Human teleportation getting closer

[SUBMAN1]

Scientists find way to teleport atoms on optic fibres

By Mark Schliebs
July 10, 2007 11:55am



AUSTRALIAN physicists have discovered a method that could see atoms being teleported between Sydney and Perth and pave the way for possible Star Trek-like travel in the future.
The method involves cooling down a group of atoms and shooting lasers at them, making them "appear to disappear" before using transporting them along optic fibres at light speed to another location where they can be reconstructed.

The "simple" way of transporting atoms was developed by physicists Murray Olsen, Ashton Bradley, Simon Haine of the Australian Research Council Centre for Quantum-Atom Optics, and and Joseph Hope of ANU.

Dr Olsen told NEWS.com.au the method was very much like the Star Trek characters' favourite way to get back onto the ship.

The atoms are cooled to almost absolute zero, or -273C. At a billionth of a degree above this temperature, a quirk of physics makes all the atoms start behaving in the same way. Then the scientists zap them with two lasers.
“If you cool these atoms down enough ... in a condensate, they all enter the same quantum state,” Dr Olsen said.

“When a few thousand atoms are overlapping (and you hit them with the laser beams)… they basically disappear.

“We can use an optic fibre (to transport the signal at the speed of light) into a second condensate, which could be in another room, or another building, or another state.

“We’ve got the coldest thing in the universe and the fastest speed in the universe.”
Experiments

He said the method could be being used in laboratories in the next four years, but didn't expect he would ever see humans teleported.

Dr Haine said the team’s method was a lot simpler than previous theories.

Dr Haine also said their method would reconstruct the atoms better once transported, compared to the “entanglement” theory.

“As our scheme doesn’t rely on the quality of the entanglement, it may be possible to achieve more accurate teleportation via this method,” Dr Haine said.
Another scientist at ANU, Dr John Close, intends to implement the experiments over the coming years.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22048954-2,00.html

[Camaero]

Damn, if we don't die from a comet or blow ourselves up with nukes then the future is pretty sweet!

[P_Funk]

Though I've heard that Star Trek teleportation was impossible basically because the act of teleporting isn't actually moving anything but of destroying the atoms at one end and creating them at the other. Then you aren't beaming someone but killing them and duplicating them, and even then if it could reach that scale of function you don't know if the person would actually live through it.

I think its just a bit of dramatic fluff really. Lasers, yes. Warp speed, probably. Teleportation? Naw.

[fatty]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Though I've heard that Star Trek teleportation was impossible basically because the act of teleporting isn't actually moving anything but of destroying the atoms at one end and creating them at the other. Then you aren't beaming someone but killing them and duplicating them, and even then if it could reach that scale of function you don't know if the person would actually live through it.

Yes, AFAIK our current level of 'teleportation' just entails reading the configuration of atom X and reconfiguring atom Y to be the same. 'Replication' is probably a better word for this.

[Chock]

Well I know for a fact that there are aliens that have teleported people to my hometown, because it's full of people that are most definitely 'not from this planet'
:rotfl:

Chock

[The Avon Lady]

"Help me-e-e-e-e-e-e!!!! Help me-e-e-e-e-e-e!!!!"

[kiwi_2005]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Though I've heard that Star Trek teleportation was impossible basically because the act of teleporting isn't actually moving anything but of destroying the atoms at one end and creating them at the other. Then you aren't beaming someone but killing them and duplicating them, and even then if it could reach that scale of function you don't know if the person would actually live through it.

I think its just a bit of dramatic fluff really. Lasers, yes. Warp speed, probably. Teleportation? Naw.

Yeah i read the same, but it would be great if they found a way to teleport humans imagine that, no more need to fly everyone in the far furture would have a teleport machine in their home it would be as common as a Television,. Well im off to paris for the weekend, you step on the panel push some buttons and zap your in paris. Would be no need for roads, transport everything would be teleported.

Maybe in 10,000 years in the future human teleportation might happen, till then experimental teleportation of humans will end with results similar to the Ripley clones in Aliens Resurrection

[Reaves]

Soon all your bases will be transported to us!

