Teleportation has been commonplace in science fiction for a
very long time. In fact it has been used so often that we are
almost inclined to wonder what is taking science so long to get
it to work in real life. In the mean time, TV shows and movies
such as the Star Trek and Stargate series routinely use
teleportation (Transporters or a Stargate) to get our heroes to
or from the destination of the week.
In most cases the thin explanation of how the teleportation
system works is something along the lines of disassembling the
person, converting them to some kind of energy stream,
transmitting them to a remote location where they are converted
back into matter and reassembled. There are two primary
variations of teleporters that we see rather often. There are
those that don't require a reassembly mechanism at the remote
location (a la Star Trek) and others which do require a
receiving and reassembly mechanism (a la Stargate).
While entertaining us, sometimes these programs touch on
some of the more esoteric aspects of teleportation as well as
the technical challenges and possible problems. Sometimes
teleportation devices have caused: two entities to fuse into one
(Tuvix from Tuvox and Neelix, as well as "The Fly"), have caused
one person to be split into two (Good/Bad Captain Kirk,
Will/Thomas Riker), have trapped people for extended periods in
limbo (Scotty), and in at least one case has dealt with the
possibility that teleportation actually involves killing the
original person and simply producing a copy at the other end
(Outer Limits). When you begin thinking about this you can
begin to sympathize with Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy of Star Trek
fame who had an aversion to Transporters and could often be
found muttering something about "...scattering my atoms all over
empty space.."
So what about the technical issues?
Clearly taking a person apart painlessly, quickly, and with
extreme precision and fidelity and converting them to some form
of transmittable energy is no small problem. Standing there
while a machine takes me apart atom by atom simply does not
sound like a particularly attractive prospect. The fidelity of
the process is also troubling. I would certainly want to be put
back together exactly the way I was before, but that's not easy
either.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells us the very act
of measuring something (such as the atoms of my body) will
disturb them in a way that makes it impossible for me to tell
their normal condition prior to the measuring process. So the
"me" that gets reassembled will be a slightly "disturbed"
version of me. Frankly, I think I am already disturbed enough,
but will further disturbance be important? That's very hard to
tell, but we do know that very small disturbances in the DNA of
a single cell can lead to death by a variety of genetic
diseases. In Star Trek this problem is even acknowledged when
they make mention of the Heisenberg Compensators that get around
this issue by some unknown feat of magic. But after all, Arthur
C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology will be
indistinguishable from magic."
Is there perhaps an easier way than delicately ripping our
bodies apart?
One of the modern theories in physics is that all the mass
particles we have come to know are really made up of energy
strings vibrating at different frequencies and perhaps in
different modes. In this theory, vibrating strings express
themselves as fundamental mass particles which combine in
various ways to be quarks which combine into protons, neutrons
and electrons which combine to be atoms that in turn combine to
be the physical us.
Albert Einstein said that matter is really just an
expression of energy. In fact that is exactly what the famous
E=mc^2 equation tells us. This has also been noted by people
who deal in the metaphysical realm who sometimes refer to our
physical representation as "solid energy.”
So, if we are in fact "solid energy” could we perhaps just
get our body to be converted to some non-solid form in a manner
that is easily transmitted and at the receiving end get it to
re-convert to its normal physical mode of expression. I suppose
we can hope this is possible, but generally getting matter to
convert to a non-solid form can be a little difficult to
control. Fission and fusion bombs immediately come to mind.
The problem here is that there is actually an amazing amount of
energy tied up in our body (our mass times the square of the
velocity of light is a lot of energy).
So, the technical challenges are formidable, but how about
the non-technical issues?
Many years ago I heard a story related by someone who
mentioned that a person had FAXed them a letter and in this
letter the sender asked, "Can you please FAX this letter back to
me because it is my only copy?" This seems silly to us in
regard to a FAX, but what about when teleporting a person?
When someone is teleported to a destination is it the
original person that arrives (like mail), or is it just a copy
of the original that arrives (like a FAX)? With our FAX machine
it is pretty clear that the original doesn't actually go
anywhere at least so long as our FAX machine doesn't try to eat
the original. However, with a teleportation system it is quite
likely that the original gets disassembled or in some way ceases
to exist in the process of being teleported. So did the
original person actually arrive at the destination or is it
merely a copy with all the memory history of the original?
If the person at the destination is perfectly identical to
the person who entered the transmitting end it might be an
irrelevant issue to the arriving person, but it just might make
a whole lot of difference to the sender. From the sender
perspective entering a teleportation device might really be no
different that walking into a disintegration chamber and being
killed. This is not exactly a pleasant prospect even if you
know a copy of you will be around afterward.
