Star trek term "Beaming"

[cogman]

Moving away from my making a space ship thread, another feature in star trek consists of the "Beaming" method which can transport Someone from ony place to another. How could you do this in real life and what do you need?

 

Ty Looking foward to the replies

[Moontanman]

The idea of "beaming" was thought up as a plot aid to allow the TV show Star Trek to be produced easier and cheaper. I am not sure there is anything that would allow the concept to be real.

[bascule]

Using nanotechnology, you could dismantle a person at one location, recording as information the structure of their body. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle wouldn't come into play in this case, as you'd physically rip their body to shreds, recording the positions of each of the individual molecules at the time you did this.

 

Once you have translated a person from matter into information, you can transmit this information as photons to another machine located elsewhere.

 

This machine would use the "blueprint" to build an exact copy of the original person at another location.

[Moontanman]

I once read somewhere that the information necessary to define a human a particular human being well enough to reconstruct them would take a stack of CD's that would be 75,000 light years high. Probably one of those senseless quotes you often read but to do such a reconstruction that would include things like memories would seem to be a prodigious amount of very precise information to say the least. I would think it would have to include things like quantum states as well, I can't see how the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle wouldn't make it far more difficult.

 

"Question at a Star Trek convention"

 

"How does your Heisenberg uncertainty compensator work?"

 

Answer, "Very well, thank you!"

[ajb]

You might be interested in quantum teleportation. Not quite the same thing, but the closest real thing.

 

It was demonstrated with photons in 1988 and then in 2004 with atoms.

[ydoaPs]

You might be interested in quantum teleportation. Not quite the same thing, but the closest real thing.

 

It was demonstrated with photons in 1988 and then in 2004 with atoms.

 

[John Cuthber]

"uncertainty principle wouldn't come into play in this case,"

Oh yes it would.

"Ye cannae change the laws of physics Captain"

[ajb]

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle wouldn't come into play in this case, as you'd physically rip their body to shreds, recording the positions of each of the individual molecules at the time you did this.

 

You cannot know exactly the position of the atoms and their energies.

[Sisyphus]

You cannot know exactly the position of the atoms and their energies.

 

Particularly not from orbit!

[padren]

"uncertainty principle wouldn't come into play in this case,"

Oh yes it would.

"Ye cannae change the laws of physics Captain"

 

Wouldn't you know "enough" though to build a replica at the atomic scale? As far as I know there is no reason to believe anything within the mechanics of a human being relies on the state of matter where uncertainty becomes an issue. It wouldn't be any different than producing a replica of a computer chip, just on a far larger scale and to a much higher resolution - but not that small.

[ajb]

Wouldn't you know "enough" though to build a replica at the atomic scale? As far as I know there is no reason to believe anything within the mechanics of a human being relies on the state of matter where uncertainty becomes an issue.

 

What about the structure of DNA and genes?

 

Any thing "out of line" could be problamatic.

[Sisyphus]

What goes on inside cells is mostly a giant soupy mystery to me. Certainly there are tons of processes on the molecular scale, but are they so precise that futzing around with uncertainty can lead to noticeably different outcomes? Obviously the best way to find out is to start teleporting rabbits.

[ajb]

Certainly there are tons of processes on the molecular scale, but are they so precise that futzing around with uncertainty can lead to noticeably different outcomes?

 

This is something that needs to be answered before we start "beaming anyone".

[Mr Skeptic]

What goes on inside cells is mostly a giant soupy mystery to me. Certainly there are tons of processes on the molecular scale, but are they so precise that futzing around with uncertainty can lead to noticeably different outcomes?

 

Very likely not. It would just look like a little extra heat.

[SH3RL0CK]

The bigger problem, in my mind, is the actual assembly process. How would we be able to place a carbon atom here, an oxygen atom there, a sodium atom there, and so forth on a scale that would "reconstruct" a human quickly enough to prevent the structure from falling apart before it was finished. Its not like manipulating individual atoms is an easy task. Some of the individual atoms (sodium and potasium for example) are a bit difficult to handle (perhaps they readily oxydize). And it would have to be very quick otherwise the person would die before being fully reconstructed.

