Read the rest here...

[edit] forgot the "L" in the last url tag... [/edit]

That is a huge step in itself. To think of the possibilities that could come of teleporting light. Fibre optics may have just become obsolete.

Couple of months ago my Physics teacher took out class to University College London, in UK. And i saw a student who made something like a tracter-beam, (like in start trek). He used light to move (well, shake it a bit) an atom side to side.

Its is also a great achievement. I was so amazed, there turning all the fiction from sci-fi programmes, into reality

i wish i could teleport down to alabama, give storm a hug and come back here

This was done a while back with just normal photons. The theory was that if you create something with exactly the same properties as the original object (photon in this case) then destroy the original you will have performed something resembling teleportation.

Sounds like quite a novel way they have found to perform their teleportation

thats kind of freaky

Maybe if someone makes a clone of me and flies them to a remote location and I shoot myself, I will have teleported.

If teleporting is possible, then humans will be able to travel at the speed of light (or close to it).

That would be some invention. Going to mars in minutes.

I think they are abusing the word 'teleport' in this case.

They are really talking about 'manufacturing' clones.

Using their method it will soon be possble for me to be in more than one place at any one time.

Despite my joke above, on some weird quantum level, I think this singular entity actually exisits twice. So basically it is the same item, but it occupies two spaces because of the trick they have done.

This would explain how one affects the other.. I guess.

if its the same as cloning someone and then destroying the other. Then i don't understand how the clone woul remember everything that the original knows. Memeory is not in your genes (right? ).

Basicly your clone would be like a BIG baby, very dumb.

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MooktaKiNG
Basicly your clone would be like a BIG baby, very dumb.
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Yeah, and not even your mom would notice ...
[just kidding]

Maybe they could use their process to replace plastic surgery.

Not a clone... But an exact copy. Memories, thoughts, etc.. Would be duplicated if you were copied exactly. Everything about you is contained through matter and energy. Memories are stored physically in the brain, while thoughts etc may take on a more energical form.

If you can copy all if the matter and energy that you comprise of, then it would contain everything about you right down to your own sense of style. Cloning does not offer this, but copying you atom by atom would.

You have to understand that this is not a copy though, but a single thing existing in two locations at once. They are both identical because they are the same thing. I say this because affecting one affects the other miles away.

Or that's how I interpereted it. I probably watch too much Star Trek anyway.

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Rick
Not a clone... But an exact copy.
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Most of us are confused at the best of times. Imagine how much more confused it would be to exist in two places at the same time. Destroying the original might even be classed as 'murder'.

Besides, if we were only made up of matter and energy, then what happens when we die? What has changed?

There was recently an interesting TV program that looked at Near Death Experiences (or should that be Out-of-Body Experience?), and this seemed to indicate that our consciousness can still exist even when our body and brain stops functioning. Some scientists have suggested that our brains are really just 'receptors' (like a TV aerial) for our consciousness. All the individuals - that were studied during this program - and that had experienced an NDE seemed to change fundamentaly and become non-competitive and not afraid to die. There was one case studied that had a woman that died on the operating table. She was hooked up to all sorts of monitoring equipment at the time so they knew that there was no longer any brain activity happening. After successfully reviving her they found that she had a perfect memory of events in the operating room while she was 'dead'.

My point here is that there may be more to 'life' than matter and energy, so if you were to be 'teleported' and the original destroyed, then you would probably be *dead* even if the copy was 'perfect'.

If you were teleported and the original died - then think about it, you'd be dead... The other that was duplicated would not actually be you. Different mind and Brain, but the same (?) So whats the point !!!

In this case, "copy" may also be a bad term. You would exist simulataneously in two different locations.

Both would be you.

I'm sure that this type of teleportation for human beings (if it ever does exist) will raise serious questions about consciousness and self-being.

This may be true and although I think it is vain that we always try to glorify the human existance as some sort of complicated and special exception to the universe.. It is also vain to assume that we know everything there is to know about energy, matter and the human conscious. So this is an interesting idea and I figured someone would bring this up. This makes for some serious ethical debates over religion and our existance... Debates of which no person in existance is really qualified to argue.

This could be used to transport normal objects (if it doesn't work with living things). For example, i go to Mars, no oxygen.

I call my parents to teleport some Oxygen and a pizza to me

It would really change the meaning of "express shipping"

Another thing, to my understanding, the part about existing in two places at once is actually talking about fractions of a second, so the object at the "send" location would disapear nanoseconds(or less) after the object is recreated at the "receive" location.

Personally, I don't like the idea of having my molecules scattered around the galaxy.

I wouldn't mind that.

I would love it if someone would shoot me into space (still in tact) after i die

I won't decay, live for ever lol

While I don't think we'll see human transportation (well any "live" transports for that matter) it should do wonders for the shipping of freight.
Would this not also be a way to solve the fossil fuel crisis?? I mean if teleportation is merely a matter of copying 1 thing, replicating it at the other end & destroying the original could they not modify the process a bit to replicate only.