Speed of light vs warp 5

[eclipce]

Other than the idea that the original copy is destroyed in the transport. I think thats cool. When they can actualy send the original copy I might not mind transporters transporting humans...

Untill that happens the current transportation system has religious implications.

[BuzzLY]

I think the idea is like moving a file... you aren't really physically tranferring the file. It is copied to it's new location, then deleted from the original place.

What I want to know is this: Let's assume that in 300 years they perfect transportation / replication. Will they be able to transfer the soul, too? How about brainwaves? Will a person be the same person when they are transported?

Makes ya think... love to hear what you all think about that.

[Elizabeth]

If you are of the assumption that the soul exists outside the flesh and blood and molecules of the body, then transporting a person via molecular breakdown shouldn't harm the soul. But one wonders if the soul has nothing to encase it, will it simply float away to heaven, and thus the person dies upon re-entry?

Perhaps they should also develop a means by which a machine can be attached to the brain to keep the brainwaves going during the process, like a battery back up 🙂 That way, no hiccups and no brain damage, and perhaps a "transfer" of the soul as well.

I'm not volunteering to be the first, though.

-Elizabeth

[Bunkermaster]

Concidering that we achieve teletransportation, we can asume that one technological prerequisite will be to backup a person's brain and that at that point we will know how to "see" the soul.

I believe the soul is a form of energy that exists outside of space and time. If you loose your arm or your leg do you loose a part of your soul?

Some believe that when you cremate the body it helps releasing the soul. Would we not "cremate" the body in a way?

Too deep for me tonight :rolleyes:

[eclipce]

This is what Strongs Concordance had to say on the word soul.

5315. nephesh, neh'-fesh; from H5314; prop. a breathing creature

You don't have a soul, you are a soul. It's the spirit that I am more worried about.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Elizabeth
Perhaps they should also develop a means by which a machine can be attached to the brain to keep the brainwaves going during the process, like a battery back up 🙂 That way, no hiccups and no brain damage, and perhaps a "transfer" of the soul as well.

I'm not volunteering to be the first, though.

-Elizabeth

That sounds a bit like something I've been wondering about. Say it takes five seconds to thoroughly read the entire quantum state of a human (necessarily destroying the original in the process). What happens during those five seconds?

"The teleportation process will take a little time - which end do you want us to start from?"

Send the mice and chimps first.

But I can already see applications now. Something the sciforums article doesn't mention is that the laser had a signal embedded in it to make sure that the reconstructed laser was the same one that had just been demolished. So what they'd put together represents an untappable communications channel - for the fundamental reason that there is no communications channel to tap. The information is destroyed here and reconstructed there without passing through the intervening space (a situation Einstein described as "spooky" when developing the theory).

[BuzzLY]

I have often wondered the same thing. Notice that in Star Trek, it does take about 5 or 10 seconds to transport things. I always thought "if it takes 5 seconds to transport a single human, shouldn't it take 30 seconds to transport 6 of them?" The only reason it would take so long is because of the memory requirements, right?

Anyway... I'm not sure it would actually hurt, since teleportation is done at the molecular level, but I would think that your conciousness would have to be transported as well, wouldn't it? Where would it be for those 5 seconds? Contained within computer memory?

I think that if they ever do get to the point of teleporting real living organisms, they are going to come across many difficult problems...

I'll tell you one thing, though -- this discussion has given me some cool story ideas... I'm thinking about writing a story about one of the first teleported human. Could be interesting...🙂

[Elizabeth]

Buzz, I think this sparks similar controversy regarding cloning humans and the end result, so make sure you include something about a super secret cloned world where humans are cloned for same DNA organ transplants later.

Incidentally, anyone else watch Mystery Science Theater 3000? Then you will know what I'm talking about. 😃

-Elizabeth
(p.s. - great idea for a story Buzz! 🙂 )

[Bunkermaster]

cheap teleporation :

have a clone in every major town and tranfer consciousness and memory 😃

[Elizabeth]

Damn, that's a lot of bodies taking up space; guess we will have to create the colonies on Mars and Venus first... or at least a self-sustaining space station. 🙂

-Elizabeth

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Bunkermaster
have a clone in every major town and tranfer consciousness and memory 😃

You should read Greg Egan's novel, Schild's Ladder...