Perhaps this is only a small psychological stumbling block
and people would eventually find it acceptable or convince
themselves that it really is they themselves who walk out of the
other end of the system. Can we trust this to be true?
The bottom line here is, "What makes me me, and what makes
you you?" One school of thought is that we are simply the sum
total of our physical bodies and the experiences we have had
throughout life. If this is true then the “me” that walks out
of the other end of a teleporter is just as much me as the “me”
that walked into the sending end. I have indeed been teleported
and maybe there are no issues in this area.
However, there is another school of thought that says there
is a distinct personality that came to the birthday party when I
was born and it is the real me which is the driving force behind
this aging body of mine. This leads to a possible problem that
might best be explored with an analogy.
Let's assume we are a strange alien life form that has come
to visit the earth. Let's further assume that we have a rather
unusual sensory system that only perceives metals, plastics, and
certain minerals. We can also assume we effectively have RF
vision. As a result of our rather strange sensory situation we
can't even see people or animals.
While exploring earth we conclude that the intelligent life
form here is the automobile. After all, they autonomously
travel all over the planet. We've seen automobiles extract
nourishment through strange hoses attached to tanks that are
replenished by other vehicles. We've also seen dead vehicles
being crushed, transported and reborn into new vehicles with the
help of other vehicles and machines. Of course it never occurs
to us that there might be more to the automobile than meets our
eye. Some of our research team keep claiming they detect the
presence of ghosts and some strange activities that seem
inexplicable, but these researchers are mostly laughed into
silence.
Now, being highly advanced we decide to teleport an
automobile up to our mother ship in orbit. In a very clever way
we trap a moving automobile and teleport it directly to the
mother ship. Everything should be perfect because we know that
our teleporters transfer absolutely everything we see, but every
automobile that arrives on the mother ship acts dead. The
engines are still running when they arrive, but they never move
autonomously. Eventually they deplete all their nourishment and
simple cease all activity.
In the mean time there are a number of news reports on
earth of people who claim that while driving their cars they
Eickerman/Teleportation/8
suddenly found themselves sliding down the road on their
backsides with no car to be seen anywhere.
No analogy is perfect, but let's apply this one to the
prospect of teleporting human beings. Do we really know what
makes a human being a human being any more than the aliens
understand an automobile?
To date, every attempt by science to explicitly define what
makes a human being a human being has eventually failed.
Invariably such definitions have been based upon what we can do
much the way we, as aliens, might have tried to define the
automobile. One of the more recent attempts was the claim that
humans make and use tools. It seemed like a pretty good
definition because in archeological digs one of the prime things
that are searched for are the tools used by our possible
ancestors. Then a problem cropped up.
Certain present day hominids broke off sticks to the right
length and used them to extract yummy termites from rotting
logs. Some tried to claim these were not really tools and just
breaking off a stick didn't really constitute "making" a tool.
Then insult was added to injury.
A crow was presented with a problem. Food was placed into
a tiny bucket that was lowered into a clear tube. The bucket
was too low for the crow to reach it with his beak so there was
no obvious way to lift the food bucket out of the tube. On top
of the tube the researchers placed a straight piece of wire.
There was no way for the bird to use the straight piece of wire
to extract the bucket. In relatively short order the crow took
the piece of wire, used leverage against the side of the cage to
bend a hook on the end, lowered the hooked end into the tube and
neatly lifted out the bucket. The scientists were astounded.
Surely this was a fluke, so they tried it again. Time after
time the crow repeated the process. Even "bird brains" can make
tools and use them. So much for yet another definition of what
makes humans unique.
Is it possible that what makes humans unique has nothing to
do with what we can do and everything to do with who we are? If
so, is who we are detectable, measurable, and teleportable or is
it just as elusive as the automobile driver is to the aliens in
our analogy?
Instead of a lot of answers, this question prompts still
more questions. Do out of body experiences suggest a separate
physical and spiritual "self?" Are Electronic Voice Phenomena
just a way for an energy form of an unembodied spirit to be able
to interact with our physical reality? How do we account for
spontaneous and provably accurate recollections by 3, 4, and 5
year old children of previous lifetime details they could not
have "learned" anywhere? What is the "reality" people see in
death bed visions? Where does our "personality" come from? Is
our personality somehow holographically associated with our body
in a way that might explain how transplant recipients sometimes
acquire unique personality traits of dead donors?
I think we have a lot to learn.
