about every seven years. So teleportation wouldn't do anything qualitatively different from what happens in the normal course of events. It just happens to replace all of your particles in one fell swoop rather than over a period of time. Another argument insists that teleportation, far from being an efficient form of travel, is equivalent to death. A person who believes in the soul may also believe that, whereas the physical body can be teleported, the soul cannot. But even leaving the soul out of it, it's possible to argue that becoming a perfect clone means becoming someone else. Perhaps non-quantum forms of teleportation will be developed and applied to human beings. Then the original would not need to be destroyed, thus raising the specter of multiple nearly-identical copies of a person being created. Would each of these new individuals have the same rights as you – part ownership in all your belongings, some share in your spouse? A non-destructive teleporter could be used as a replicator, for virtual medicine (manipulating the stored data to create a copy better than the original), travelling into the future (creating a copy many years after the information was stored), or making backup copies (creating a copy from recently stored information if the original was involved in a mishap.) Related categories    • PARTICLE PHYSICS    • SPACE AND TIME    • ADVANCED PROPULSION CONCEPTS    • SCIENCE FICTION Also on this site: Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy & Sustainable Living Encyclopedia of History Transport Concepts & Designs (partner site) BACK TO TOP