[eclipce]

One note about the transporter in Star Trek is that it does not operate in the same way that current transporters do.

Star Trek uses a matter to energy conversion, and then back again. So the original copy stays intact.

Our current way of teleporting is a matter to information conversion.

Eclipce

[BuzzLY]

Originally posted by Bunkermaster
cheap teleporation :

have a clone in every major town and tranfer consciousness and memory 😃

There was a movie with one of the Baldwin brothers in it with a similar plot. Say there is a person in New York that needs to conduct business in San Francisco, and another person in SF that wants to go to a Yankees game at the same time. The two of them hook up at this corporation and trade personalities. The bodies never go anywhere, but the personalities do.

Great story idea, stupid movie. They could have done much better. I'll have to look for it...

[edit]
Found it. It's called X Change. It also involves clones, but I kinda forget the whole plot, except that it was stupid LOL.

[BuzzLY]

Originally posted by eclipce
Star Trek uses a matter to energy conversion, and then back again

... with almost total disregard for the theory that such a conversion of so much mass to total energy would probably destroy a planet, or worse...

[Weedpacket]

The real (for some value of "real") difference between Star Trek transporters (and if you pay attention the scriptwriters have been given some advice from their consultants about the importance of preserving quantum state) and present-day teleporation, is tha that the latter requires the use of sending and receiving equipment that already "know about" each other in the sense that affecting the quantum state of one affects that of the other in a predictable fashion.

I almost can't believe I'm having this conversation...

[ir4z0r]

Originally posted by Bunkermaster
I believe the soul is a form of energy that exists outside of space and time.

I don't think that. I think of physical phenomen only which form a consciousness.

My problem is to imagine how it is interrupted, speaking of some
kind of pause mode.
The period of time itself (how long it's interrupted) doesn't seem
to be a problem. I've seen an episode of TNG once, where they
recovered Scotty from the transporter buffer, where he was "stored"
since ~50 years.

Maybe this would create new possibilities for longtime travel, replacing
cryo-sleep
I'd only be afraid of power failure ...

[eclipce]

Originally posted by BuzzLY
... with almost total disregard for the theory that such a conversion of so much mass to total energy would probably destroy a planet, or worse...

Pfft! 😛 Man once thought that flying was only for birds. We once thought the world was flat.

I think far enough in the future the Star Trek way of transportation will work just fine. And hey, whose to say that theory is right or can't be bypassed somehow.

[Myrkul]

i thought I would jump in here and say something.. I am not a star trek fan (rather a star wars fan).. but I am interested in all the technologies used in both series.

An earlier post posed the question "where would the conciousness be during those 5 seconds [of transportation]?"

well, your assuming the conciousness is a non-physical element. But It seems more likley our consiousness is simply electical charges in our brains. There is really nothing to suggest otherwise.. I mean if you think of our brain as a incredibly complex computer hardrive.. or for that matter a computer.. you can take a computer apart (into peices) then take them across town and put them back together.. pretty much the same thing with teleporting humans (dealing with the disassembly and reassembly not the actual transportation).. but so much more complex.

[Bunkermaster]

I aggree that the human body is using with a technology that we don't master. Biological circuitery etc.
But as for a server which has it's purpose (services, etc.) there is a user somewhere who inputs something. I call this user is the soul.
If you move the computer to the other side of town without making sure the user is aware of his computer's whereabouts... what happens?

(just woke up)

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Bunkermaster
If you move the computer to the other side of town without making sure the user is aware of his computer's whereabouts... what happens?

... kind of like an ant that crawls into a car and winds up 300 miles away when he crawls back out. What a shocker, eh?

I think perhaps teleportation could possibly happen with a coma-like state- people who recover from comas claim they were ultimately aware of their surroundings while they were "under". We could be put under a type of anesthesia while the body is moved; they currently operate on brains successfully, while constantly keeping at least some functions of the brain intact- why not transport in phases so the brain is always going? And if we were under anesthesia, we wouldn't remember a thing.

I can't imagine the lawsuits though if the destination coordinates were off (and someone ended up in the middle of the Atlantic) or if there was a "bug" in the reconstruction phase of the molecular transfer (and someone ended up with 3 arms instead of 2) 🙂

-Elizabeth