As a seasoned gamer and science fiction enthusiast with a penchant for both retro and modern games, I can’t help but be captivated by the allure of teleportation, a recurring theme that graces our screens from “Star Trek” to “The Fly”. Having spent countless hours traversing virtual galaxies in search of exotic planets and engaging in epic space battles, I must admit that the concept of instantaneous travel has always held a special charm for me.
Teleportation is a common theme in science fiction, appearing frequently from shows like “Star Trek” to movies such as “The Fly”, currently streaming on Peacock. In “Star Trek”, teleportation is advanced technology that effortlessly transports thousands of people over short or long distances daily. On the other hand, in “The Fly”, teleportation is still developing and has the potential to cause terrible errors, such as transforming a baboon into an inside-out creature and mixing Jeff Goldblum’s DNA with a fly’s.
In a rephrased form: Goldblum portrays Seth Brundle, a researcher whose work aims to revolutionize the world and human existence as we understand it. This ambition is fueled by his struggle with motion sickness throughout his life. Instead of traveling in conventional vehicles, Brundle invents a set of telepods, operated by a central computer, which can transport objects instantly from one location to another.
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In a turn of events, Brundle encounters journalist Veronica Quaife (played by Geena Davis) and escorts her to his lab/residence to demonstrate his invention. He requests an item that is uniquely hers, and Quaife presents him with a pair of socks. Minutes pass, and the socks mysteriously move 15 feet across the room. “It vanished there and reappeared here, if you can call it that,” Brundle comments.
As a gamer, I’ve experienced the thrill of flawless telepod technology transporting inanimate objects without a hitch. Yet, when it comes to dealing with living tissue, the machine seems to stumble and get confused, struggling to recreate that matter accurately on the receiving end. Much like the character Brundle, who faced this issue with moving matter between two points in space, his invention couldn’t replicate the original material perfectly. This same challenge eventually leads to his personal troubles with a housefly, and it’s one of the major hurdles we face when trying to develop practical teleportation technology in reality.
Even Teleportation Can’t Break the Laws of Physics
In a reality where teleportation becomes feasible, it’s expected to deviate significantly from its portrayal in fiction. A key distinction would be the speed at which travel occurs. Regardless of the mechanism, teleportation won’t surpass the speed of light.
When it comes to teleportation, issues with light-speed limitations don’t arise when moving relatively short distances, such as from one location on Earth or even between Earth and nearby space. The time it takes for light to travel between Earth and the Moon is roughly 1.3 seconds, which is fast enough to be considered instantaneous. However, complications arise when traveling to more distant locations. For example, a teleporter moving between here and Mars would spend anywhere from 4 minutes to 24 minutes in transit between the telepods, depending on the planets’ positions in their orbits.
In various types of teleportation, there are additional constraints to consider. For instance, if the teleporter is transporting your physical matter from one location to another, it will be significantly slower as particles with mass can’t reach the speed of light. Furthermore, there’s the challenge of obstacles. With only a few exceptions for particles like neutrinos, most objects don’t pass through solid barriers easily, so the teleporter would primarily function when there is a clear path between the origin and destination points.
A possible alternative approach could involve converting an item or individual into data, transmitting this data as a continuous flow of massless light particles (photons) at the speed of light, and finally reconstructing the data back into its initial state at the destination.
How Real-World Teleportation Might Work
In this type of teleportation that comes closest to our science fiction fantasies, it’s not your physical self that gets transported, but rather the data or information about you. The issue then arises as to how accurately we must transmit this information to ensure that you arrive safely at the new location.
Is merely recreating the arrangement of atoms and molecules, placing cells in their proper positions enough, or does the essence of individuality reside at a more fundamental level? Must we also account for the quantum state of every particle to encapsulate what defines us as individuals? How far down do we need to delve to maintain everything that makes a person distinct?
Even if we assume we only need to know the position of each atom in the body, the amount of information you would need to capture the entirety of a human being is staggering. Even if we assume a significant level of data compression, one bit of information for each atom, storing the information for an entire person would require a computer with thousands of times the storage capacity of all the world’s computers combined.
Even if we managed to construct a computer with enough capacity and speed to process vast amounts of data, the transmission times would still be rather slow. A team of students from the University of Leicester calculated that the data transfer rate couldn’t exceed 30 gigahertz, and it would take about 5 quadrillion years to complete the transfer. Given that major technological advancements are unlikely in the near future, it seems we won’t be developing teleportation devices anytime soon. If you were to ask Seth Brundle, he might agree that this turn of events is for the best.
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2024-10-08 23:31