[extropy-chat] Teleportation Question

[Robert Bradbury]

On 10/10/06, scerir <scerir at libero.it> wrote:
>
> According to prof. Zeilinger it should be possible, but in the far future
> only, to teleport little molecules and perhaps viruses, with a good enough
> fidelity (this is an important factor!).


But why do you care?

I don't see what quantum teleportation has to do with classical
teleportation.

In classical teleportation you want an exact copy at a remote location.  The
disassembly of the original is commonly part of the equation but I can
imagine processes where it might not be entirely necessary.  The classical
quantum states of all of the atoms in the original are IMO *irrelevant* from
a human "teleportation" standpoint [1] -- the quantum state of my brain
changes far more between going to sleep and waking up or letting my blood
sugar get too low and I find neither of those upsetting.  And a dumb rock
doesn't care whether or not it is the "same" rock when it is moved from
point A to point B.

If you do this by turning matter into energy, transmitting a beam of energy
and turning it back into matter I think you have *lots* of problems
involving the difficulty of doing those conversions, the efficiency of those
conversions, the non-trivial amount of energy required for 60kg of matter (a
small fraction of that mass is converted to energy in an atomic bomb
explosion), etc.  So I think that is a non-starter until one is *well* into
the singularity and perhaps not even then.

If one uses "teleportation" of information through a worm hole, "subspace"
or some other "magical" ether then one still has the problem of how to get
it in an out and it doesn't make the object being teleported "magically"
appear at some distant point in space -- there has to be a transporter,
ring, etc. on both ends.  (So you can never beam down to a planet without a
transporter on the planet.)

If you want the "same" atoms, you have a big problem with accelerating that
much matter up to the speed of light and slowing it down again.  If your
purpose is simply to send someone from point A to point B they can walk or
ride a boat or fly in a plane.

If anyone can explain to me how any of these so-called "teleportation"
experiments are in any way relevant to classical (i.e. Star Trek or Star
Gate) teleportation please do so.

I used to be able to stand on my head -- but it isn't useful for very much.
I think that is how I classify experiments in this area as well.

Robert

1. Of course if you start to drift off into Penrose or perhaps Tipler land
you may consider them to be more important than I do.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20061010/6c259b21/attachment.html>