# Teleportation truely possible within a decade? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 3, 2002, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817 "2002-09-03T15:53:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Islander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a87d85/32.png) [@Islander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Islander)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/1 "2002-09-03T15:53:18Z")
Is teleportation of physical substances possible with in the next decade? ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/2 "2002-09-03T16:02:43Z")
I would seriously doubt it. IIRC, the only “teleportation” that’s ever been demonstrated so far is of quantum states of individual photons. AFAIK there isn’t even a theoretical basis for teleportation of macroscopic physical objects. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/3 "2002-09-03T16:21:05Z")
Realize that to ‘teleport’ something you need to apply E=MC[sup]2[/sup]. Say you try to do that to a 100Kg person or object and the energy requirement is stupendous. This, of course, doesn’t even consider the issues with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In order to take an object apart and put it back together again somwhere else you would need to know the _exact_ position and _exact_ velocity of every particle in that system. The Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know both values precisely (the better you know one the worse you know the other). In Star Trek they make a nod to this claiming the transporter system has something called a Heisenberg Compensator as part of its machinery. Of course, no explanation for how such a device works is given hence the term science-_fiction_. In short, you will almost certainly not see a teleporter within the next decade and chances are such a device will never be built (at least given what we understand about physics today and allowing that something no one has thought of may be invented in the future). ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/4 "2002-09-03T16:38:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole \* > **Realize that to ‘teleport’ something you need to apply E=MC[sup]2[/sup]. Say you try to do that to a 100Kg person or object and the energy requirement is stupendous.** FYI: From [this link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=122487&highlight=energy+joules) several people calculated the energy we are talking about here. A 75 kilogram person (or object) is the equivalent in energy of (roughly) a 10,000 megaton nuclear bomb. That is the amount of energy (at a minimum) you’d have to handle and control to teleport someone someplace. Although the energy wouldn’t be released in bomblike fashion that’s still a butt-load of juice. Also from the link above they mentioned that this much energy would be enough to power 1 million 100W light bulbs for around 2,100 years. No simple feat. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/5 "2002-09-03T16:47:33Z")
Ah but you wouldn’t have to worry about the matter-energy transfer if you simply build an exact replica of the person at the desired destination, then kill the first one. Soylent Green, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Jdeforrest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@Jdeforrest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jdeforrest)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/6 "2002-09-03T17:03:12Z")
Or 1 billion 100W light bulbs for around 2.1 years. Though Whack-a-Mole’s version sounds better 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Jdeforrest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@Jdeforrest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jdeforrest)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/7 "2002-09-03T17:04:45Z")
BTW, weren’t they talking about simply transporting a single atom within the next decade? Not saying that’s simple either but we wouldn’t need a trillion megaton bomb either. ---
**Author:** ![Islander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a87d85/32.png) [@Islander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Islander)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/8 "2002-09-03T17:05:10Z")
baby steps folks, lets not assume a “person” to teleport yet, but a mist particle of H2O or a grain of NaCL is more my line thought. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/9 "2002-09-03T17:22:16Z")
> [@](#): > > baby steps folks, lets not assume a “person” to teleport yet, but a mist particle of H2O or a grain of NaCL is more my line thought. Still highly unlikely. HUGE energy conversion involved, and all that Heisenberg uncertainty when you put it back together – even if you label all the parts (that’s why the transporters on the Enterprise all have “Heisenberg Compensators” – whatever the hell they are). Even without all that, teleportation is a real worm’s nest of difficulties. Read Larry Niven’s essay “The Theory and Practice of Teleportation” in his collection **All the Myriad Ways**. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/10 "2002-09-03T17:51:34Z")
If you are taking a person apart at one place and then putting him or her back together at another place, aren’t you _by definition_ killing that person and replacing him or her with a duplicate? I don’t think we’ll be teleporting people ever, because there’s no way to do it without killing you. Sure, no one else will notice the difference and your duplicate will have all your memories, but you’d be gone. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/11 "2002-09-03T18:03:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Islander \* > \*\*baby steps folks, lets not assume a “person” to teleport yet, but a mist particle of H2O or a grain of NaCL is more my line thought. \*\* Well, to be fair, it is theoretically possible that you might spontaneously teleport from in front of your computer and re-appear on (say) Mars. The chances of this happening are insanely slim (wait a few trillion years and the chances are still pretty remote) but the chance is non-zero. Quantum teleportation has been observed in laboratories for awhile now but as mentioned above moving into the macro realm makes things FAR more difficult. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2002, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/12 "2002-09-03T23:47:58Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, to be fair, it is theoretically possible that you might spontaneously teleport from in front of your computer and re-appear on (say) Mars. It’s far more likely (although still insanely improbable) that you’d just collapse into a pile of goo on the floor. And it’s just as probable that you’d teleport to Mars, but when you got there, you’d be Ronald Reagan. In other words, don’t count on it. ---
