I see the problem of teleportation as two separate problems:
The transportation of atoms from Point A to Point B.
The disassembly of atoms set in a certain pattern and reassembly of atoms into the same exact pattern.
For the purpose of this conversation I would like to concentrate on the 2nd problem: the breaking down of atoms in a certain pattern, followed by the reconstruction of that pattern using those same atoms…and to not sideline this into a discussion of life and souls and self and stuff I would like to stick to something simple-like the half filled bottle of Diet Mountain Dew sitting before me, perhaps. Can matter be broken down that far?
Can matter be reassembled? Does it look like it is at all possible?
There is a book “The Physics of Star Trek” by Lawrence Krauss that discusses what technologies would be required to enable things like teleportation.
The “practical” way to perform teleportation, is not to transport the atoms themselves, but rather to transFER the information required to (re)create the atoms. Think of it like a fax: the image on the sheet is “captured”, then transferred, and when received, the image is re-created.
So teleportation would be the same: “digitize” all the atoms to obtain the information on how to recreate, send this information, then re-create the atoms.
The kicker, though, is like a fax, you end up with both the original and the re-created version. So in order to only maintain one of a person, you would need to destroy the original ! (or not - this occurred in a TNG episode with 2 Rykers existing).
Do we have the technology to “digitize” atoms, to capture enough information to be able to recreate ? I don’t think so.
Do we have the technology to re-create ? 3-D printing is a step in this direction. There is still a long ways to go, though.
For the purpose of this discussion I would like to avoid talking about all the different methods of teleportation and stick to the topic of disassembly and reassembly of atoms, not the faxing of info and/or the teleportation aspect.
If you’re going to use the exact same atoms what’s the point of breaking down the Diet Mountain Dew can at all? Why not just carry it in some manner? You’re going to have the same mass to transmit, just in smaller units. And you’re going to have the overhead of assembly and disassembly.
In order to reassemble the item (Mt Dew, Dr. McCoy, etc) first you have to know exactly *precisely *where every atom is (location), and its state (velocity). And that is fundamentally impossible. Not technologically impossible at this time, but rules of the universe impossible.
How does ST get around this impossibility? By using Heisenberg compensators. (How do they work? “Very well, thank you.”)
Let alone that even a 0.0001% inaccuracy in reassembly would create an error so large Dr. McCoy might not survive. Or the Mountain Dew would become evil.
As much as I love ST, the transporters CAN’T work as described. the energy cost of precisely mapping the location of every atom in a person, disassembling it (how? energy beams? How many? Do they do any damage?) shipping it across 40000 miles (how? as atoms? quarks?) and then reassembling it remotely (how?) and making sure every atom is exactly precisely where is should be, would be astronomical. It would be cheaper to land the Enterprise.
I fan wank how the transporter really works, and enjoy the show.
Because I want to tie it in with the larger “Teleportation” problem. If we are talking about just making it into smaller parts and shipping it conventionally it is no longer part of the “Teleportation” problem-it is part of the “UPS/Fed-Ex” problem.
Disassembly is always possible: for instance, if you heat molecules up to thousands of degrees you can split apart water, nitrogen, and even carbon monoxide.
There are mechanisms like protein folding to reliably construct complex molecules, and technologies like atomic force microscopy can manipulate individual atoms at room temperature, but this is all a far cry from taking a cloud of hot atomic gas and molding it into a living cell.
The reassembly-from-atoms step also raises the Ship of Theseus problem: is the reassembled person the same person, or an identical facsimile of the original? How would one tell the difference?
And, even more thorny: does consciousness persist across the disassembly/reassembly steps? Or is it a “fresh” consciousness that simply has all the same memories and states as the original? And again: are these even distinguishable?
These sound like sophomores-talking-late-in-their-dorm-room questions, but even so, they’re nontrivial.
Wait…previous posts discuss exploding animals and debate whether teleported Mountain Dew would be good or evil, and you jump on mine for violating your terms of service? And in IMHO?
