First successfull teleportation done!

[Thorgal]

The whole point of quantum "teleportation" is that you transport the information, and not the matter/energy.

That sounds very nice. But you can not teleport matter to a point of the space if in the destination point, there is not matter. I want to say that you can not create matter from nothing. A transport must exist.

[Andrew1999]

There's several levels of non-living objects to test this on too. I'd imagine transporting somebody's laptop while it's running would be a big hurdle, for example.

[LDiCesare]

First we need to learn transporting atoms, dead or alive.

You should be ashamed. Killing those atoms!
Seriously, Stefu, I had the same misgivings about teleportation and such at a time. I talked with a SF writer who made this point:
When you go asleep, when you wake up, what makes you sure you are the same old self?How do you know? You weren't there in between, or were you conscious all the time?
And who can explain what the Theseus paradox is?
Anyway, I think that teleporting information is what matters.

[Stefu]

Seriously, Stefu, I had the same misgivings about teleportation and such at a time. I talked with a SF writer who made this point:
When you go asleep, when you wake up, what makes you sure you are the same old self?How do you know? You weren't there in between, or were you conscious all the time?

"What makes you sure"! How reassuring!

For one thing, I do not actually die during sleep - I would die during this teleportation process. I'm don't know too much about what happens during sleep, but I'd wager a guess it's different enough from what happens during teleportation that the two aren't comparable.

[ranskaldan]

The thing is, it is impossible to know whether you die or not during teleportation.

In fact, no matter how many trials you get, there is NO way we can EVER know.

So as far as I'm concerned, I'm not stepping into any such device either.

[Jaakko]

**Warning: weird ramblings**


From what I've read, it's not nearly as simple as "send info on X - destroy X - create copy Y from info".
To my understanding they are transporting quantum states uninterrupted, an important distinction from "ordinary" copying.
Whether this will transport the original consciousness uninterrupted as well, I can't tell. Hell, I can't even form an opinion here, except through intuition, which is a pretty useless tool in physics once you go to QM.

A good test would be to see if this thing could create duplicates, but even then both could be the true you, but immediately become "different" because of existing in different places. Ie . you'd only be the same thing as long as you were completely identical.

As a final question, how would teleporting differ from traveling in time from position A to position B?
In teleporting, would you die any more than you die while passing through time?

[Stefu]

In teleporting, would you die any more than you die while passing through time?

Well, possibly, if we're talking about time travelling - to the future or back in time, for example.

Then again, time travelling is even more impossible than matter transmission.

[LDiCesare]

I'd wager a guess it's different enough

Well, you're gambling your life every night then.
From your conscience point of view, what makes you sure you are 'the same'?
The question is what are you? If you define yourself as the continuity of your consciousness, then teleportation is safer than sleep. Or do you feel like you must be the same in a spatial continuity through time (probably like your position can be derived along time and any dimension of space at any point)? If so, you can indeed never teleport. However, space continuity is a macroscopic thing. I am pretty sure your wave function would be continuous in space and time, and, from a quantum point of view, your position is a consequence of your wave function, so that point probably doesn't hold.
Now my quantum mechanics courses are err... 10 year old, so I may just have been telling utter bull****.

[Stefu]

Well, you're gambling your life every night then.

Well, sleep deprivation would kill me sooner or later anyhow, so it isn't that big a gamble.

If you define yourself as the continuity of your consciousness, then teleportation is safer than sleep.

Why?

And again, I'm not a sleep expert, so I don't know what happens to consciousness while you sleep. It certainly is somewhere back there, ready to awaken you if anything threatening happens.

[Jaakko]

DiCesare has a very good point about wave functions and whatnot, IMO (no, I've no idea if I'm spewing BS either ).
In fact I can't see any difference between the end result of teleportation and going somewhere by classical means.

[Boris Godunov]

I'm with Stefu here. I don't see any logical way I can be dissambled at the atomic level and then reassembled and it's still the same me. It may be a perfect replica, but it seems in the transport process my consciousness would be broken at some point. I'd die, and there's my doppelganger.

I'd become the unibomber before stepping into one of these things.

[Jaakko]

The way doesn't have to be logical, and probably isn't either, in a conventional sense!

I'm frying my brain thinking about this, we need someone like MtG or IntgrSpin to educate us...

[Stefu]

I stopped thinking about 30 minutes ago. I've thought too much today. First a retest on mathematics, then I got into thinking about subject as cheerful as "what happens after death?" and now this.

Now I just listen to music.

[Sava]

I bet getting disassembled by a teleporter hurts like hell. Personally, I don't think its possible.... humans that is. I'm sure teleporting regular objects will happen.... maybe raw materials. I can see mining on other planets and beaming the minerals to Earth.

[Kassiopeia]

The moment I read of Stefu's concern, that quote about going to asleep and waking as a different person came to my mind.

Because, really, how can I tell that it is *I* who went to sleep last night? Maybe I'm just a replica that has the exact memories of the old me.

Therefore, the only problem with teleportation is the fact that people are aware of the fact that their old self will be destroyed.

If we could trick people into believing that it is actually their very matter that is transported, and that there remains no former self that is destroyed, then no-one would care except the people who built the bloody thing.

Problem solved, everyone would be happy, except that those builders might be somewhat reluctant to use the device.

But, then again, I myself would never dare using such a thing.