[Letum]

I love the "teleporter paradox". Its a phillosophical paradox that goes thusly:

"The year is 2500, and teleportation technology has been perfected for use on humans in interstellar travels. This is how the human teleporter works: instead of actually sending you (with all of your atoms) through space-time, it simply scans your body, capturing all the information on every subatomic particle in your body at an instant (assume that they got around Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), at which point your body is destroyed (don't worry, you are put under anaesthetic for the procedure), while the information of those atoms gets transmitted to the destination, where a machine will synthesise an exact replica of you (exactly the same down to the subatomic level) using new atoms. You then wake up in a different galaxy (after the anaesthetics wear off - and the anaesthetics would also be 'teleported' by the way), with all your memory before the teleportation intact, convinced that you have survived the procedure. Of course the atoms are all new, but isn't the new body still the same 'you'? (In real life, every atom in our body eventually gets replaced anyway.)

Now let's add a twist. Instead of destroying your original body, it is preserved during the scanning process. So now we have TWO copies of you: the original one, and the replica. Both of them are identical down to the last atom, and should be behaviourally indistinguishable (because they have the same physical makeup, materialism states that they must be identical in every way.) But surely you can't be in two places at once! If 'you' survived at all, isn't it obvious that you survive as your original self, not the clone? But what's the difference between your original self and the clone anyway? Both of you would behave in exactly the same way, and both would have the same thoughts (at least initially, when there has been no divergence in the environment). So did you really survive the procedure afterall? If you didn't, doesn't that point to the existence of something other than your physical body including the information contained within the arrangement of the atoms? Is there a difference between the scenario with one original body and one clone, and the scenario where I destroy your original body, and create two(or more!) clones instead? In each case, is it so clear that 'you' will survive, and survive in one of the individuals/clones?"

One thing to keep in mind when thinking over this paradox is the fact that you have very, very few of the atoms in your body that you where born with.

[bookworm_020]

I remeber reading somewhere that even if you transport a human and rebuild them in one piece, you would turn their brain state back to the equiviant of a new born child.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

I remeber reading somewhere that even if you transport a human and rebuild them in one piece, you would turn their brain state back to the equiviant of a new born child.

Therefore, remember to include a package of Pampers in every shipment.

[Reaves]

By those theories we can come to the conclusion that life is not just the atomic makeup of our bodies but also consists of our "soul" aka life.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

I remeber reading somewhere that even if you transport a human and rebuild them in one piece, you would turn their brain state back to the equiviant of a new born child.

From a strictly scientific point of view, if you put every atom and sub-atom in the correct position, includeing all the chemicals and connections of the brain, then the new person should have all the memorys of the old one and his/her stream of concousness would not be modifyed.

This is a scientific point of view because it assumes that thought and consciousness are products of the physical state of the brain.

Originally Posted by Reaves

By those theories we can come to the conclusion that life is not just the atomic makeup of our bodies but also consists of our "soul" aka life.

If only that was a logical conclusion, then so many questions would be answered and the deportation paradox would no longer be a paradox.
There is no way we can come to such a conclusion with out physically trying the paradox.
It is just one of 2 main conclusions; either:
1) Consciousness and thought are results of physical brain states and the teleportation will not alter the stream of consciousness.
or
2) Consciousness and thought are non-physical and teleportation will alter the stream of consciousness.

Option '2' comes with it's own set of questions:
a) To what is the stream of consciousness attached?
b) How does something non-physical interact with something physical?

Option '1' is more simple, but more puzzling. It does not throw up any major logic puzzles, but it supposes that all qualia (including that of consciousness) are physical. This is counterintuitive because that does not seam to be how we experience qualia. If you thus take option '1' to be false; a new paradox arises: How would we experience the world differently if all qualia where physical?

[Reaves]

It is a very interesting subject to think about. I must admit that i'm not on an educated level to keep up (i understood what you said yet have never encountered the word qualia) however I do think that many questions would be answered if we could attempt a 'perfect teleport.'

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Letum

Now let's add a twist. Instead of destroying your original body, it is preserved during the scanning process. So now we have TWO copies of you: the original one, and the replica. Both of them are identical down to the last atom, and should be behaviourally indistinguishable (because they have the same physical makeup, materialism states that they must be identical in every way.)

Hey! I saw that episode of Star Trek too!