Teleportation

Teleportation, or teletransportation, is the process of moving objects from one place to another more or less instantaneously, without using conventional transportation.

In Reality

Although the use of teleportation has traditionally been found only in science fiction, the theory and experimentation of quantum teleportation has been of interest to physicists.

Related Topics:
Quantum teleportation - Physicist

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In June 2002 the Ph.D. project of Mr. Warwick Bowen(http://photonics.anu.edu.au/qoptics/Misc/media.html)& (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/06/17/aust.startrek/), led by Dr. Ping Koy Lam, Prof. Hans Bachor and Dr. Timothy Ralph of the Australian National University achieved (quantum) teleportation of a laser beam.

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Davis report

In 2001, the United States Air Force commissioned Dr. Eric W. Davis, Ph.D., FBIS, to do a scientific study of teleportation. He submitted his report (AFRL-PR-ED-TR-2003-0034) in August 2004. The Davis report has been very controversial due to its recommendation of further studies of p-Teleportation:

Related Topics:
2001 - United States Air Force - 2004

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:A research program improving on and expanding, or implementing novel variations of, the Chinese and Uri Geller-type experiments should be conducted in order to generate p-Teleportation phenomenon in the lab.

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The report (page 2) classified teleportation concepts into five sections:

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; sf-Teleportation : "the disembodied transport of persons or inanimate objects across space by advanced (futuristic) technological means." The report does not further define sf-Teleportation, and has no further comment on it than to dismiss it from the scope of the report.

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; p-Teleportation : "the conveyance of persons or inanimate objects by psychic means."

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; vm-Teleportation : "the conveyance of persons or inanimate objects across space by altering the properties of the spacetime vacuum, or by altering the spacetime metric (geometry)." This category includes the use of wormholes for transport, and the modification of the speed of light.

Related Topics:
Wormhole - Speed of light

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; q-Teleportation : "the disembodied transport of the quantum state of a system and its correlations across space to another system, where system refers to any single or collective particles of matter or energy such as baryons (protons, neutrons, etc.), leptons (electrons, etc.), photons, atoms, ions, etc." The report explicitly includes in this category a process essentially the same as that envisioned by the fictional transporters of Star Trek. It also includes quantum teleportation by means of quantum entanglement.

Related Topics:
Quantum - Baryon - Lepton - Transporter - Star Trek - Quantum entanglement

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; e-Teleportation : "the conveyance of persons or inanimate objects by transport through extra space dimensions or parallel universes."

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The report did not investigate sf-Teleportation other than to define it. The report recommended further study in all other types of teleportation (pages 28-29, 47-49, 54, 62).

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Teleportation scenario

The use of teleportation as a means of transport for humans still has considerable unresolved technical and philosophical issues, such as exactly how to record the human body sufficiently accurately and also be able to reconstruct it, and whether destroying a human in one place and recreating a copy elsewhere would provide a sufficient experience of continuity of existence. Religious people might wonder if the soul is recopied or destroyed, and might even consider it murder. Many of the questions are shared with the concept of mind transfer.

Related Topics:
Transport - Soul - Murder - Mind transfer

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It is not clear if duplicating a human would require reproduction of the exact quantum state, requiring quantum teleportation which necessarily destroys the original, or whether macroscopic measurements would suffice. In the non-destructive version, hypothetically a new copy of the individual is created with each teleportation, with only the copy subjectively experiencing the teleportation. Technology of this type would have many other applications, such as virtual medicine (manipulating the stored data to create a copy better than the original), travelling into the future (creating a copy many years after the information was stored), or backup copies (creating a copy from recently stored information if the original was involved in a mishap.)

Related Topics:
Quantum teleportation - Macroscopic - Technology - Medicine

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Another form of teleportation common in science fiction (and seen in The Culture and The Terminator series of films) sends the subject through a wormhole or similar phenomenon, allowing transit faster than light while avoiding the problems posed by the uncertainty principle and potential signal interference. In both of the examples above, this form of teleportation is known as Displacement or Topological shortcut (Scientific American). (Skynet used its displacement technology to produce a time machine, and thus named it the "Time-Space Displacement Equipment.")

Related Topics:
The Culture - The Terminator - Wormhole - Faster than light - Uncertainty principle - Skynet

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Displacement teleporters eliminate many probable objections to teleportation on religious or philosophical grounds, as they preserve the original subject intact — and thus continuity of existence.

Related Topics:
Philosophical - Existence

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p-Teleportation means of teleportation are sometimes referred to as "psychoportation," or "jaunting"; named after the fictional scientist (Jaunte) who discovered it in The Stars My Destination (originally titled Tiger! Tiger!), a science fiction novel by Alfred Bester.

Related Topics:
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester

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In religious, occult, and esoteric literature, teleportation or astral travel is the instantaneous movement of a person or object from one place to another, by miraculous, supernatural or psychic means rather than technological ones. For instance, in Acts 8:39, after Philip evangelized the Ethiopian finance minister, "Spirit of the Lord grabbed Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing. Philip found himself in Ashdod."

Related Topics:
Religious - Occult - Esoteric - Astral travel - Miraculous - Supernatural - Acts

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