OVERLOOKED TELEPORTATION FACTS
COPYRIGHT 2000-2009 GEORGE D. PETERSON, JR.

FOREWORD
"Beam me up, Scottie!" 

The image flickers (and there is ALWAYS the sounds - even in the vacuum of space, we must have sounds!) and the person appears on the surface of the planet.

Let's give it the fact that the starship is moving in orbit as is the surface of the planet many miles below (did you know that at the surface of the earth at the equator, the speed, because of the earth's rotation, is about 1,000 miles per hour?) is being precisely matched.... let's not even consider that if you are a few seconds or meters (whatever) off course, the person may get to materialize with their toes in the sidewalk or a entirely inside a brick wall...  Let's just talk about teleportation, the moving of an object from one place to another using scientific magic.

BASICS
We are in away doing some form of teleportation, in a telephone. We are magically relocating the voice of another from one location, almost instantly, to another location.  We speak in a handset, which changes sound waves (pressure) into electronic signals that move electrons through a wire to a distant location where it is converted back to sound waves again in a handset. [Yes I am aware of fiber optics, microwave links, etc etc - stay with the simple program!]

In theory, we would convert stuff into an electronic signal and sent it through wires (or fiber or microwaves, etc) to a distant location where they would be converted into stuff once again.  Stuff could be a cup of coffee, your aunt Martha, or money from a bank vault (you never saw THAT on Star Trek, did you?!).

I'm guessing that the stuff would have to be disassembled piece (atoms or even smaller) by piece and then precisely reconstructed at the other end.  It would have to be done very quickly because matter, even solid matter, is moving at the atomic level and you'd want it to be an exact representation.

For example, if you were to transport an hour glass, you would want it to catch all of the grains of sand at the right moment otherwise you may miss one grain or even make the same one 'appear' in two different places.  Do you need to first "freeze" the stuff you are sending because there is NOTHING that quick to get all that stuff at the exact same time.  ... and don't forget, the universe is in motion, also.

OUCH
OK. Aunt Martha is our first volunteer. Disassembling her has gotta hurt!  We know it must be done pretty quickly less she starts.... uh, leaking.  OK, she is now all disassembled  stored in memory, but what is exactly stored in memory? Is it representations of the itty bitty pieces of Aunt Martha or actually those pieces themselves?

The sound waves we hear on the radio are not the same sound waves coming from the announcer. The sound waves 'vibrated' at the microphone are not the ones reaching us but we are hearing sound waves being vibrated nearby the speaker in the radio.  It is not the original sound wave that came from the announcer even though it sounds exactly like it.  SO!!!!

When Aunt Martha is "reassembled," is it of the exact same stuff that came from our original Aunt Martha?  To me, unless you were able to actually move the exact pieces of Martha from one place to another, that is NOT Aunt Martha.  Not only that, but you killed the real Aunt Martha and this fake lady, although an exact replica is just that, a replica.

So if you need to transport the pieces of the original Martha from place to place, you are still back to the original dilemma - matter transport, although small, it is still matter and you need to get it (the real "it") from one place to another.

Apparently the crew of the Enterprise is cool with the idea of dying and having some replica go on with their lives, so the situation suggests that you are disassembled (with instructions - ergo a pattern buffer or something) and the INSTRUCTIONS or a map of your makeup, so to speak, are relayed to another site where available matter is used in the reconstruction of you, aunt Martha, or coffee.  Wonder what available matter your coffee was re-assembled with?  Maybe that is why it tastes kinda like dirt.  I'm sure there are energy to matter and matter to energy converters everywhere, though!

INSTRUCTIONS
If all we need are instructions to reassemble the coffee, then why can't we put that on a floppy and take it some where and do it over and over again?  Well I bet that is how the Star Trek replicators work!  Brew your best cup of coffee and disassemble it, get the instructions (the map of the itty bitty part's location) stored, and reassembled it with perfect taste precision time and time again.

So if we want two aunt Marthas, we just keep pushing the button?  OK, so I am lazy, I duplicate myself and send me to work today, right? But what happens to "me2"?  That is a person, a person that is actually taking over my life and sooner or later, me2 will come home and find me1. Maybe I will gouge its heart (sorry, BORROW it's heart) out if I have a coronary - that seems logically moral.  Me2's remains can go back to the surplus matter container.

The Riiker accident (Star Trek), the comedy hit Multiplicity, and so forth, deal with this aspect from different angles but nonetheless just scratch the surface of the unending moral dilemmas of teleportation of humans.

IS IT POSSIBLE?
I think it will be possible to "scan" stuff in one "chamber" and transmit instructions to another chamber, no matter how far away.  It would then reconstruct it using the instructions and "surplus stuff" (modeling clay, if you like) as a source of material at the destination chamber, or do some form of energy to matter transformation.

The device would have to actually destroy the original first because you would have to "scan" every part of the original.  That would logically be from outside to inside. Of course you'd reassemble it locally (if necessary) once the scan was complete.  That will take a lot of precision and high speed (so the fish tank won't leak when the glass walls are scanned away).  It will take a lot of computer memory because things have lotsa atoms in them and you have to remember the size, weight, color, speed, location, whatever, and store each of those in memory (instructions, the map). 

It would require a lot of energy at both ends. The use of the energy would not, however, be able to have any effect on the stuff you were to be teleporting.  If you teleported a candle, the energy would not have to give off heat or the candle would melt.

If you teleported an unexposed film canister, the film should not be exposed to light as the outside shell was "removed," even if quickly. The teleporter's energy would not be able to give off light or any radiation that would cause the film to be exposed.

DOWN SIDE.
Ok, if we do ever get matter transport, by taking matter down to the Sub-Mono-Eek-A-Tronic level, then theses S.M.E.A.T. particles are some how moved from one place to another with the Quantum Tunneling Instant Portal (Q-TIP) just like a television or radio transmission.

Ever heard of static?  Yeah, some kind of interference.  Ever watched TV when  an airplane was passing over head?  The signal on the TV will ghost and flutter.  I really know of very few wireless transmissions that are 100% and often wired transmissions are interfered with.  Right! Poof, there goes the left index finger or even worse, a heart valve.

And if you really did NOT like Aunt Martha, well, just wait until she gets in the "Q-TIP" and hold an iron plate between mars and the microwave dish.  Strange. Aunt Martha was never seen on mars.

PARTICLE vs. ENERGY TRANSPORT.
Consider a lit candle in a transporter. When it arrives a its destination, will the candle still be lit?  The energy--light and especially the heat--is not a particle. So the heat and light will not be transported, but the candle will. It will arrive at its destination as if it had been blown out.

With that in mind, consider the transport of a glass of water at room temperature. It's liquid. The temperature of the room--energy--keeps it in the liquid state.  So transport that!  It arrives with out any energy at the destination with no energy, so it becomes ice. As a matter of fact I am speculating that it arrives at absolute zero. Of course it begins to soak up the sun when it arrives and will eventually 'melt.'

Back to poor aunt Martha, again.  We're gonna have to figure a way to thaw her safely or figure a way to transport all of her energy or we have Martha-cicle.  (Transportation is becoming less and  less likely, isn't it?).

OK... how many of you have thought about this already? MAYBEEEEEEE it's why yours doesn't work!

Oh, by the way, to be effective, the device would have to take Visa, Master Card, Discover, AND American express.

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