Breaking down the atoms, while currently impossible, might be feasible. Assembly is another matter.
There are two cases - assembly with equipment, and assembly without equipment, the way it is done on Star Trek.
There are also two cases - are the actual atoms sent, or just information about the atoms and their location.
If information is sent, and there is a transporter mechanism on the other side, it could have a stock of atoms which would be assembled into the teleported item. In this case, duplication is possible. It is very iffy due to all the reasons expressed, but someone could invent some technobabble to explain it. The buffer described in Star Trek holds the information while it is being assembled from the breakdown. You can lose information over time, like what happened to Mr. Scott’s friend in Relics.
If there is no machine on the other side, where are the atoms coming from? You are not going to make metals from the air. So that’s a loser.
Let’s assume the atoms get transmitted. One problem is that they have to be sent without loss and directly from transporter to transporter. How are you going to send an iron atom through the walls of a building not to mention hundreds of feet of rock. The problem without a machine on the other end is even worse.
So, sending information to a booth on the other side might be justifiable, but nothing else.
In my universe I have what is basically a transporter, but it works by opening a tunnel through another dimension to the point where you want to go, and pushing the object or person with a tractor beam, using gravity control to compensate for the different speed of the destination. Same effect but none of the practical and philosophical issues of the ST transporter.
Can you break down a can of soda into a pile of individual atoms? You can run it through a shredder, or heat the hell out of it and melt it into slag and steam, vaporize it with a laser, maybe.
Certainly the Dew can be broken down into its component parts, eventually.
Reassemble it? I’ve never heard of technology, even conceptually, that is remotely capable of taking a pile of pure elements and turning it into something resembling a can of soda.
The height of assembly technology right now is 3D printing. So, perhaps you could break down the can and use sintering to rebuild a similar can (or bottle)from the same metal (or plastic or glass). However, much of the product is assembled from raw materials that are processed in multiple steps in high volumes, and with proprietary techniques. There is a plastic coating inside the can and paint outside the can either of which my involve complex reactions after the coating is applied to the metal. A plastic bottle goes through multiple steps of processing long before it even gets blown into a bottle shape. Is it possible to bypass all those complex steps and process the bottle all in a single go? If it’s a glass bottle, can you replicate the internal stress profile of annealed glass, or tempered glass, without going through a heat/cool cycle? Just assemble the glass properly stressed?
I’m thinking we don’t have anything remotely resembling this, even in the barest concept stages.
I feel your pain. It was a joke in service of answering the OQ.
But reassembly is the hard part. Anybody with a wee bit of power can disassemble anything. We’ve had that technology since July 16, 1945. Reassembly is tricky. I believe it is impossible, or at least unworkable, no matter the technology leap. So whether your transporter outputs an unrecognizable lump of red meat, or an evil mt Dew, the transporter still won’t work.
For example, this review article (from 2009) is called “Atomic force microscopy as a tool for atom manipulation” and explains how they are able to push and pull atoms, as well as swap atoms between the surface and the tip, by bringing the tip close to the surface and scanning it across the surface in certain directions.
The amount of energy required to assemble, for example, a single human DNA strand, in a short amount of time is non-trivial, to say the least. Multiply that by all the DNA strands in a body. Throw in all the other molecules being generated at the same time. And you end up with:
A rapidly expanding cloud of steam and organic volatiles.
Makes the goof Fred Kwan makes in his first attempt at transporting in Galaxy Quest look nice by comparison.
Right, but what gets reassembled and the context is pretty crucial. For instance, reassembling a crystal would probably not be too hard given atomic manipulation. However atoms and molecules in our bodies are moving all the time. How do you freeze them until the reassembly is complete and then let them vibrate without everything falling apart. And how can you measure where they are instantaneously, so that the reassembled body is consistent.
The information versus atoms issue is fairly crucial in answering the question also.