**Author:** ![JS\_Princeton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/57b2e6/32.png) [@JS\_Princeton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JS_Princeton)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/13 "2002-09-04T01:08:32Z")
Yeah, this is all theoretical mumbo-jumbo. If it can’t happen in the age of the universe you ain’t gonna see it happen. These things we’re talking about are less likely to happen than that (except for the goo bit which due to the second law of thermodynamics must happen in some fashion given enough time). In fact there ridiculous orders of magnitude in higher probability. You are not a waveparticle. If you insist, you can be an extremely highly attentuated quantum waveparticle. To even move you the tiniest detectable amount would be a staggeringly unlikely event. At Mars, the amplitude of your position wavefunction is all the more ridiculously lower. There’s a reason things that we see don’t magically teleport around, and that reason is physical. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/14 "2002-09-04T01:43:15Z")
We’ll have plenty of power when we get commercial fusion reactors online. They’ve been telling me we are about thirty years away from them for as long as I can remember. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/15 "2002-09-04T12:26:36Z")
> [@](#): > > If you are taking a person apart at one place and then putting him or her back together at another place, aren’t you by definition killing that person and replacing him or her with a duplicate? Yep. So its not useful except as a bulk matter transporter. ---
**Author:** ![Islander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a87d85/32.png) [@Islander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Islander)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/16 "2002-09-04T13:17:18Z")
So in the event a teleportation machine is succesfully built, with every teleportation of an individual, the deconstruct process expires the person, thus the soul leaves the body. During the reconstruction phase the body is recreated without a soul? Where is the soul re-obtained from? Last I heard you’re only given one soul. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/17 "2002-09-04T14:24:01Z")
There’s also going to be one hell of a bandwidth problem, even if the exact-measurement problem and the total-energy problem are solved. If you think downloading a complete Linux build over a 28K modem is impractical, wait until you try to beam your 100Kg person from station 1 to station 2. > [@](#): > > Estimated time remaining: 98,267,406,311,028,601 hours ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/18 "2002-09-04T14:41:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JS Princeton \* > \*\*Yeah, this is all theoretical mumbo-jumbo. If it can’t happen in the age of the universe you ain’t gonna see it happen. \*\* In an infinite universe shouldn’t this sort of thing be happening all the time? I mean, the chances of _you_ spotanesouly disappearing and re-appearing on Mars as Ronald Reagan are stunningly remote. Still, say the chances are 1:Googleplex and but you have a Googleplex of items in a universe (yeah yeah…only 10[sup]80[/sup] particles exist…just go with the example) then shouldn’t an object be popping around almost all the time? Even if you drastically lower the number of items in the universe vs. the chance something will spontaneously teleport isn’t it reasonable to say something does it every few million years or so _somewhere_? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/19 "2002-09-04T15:02:32Z")
This whole thread made think of a new theory that I thought I’d share with the Dopers here and see what they think. Clothes driers are, in fact, Cosmic Random Chance Accumulators. Basically, they gather tons of improbability and make it probable. However, in one of those quirks of physics, they only seem able to generate sufficient probability to teleport something about the size of a sock and only one sock at that. This may also explain visitations from alien cultures as they come here to determine why we keep littering their planet with tons of socks. Being multilegged aliens they find the tons of unmatched socks to be particularly annoying which is why they are planning our total destruction as we speak. ---
**Author:** ![Mort\_Furd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mort\_Furd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mort_Furd)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2002, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817/20 "2002-09-04T15:17:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole \* > \*\* > > In an infinite universe shouldn’t this sort of thing be happening all the time? I mean, the chances of _you_ spotanesouly disappearing and re-appearing on Mars as Ronald Reagan are stunningly remote. Still, say the chances are 1:Googleplex and but you have a Googleplex of items in a universe (yeah yeah…only 10[sup]80[/sup] particles exist…just go with the example) then shouldn’t an object be popping around almost all the time? > > Even if you drastically lower the number of items in the universe vs. the chance something will spontaneously teleport isn’t it reasonable to say something does it every few million years or so _somewhere_? \*\* Why do you think you can’t find your car keys sometimes? Just joking. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-truely-possible-within-a-decade/126817.md?page=2)