[TrashMan]

As it stands, all FTL requires handwavium of one kind or another. Einstein-Rosen bridges require negative energy density, as do warp drives -- the two plausible methods of FTL currently theorized. This is magic, though to a lesser degree than the One Ring or, dare I say, a Portkey.

In essence, we're quibbling over word choice here. Perhaps you'd prefer 'handwavium' to 'magic', though one is really a subset of the other -- magic with marginal justification and some quick talk around the sticky points.

the problem with FTL is that it is in itself a rather murky territory. It deals with a higher degree of physics that we know jack s*** about. We do have some theories thrown around that don't have any real proof behind them except that it "appears" to work. Appears is the key word.
While some of the most basic laws of the universe are very likely to be correctly interpreted by us, the higher up the food chain you go and the more you throw in newer theories, the less solid they are.

FTL is improbable. And AT THE MOMENT it appears it might break something (frankly, I think the whole casuality argument sucks. It just makes so very little sense to me). But FTL is the smallest of all plausabiltiy evils you can come up with in Sci-Fi.

I don't understand what you say breaks logic on a fundamental level, and whatever point you tried to make by introducing 'conservation of energy' and 'action and reaction' is lost on me.

I can give you a lot of examples. Like introducing technology that does X and not taking into account that if it does that, it should also be doing Y and that would change Z. And you leave Z the same.

Another good example would be that shapechanger for ST: DS9.
Changing it's mass and volume like that would require amounts of energy equal to a atomic bomb. Not to mention that when they shapechange, even scanners can't tell them apart from the real thing. They are in essence physicly a perfect copy - which is beyond any logic, since then they wouldn't be able to change back.

check this:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3al.html
Look under UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

[General Battuta]

As it stands, all FTL requires handwavium of one kind or another. Einstein-Rosen bridges require negative energy density, as do warp drives -- the two plausible methods of FTL currently theorized. This is magic, though to a lesser degree than the One Ring or, dare I say, a Portkey.

In essence, we're quibbling over word choice here. Perhaps you'd prefer 'handwavium' to 'magic', though one is really a subset of the other -- magic with marginal justification and some quick talk around the sticky points.

the problem with FTL is that it is in itself a rather murky territory. It deals with a higher degree of physics that we know jack s*** about. We do have some theories thrown around that don't have any real proof behind them except that it "appears" to work. Appears is the key word.
While some of the most basic laws of the universe are very likely to be correctly interpreted by us, the higher up the food chain you go and the more you throw in newer theories, the less solid they are.

FTL is improbable. And AT THE MOMENT it appears it might break something (frankly, I think the whole casuality argument sucks. It just makes so very little sense to me). But FTL is the smallest of all plausabiltiy evils you can come up with in Sci-Fi.

Exactly. That's why you need magic/handwavium (a slight degree of it) to make it work. FTL is reasonably well-understood, of course; a wormhole's never been observed, but the kind of space-warp FTL drive that's been theorized is precisely what drives distant galaxies away from us at such incredible speeds.

Actually, the smallest of all plausible evils are probably human genetic engineering, cybernetic augmentation, and brain uploading. These are currently impossible (to one degree or another) but are very likely to be possible in the near future.

I don't understand what you say breaks logic on a fundamental level, and whatever point you tried to make by introducing 'conservation of energy' and 'action and reaction' is lost on me.

I can give you a lot of examples. Like introducing technology that does X and not taking into account that if it does that, it should also be doing Y and that would change Z. And you leave Z the same.

Another good example would be that shapechanger for ST: DS9.
Changing it's mass and volume like that would require amounts of energy equal to a atomic bomb. Not to mention that when they shapechange, even scanners can't tell them apart from the real thing. They are in essence physicly a perfect copy - which is beyond any logic, since then they wouldn't be able to change back.

check this:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3al.html
Look under UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Ah, okay, I definitely agree with that. Star Trek was really terrible on that front -- ships never used their transporter beams as weapons against each other, for example (at least once shields were down.)

I have read that website.