Edited December 22, 2009 by SH3RL0CK

[mooeypoo]

The bigger problem, in my mind, is the actual assembly process. How would we be able to place a carbon atom here, an oxygen atom there, a sodium atom there, and so forth on a scale that would "reconstruct" a human quickly enough to prevent the structure from falling apart before it was finished. Its not like manipulating individual atoms is an easy task. Some of the individual atoms (sodium and potasium for example) are a bit difficult to handle (perhaps they readily oxydize). And it would have to be very quick otherwise the person would die before being fully reconstructed.

In StarTrek they solve this by claiming the process is similar to a replicator, where the machine has a supply of some "meta material" that can be used as source to build the molecules.

 

Inventive, but I'm not quite sure how realistic it is.

[npts2020]

In StarTrek they solve this by claiming the process is similar to a replicator, where the machine has a supply of some "meta material" that can be used as source to build the molecules.

 

Inventive, but I'm not quite sure how realistic it is.

 

Just speculating, but I would think that replicating something at a distance would be far more difficult than doing it in say a box built for that purpose.

[padren]

What goes on inside cells is mostly a giant soupy mystery to me. Certainly there are tons of processes on the molecular scale, but are they so precise that futzing around with uncertainty can lead to noticeably different outcomes?

 

Actually I would suspect that living cells are far more resilient than that. On the one hand they are a delicate balance of microscopic functions, but they also survive massive strains, have a pretty impressive capacity for self repair, and can endure many things. While too much radiation exposure causes cancer, we also can be exposed to enough x-rays safely that they are standard in the medical industry.

 

I think the brain could be a little difficult, as getting every atom to have the right number of electrons would both have to be precise, and deal with a rapidly changing system.

How would you "map" a computer ram chip if the 1s and 0s are changing so fast that by the time you map the last bit the first half of them have changed?

 

Getting an exact instantaneous snapshot would be very difficult.

 

 

Aside from that, the reconstruction method as SH3RL0CK mentions would not be building the person 'in freeze' but while the laws of physics are still acting on the reconstructed molecules. Blood in veins are under pressure, and until the whole is built it will want to splurt out everywhere.

Additionally, building anything tends to have an effect on what is immediately near it (it takes energy to place something/bond something at a location, which causes heat loss/entropy) and the build process would have to be very very fine tuned to prevent already constructed elements from changing as a result of constructing it's new neighbors.

 

 

And of course, beaming and space and distances really makes it all very far fetched as a technology.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well yes, I've considered that it would in fact be easier to actually freeze the person and defrost them at the other end, than disassemble and reassemble them quickly enough not to kill them. The latter method you have hours to scan, assemble, and disassemble, and it could still be quicker than via spaceship.

[ydoaPs]

Is it just me, or does it seem that the deconstruction process version of beaming(rather than scanning and copying) would REALLY REALLY HURT? It's not as though the disassembly would be instantaneous. And I'm not so certain the reconstruction process would work.

[Pangloss]

Also, it had better be really, really fast, not just to deal with the pain issue but also to deal with potential incongruities.

 

"The detectives tell me I shot the man just before I beamed up, but it must have been after I began disassembly, because I don't remember it at all."

[Mr Skeptic]

Is it just me, or does it seem that the deconstruction process version of beaming(rather than scanning and copying) would REALLY REALLY HURT? It's not as though the disassembly would be instantaneous. And I'm not so certain the reconstruction process would work.

 

No. If it hurts, you almost certainly die. Very unlike star trek teleporters if they do that.

[Moontanman]

It seems I remember a science fiction story where aliens brought us the technology to transmit a person light years instantly but only a copy was sent and the original had to be killed each time a person was transmitted. We agreed to the terms but couldn't abide by them, lol