We all saw Captain Kirk on Star Trek, we were all fascinated by the very thought of it and we are all still waiting for it to happen. To travel from one place to another with no physical transportation object being used – no car, no aircraft, no ship – is truly the final frontier that technology must overcome.
And enough signs of it coming about one day are in place. Scientists have managed quantum teleportation with photons where an object is dematerialised at one point and the details of that object’s atomic configuration are then sent to another location where it is precisely reconstructed. (All hell breaks loose if it’s not, though. Imagine being beamed from home to office and arriving as a globular green mess because something went wrong!) Right now, a photon, a laser beam and a laser beam carrying information have been successfully transported.
However, a human being is a million times more complex. The catch is that for teleportation to happen, the original must be destroyed. So when you are beamed on a trip to Paris, your original will be zapped to nothing and you must hope and pray that the one that they recreate will have the exact same body, face, thoughts, memories and mind. Otherwise, the person enjoying the sights of the Eiffel Tower may just be a totally different person – and you may not exist, all because you were in a hurry and didn’t want to take the flight.
And enough signs of it coming about one day are in place. Scientists have managed quantum teleportation with photons where an object is dematerialised at one point and the details of that object’s atomic configuration are then sent to another location where it is precisely reconstructed. (All hell breaks loose if it’s not, though. Imagine being beamed from home to office and arriving as a globular green mess because something went wrong!) Right now, a photon, a laser beam and a laser beam carrying information have been successfully transported.
However, a human being is a million times more complex. The catch is that for teleportation to happen, the original must be destroyed. So when you are beamed on a trip to Paris, your original will be zapped to nothing and you must hope and pray that the one that they recreate will have the exact same body, face, thoughts, memories and mind. Otherwise, the person enjoying the sights of the Eiffel Tower may just be a totally different person – and you may not exist, all because you were in a hurry and didn’t want to take the flight.
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