[S-99]

That's where i liked voyager. Some of the normal things that are almost unheard of but capable with trek technology they totally do in voyager. Doing things like using the transporter to teleport a whole entire ships crew over at one time to even teleporting a shuttle or other small ship. Voyager was cool because this is stuff you could totally do with trek technology, that just plain old no one did with at all in the other treks. Usually the transporter only is teleporting a small hand full of people at any one time in any trek series. Voyager even had cool stuff like exploiting temporary holes in a vessels shielding.

Then again, where voyager did some of the more outrageous stuff plausible by their universe. I think i liked stargate more for their abilities of simplifying situations. In star trek it's always "we need to shutdown their shield generator, beam in next to their shield generator, where you'll use only your 733t speedy, yet time consuming handling of alien consoles." In stargate it's like the moment of suspense where the enemy would totally be relying on intimidation to get by is never a second lost for a bullet in the head for the sucker, and anything that needed to be shutdown, rather got blown up (perma-shutdown). I've got to give that to voyager though, half way through the series eventually they did just start to transport torpedoes over to enemy vessels when shields were down. But, a torpedo can always be affected by a dampening field. Why not transport over massive amounts of 1920's style analog clock detonator (sounds like a dampening field wouldn't take care of that). They can do that in trek with the replicators.

[Aardwolf]

Voyager, eh? It would have been interesting if the Borg and species 8472 joined forces... Also, apparently in one of those two episodes where they introduced the borg/8472 conflict, the Borg had a planet...

[TrashMan]

Voyager? Voyager?

[Flipside]

So true, it's like the Replicators on Star Trek ships, it's amazing how they, cannot replicate more complex molecules whilst at the same time being tied into the transporter system, which can replicate any living organism, and keep it alive at the other end...

[MarkN]

IIRC It's stated that replicators do notproduce exact replicas due to information storage issues. Because of this they produce volume hundreds of molecules across which have identical structure (alright for dead biologicals but not for living). As a transporter stores the information for only a few seconds, it can store far more information about each item to be produced, and store everything down to quantum levels in the brain (if it didn't do this there would be regular neural scrambling).

As for teleportation in real life. 'sppoky quantum action at a distance' has to be started with a nearly zero distance and then the two entangled particles transported apart by conventional means (and kept entangled along the way). So while the environment of one particle will effect another some way away from it almost instantaneously, the set-up of this is sub-light. Its a bit like the FTL mag-pulses which were being reported a few years ago, where while the wavefront was moving faster than light, the average energy was not.

[TrashMan]

Given the Heisenberg uncertanty principle, since it's impossible to know hte speen and position of en electron at a given time, ti's impossible to re-create a perfect copy on the other end.
Aditionally, the very definition of the teleporter being spoken about here implies what whatever is teleported gets fully VAPORIZED (dissolved into atoms). This means two thing - it kills whatever being is being teleported and it requires amazing amounts of energy.
Then the information is sent to another machine that reconstructs, atom by atom (exactly how this is done? Where are all the atoms stored if they are not sent directly?) the original being. This would require absolutely amazing amounts of time, power and knowledge, assuming it was even possible to re-create the original. Which is not. Whatever gets created at the other side isn't you. You're dead.

[Aardwolf]

This has given me an idea for a topic (which I will not post in General Discussion where it belongs).

The topic has to do with tachyons.

[General Battuta]

Given the Heisenberg uncertanty principle, since it's impossible to know hte speen and position of en electron at a given time, ti's impossible to re-create a perfect copy on the other end.
Aditionally, the very definition of the teleporter being spoken about here implies what whatever is teleported gets fully VAPORIZED (dissolved into atoms). This means two thing - it kills whatever being is being teleported and it requires amazing amounts of energy.
Then the information is sent to another machine that reconstructs, atom by atom (exactly how this is done? Where are all the atoms stored if they are not sent directly?) the original being. This would require absolutely amazing amounts of time, power and knowledge, assuming it was even possible to re-create the original. Which is not. Whatever gets created at the other side isn't you. You're dead.

This is correct.

