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Beam Me Up Scotty
comes a step closer , no longer just a dream and seen in the science fiction films
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Perhaps one of you on here, not jim, would like to offer a hypothesis of how the Heisenburg uncertainty principle may be overcome. Instead of berating those that have some idea scientifically why not offer us a mechanism as to how this may be achieved. You see all the inventions and discoveries mentioned above actually had a viable hypothesis long before they were achieved. Matter transference beyond the quantum level, ie of at least one atom, requires that the position and speed of each particle, any quantum mechanics beginner wil tell you that you can only know one or the other not both, QED. So if one of you would like the nobel prize for physics then all you have to do is crack that little problem!
Perhaps it's because the "little knowledge" that I do possess about this is enough to give me a better chance of assessing the probability that this will translate into human teleportation. I could once again go into the sheer numbers of the problem, but I don't know if it's really worth it.
Never mind, let me try anyway. Firstly, this team has managed to transmit a single piece of information about a single, tiny particle, trapped in incredibly finely controlled conditions, over a few metres. Actually the distance part isn't all that important, since metres are to atoms and electrons what the distance between the Sun and Earth is to us, so if they can manage that it probably won't be too much harder to scale up the problem to distances of kilometres.
But that aside, again let's stress the two main points: this was one particle (well, to be more precise, one particle at a time), one piece of information about it, and in one incredibly controlled environment. The precision of the conditions in itself is highly significant. For this experiment to directly translate into human teleportation itself you would have to be broken up into all your constituent parts and then encased in diamonds in a very particular way. I don't overly care whether that would work or not, since I obviously wouldn't be me at the end. I'd just be several billion billion atoms and rather dead.
The next point is that there is only one piece of information. Precisely, that is the spin state of the electron trapped in this diamond environment. In order for teleportation to be feasible for humans, in such as way that the same person could step out at the end, you would have to measure not just the spin state but also maybe as many as six or seven other pieces of information about the particle exactly. Unfortunately, this is theoretically impossible in a way that cannot be overcome by experiment. It's not just hard, it's precisely impossible. Nature forbids it.
When a scientist got it wrong about how small computers would be, or about heavier than air flight, almost invariably the error was one of underestimating the technical/ engineering aspects of the problem. I mean, obviously heaver-than-air flight is possible. Birds do it all the time. The problem was that some people couldn't see how we could do it. The technology wasn't there. And then someone cracked it. This is a different problem altogether. One might as well try to make 2+3 = 6. It's a fundamental truth of nature that you cannot know everything about a particle all at once, not a technical challenge that can be overcome if only we weren't so short-sighted.
But even allowing for that minor problem, you have to overcome this impossible barrier and do the same trick not just for one tiny speck of a particle, but also a further several billion billion billion. Each proton, neutron and electron that makes you "you" must be measured carefully, its properties precisely determined, and then this information losslessly transmitted -- not even an iota of signal degradation can be allowed -- while preserving all details of the virtually infinite set of interactions between them. And then that information must be decoded at the other end and duplicated onto a blank canvas so that you step out, whole and untarnished, and all these new particles magically joining up in precisely the same way as before.
It's impossible. No matter how long you spend on the problem you will never solve it. Not given the entire lifetime of the Universe could you pull off this trick, of ignoring one of the most fundamental laws of Nature and then doing the same thing at least a billion billion billion times (and even that is more likely to be a serious underestimate) -- oh, and you'd have to do it in the tiniest fraction of a second, too.
I really would love this sort of thing to be possible. But no matter how wonderful imagination is, at some point reality ought to kick in.
Never mind, let me try anyway. Firstly, this team has managed to transmit a single piece of information about a single, tiny particle, trapped in incredibly finely controlled conditions, over a few metres. Actually the distance part isn't all that important, since metres are to atoms and electrons what the distance between the Sun and Earth is to us, so if they can manage that it probably won't be too much harder to scale up the problem to distances of kilometres.