Of course, saying 'you're dead' implies you believe in a soul that can't be transmitted with everything else. If you don't accept that, then the identical copy that reappears is you, since it is, after all, perfectly identical -- down to mindstate.

It would be no different than a brief period of unconsciousness.

[Polpolion]

But if there's no way of creating FTL communication, then it's really not going to help, because you'd still have to transmit that data at light speed, which isn't fast enough.

Also, the amount of data would be vast, imagine how many atoms there are in a human, about 12g of Carbon has 6.02 x 10²³ atoms in it.

Actually, if we further develop the method of teleporting photons (which someone said we could already do), we could teleport them directly into fiber-optic cables from one end to the other for, at the very least, instant primitive voice communication.

[Aardwolf]

Well the original body has still been vaporized, soul or not.

[General Battuta]

Doesn't matter. The pattern remains the same.

Think about it. None of your body is made of the same atoms as the day you were born. Effectively, you've been vaporized thousands of times over. But the pattern of atoms remains. That's what encodes your identity.

[Aardwolf]

Well maybe, but that's not why it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because the multiple "yous" never exist simultaneously, there are no memories the original has the new one does not, and moreover the original didn't feel anything. If, instead, you "teleported" the person, and the original just stood there as if nothing happened, and then for no particular reason you took a lightsaber or whatever to him to make him go away, then it's different.

Edit: I would have said phaser, but lightsaber fits better and I didn't think it mattered that I stick to star-trek weapons.

[Flipside]

Thing is, you would have to record the state of every atom in that persons' body at the same time, you couldn't do it sequentially, else each atom would be slightly further along the timeline from the previous one, so you would end up with an object that consists of atoms that are 'older' or 'younger' than others, in fact you would end up with atoms whose components are at different stages.

This might be ok for non-organic stuff, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too healthy for organic or living tissue, since there are constant reactions going on inside living tissue, and they would all arrive at different stages.

[S-99]

Voyager, eh? It would have been interesting if the Borg and species 8472 joined forces... Also, apparently in one of those two episodes where they introduced the borg/8472 conflict, the Borg had a planet...

The borg have many planets actually. They are not only space faring. Borg do populate planets. In the second tng movie, if the enterprise hadn't gone back in time, then the borg would have conquered earth. Althoug borg planets are usually never seen in star trek, they were usually talked about all the time in voyager, and the fact that you see one get destroyed by 8472. I don't think  the borg could have forged an alliance with 8472, voyager was barely able to do so, and that's only because the borg understand the federation through what they have assimilated of it.

[General Battuta]

Well maybe, but that's not why it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because the multiple "yous" never exist simultaneously, there are no memories the original has the new one does not, and moreover the original didn't feel anything. If, instead, you "teleported" the person, and the original just stood there as if nothing happened, and then for no particular reason you took a lightsaber or whatever to him to make him go away, then it's different.

Edit: I would have said phaser, but lightsaber fits better and I didn't think it mattered that I stick to star-trek weapons.

It's true that any functioning teleport of this type should also serve as a perfect duplicator.

[TrashMan]

Doesn't matter. The pattern remains the same.

Think about it. None of your body is made of the same atoms as the day you were born. Effectively, you've been vaporized thousands of times over. But the pattern of atoms remains. That's what encodes your identity.

Except, as previously stated, you can't create a perfect copy. It won't be perfect.

And we haven't even dwelt into being able to re-create a human with his MEMORY  or current thoughts in tact.
Think about it - with the most sophisticated methods today it took us s***loads of time to move a dozen atoms on a singular piece of matter. Just one the surface.
Teleportoing is not useful at all if it takes 12*10^30 YEARS to put a man back together on the other end.


as I said before, I've been over teleporting with my Physics professor. He happens to be something of a Star Trek fan and works at CERN on anti-matter. Long story short - teleporation of human being is a dream.

[Stormkeeper]

I'm amused at what the topic started on, and at where it is now.

[Flipside]

I would split it, but it's such a spaghetti of topics, I'm not really sure where to begin...