But that aside, again let's stress the two main points: this was one particle (well, to be more precise, one particle at a time), one piece of information about it, and in one incredibly controlled environment. The precision of the conditions in itself is highly significant. For this experiment to directly translate into human teleportation itself you would have to be broken up into all your constituent parts and then encased in diamonds in a very particular way. I don't overly care whether that would work or not, since I obviously wouldn't be me at the end. I'd just be several billion billion atoms and rather dead.
The next point is that there is only one piece of information. Precisely, that is the spin state of the electron trapped in this diamond environment. In order for teleportation to be feasible for humans, in such as way that the same person could step out at the end, you would have to measure not just the spin state but also maybe as many as six or seven other pieces of information about the particle exactly. Unfortunately, this is theoretically impossible in a way that cannot be overcome by experiment. It's not just hard, it's precisely impossible. Nature forbids it.
When a scientist got it wrong about how small computers would be, or about heavier than air flight, almost invariably the error was one of underestimating the technical/ engineering aspects of the problem. I mean, obviously heaver-than-air flight is possible. Birds do it all the time. The problem was that some people couldn't see how we could do it. The technology wasn't there. And then someone cracked it. This is a different problem altogether. One might as well try to make 2+3 = 6. It's a fundamental truth of nature that you cannot know everything about a particle all at once, not a technical challenge that can be overcome if only we weren't so short-sighted.
But even allowing for that minor problem, you have to overcome this impossible barrier and do the same trick not just for one tiny speck of a particle, but also a further several billion billion billion. Each proton, neutron and electron that makes you "you" must be measured carefully, its properties precisely determined, and then this information losslessly transmitted -- not even an iota of signal degradation can be allowed -- while preserving all details of the virtually infinite set of interactions between them. And then that information must be decoded at the other end and duplicated onto a blank canvas so that you step out, whole and untarnished, and all these new particles magically joining up in precisely the same way as before.
It's impossible. No matter how long you spend on the problem you will never solve it. Not given the entire lifetime of the Universe could you pull off this trick, of ignoring one of the most fundamental laws of Nature and then doing the same thing at least a billion billion billion times (and even that is more likely to be a serious underestimate) -- oh, and you'd have to do it in the tiniest fraction of a second, too.
I really would love this sort of thing to be possible. But no matter how wonderful imagination is, at some point reality ought to kick in.
Svejk, // why not say, 'I cant imagine that' or better still, 'with the little bit of knowledge I possess I cant imagine that'.//
If only!
Jim, why assume that science is limited to the methods used here? Perhaps this is just a beginning. For all your lengthy discourses, in truth you have no idea what the future might bring. You just think you do.
If only!
Jim, why assume that science is limited to the methods used here? Perhaps this is just a beginning. For all your lengthy discourses, in truth you have no idea what the future might bring. You just think you do.
I'm not sure you have any idea, really, just what it is you are dismissing, Naomi. As I said, it is about as fundamental a law as 2+3=5. And no-one can seriously think that this may change with future methods. This isn't a technological challenge. This is as absolute a property as there is possible to be. Predicted by theory (and it's not even a difficult prediction either, following in two lines of working and consequently true by definition) -- confirmed by every single experiment since that prediction. Nor does it shut down imagination. But rather, it fuels it, as the consequences of the same law take you to places that you might never have thought of otherwise.
Enough with the criticisms of lack of imagination. At the moment, I think it's fair to say that those with the least imagination are those who think this might be possible. Since, in the process, they also seem not to imagine that we might, after all, know things about the world we live in. Amazingly, this very experiment is testament to how Universal and fundamental this law of fundamental Quantum Uncertainty truly is. Experiments of this kind depend on it.
Enough with the criticisms of lack of imagination. At the moment, I think it's fair to say that those with the least imagination are those who think this might be possible. Since, in the process, they also seem not to imagine that we might, after all, know things about the world we live in. Amazingly, this very experiment is testament to how Universal and fundamental this law of fundamental Quantum Uncertainty truly is. Experiments of this kind depend on it.
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