Beam me up Scotty (Not a Star Trek thread)

[Doulton]

Imagine in the near future they had transporters, just like the ones on Star Trek. You step onto a pad, press a button and you are teleported to another pad on the other side of the planet. But there's a catch. The pad doesn't actually transport your particles. It takes a very detailed scan of your body, and sends the blueprints to the other pad, which then creates an exact duplicate of you; thoughts and memories included. The original is disposed of quickly and thoroughly. As far as you can tell, you have stepped onto one pad and and stepped off another. Don't take into account that there may be errors and there may be two of you walking around, or that it may be dangerous, or that the government could keep your blueprints on file or anything like that. Just whether or not you would be OK with the fact that it's an exact copy of you, rather that the original. How many of you would or wouldn't go through it and why or why not?

 

[TygerEyez]

Alright, now you'ved confused me.

"Not a Star Trek Thread"............ and yet the thread is purely science fiction?

You had my hopes up, you Minx, and now you've gone and dashed them.

Bad puppy.. no biscuit.

Oh... Just kidding, btw. I'm in one of those moods... ignore me.

 

[Mensa]

Interesting question

How complete would this replica be, because I would imagine if it could make alterations, plastic surgeons would be irate.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Actually, this is exactly how the Star Trek producers say the Transporter works. According to a book called "The Physics of Star Trek" transporters would be astonishingly difficult things to build, and are most likely impossible.

But, you quesiton was "how would we feel about being a whole new creation?" essentially. Well, we change every cell in our bodies every seven years, completely replacing the person who was here before. We grow from children to old age, metamorphising through an enormous variety of changes. And no one flips out (except men in their mid forties). I think we'd get used to transporters pretty easily.

 

[rambling man]

scary idea

impossible? Just science fiction? That's what they said about cloning once

With supercomputers and the knowledge that the human genome map brings i would not be surprised if it became a reality

What the human can imagine, eventually he will be able to do if he wants...that is frightening too!!!!

 

[Sephiroth]

Hey Doulton, have you been watching The Outer Limits?

 

[Doulton]

I haven't seen the Outer Limits in a while, and I don't remember any episode similar to this transporter thingy. I think I got this from my brother. What happened in the episode you're refering to?

DCL's point about the human body replacing it's cells anyway is exactly what I say when I explain to people why I would use it. It would appear we think in similar patterns Dixon But even without that explanation, I wouldn't have any objection to it. I expected opposition to it to come from the people who believe in souls etc., wondering what would happen to your soul in this situation. A very high number of people I have posed this to have said they wouldn't do it, for reasons more or less meaning "it's not really you."

Whether or not it could happen I dunno. I can't think of any physical limitation that would make it impossible. But it sure won't be happening in our lifetimes

And Mensa makes a good point too. Would we really want this technology? Do we want to repeat the mistakes of the Manhatten project and the guys off Jurassic Park? Sure, we could get places faster, but think of all those poor plastic surgeons. Spending ther lives tirelessly telling us we're not good enough as we are and offering to fix us and make us better people. And all they ask in return, is a a few tens of thousands of dollars. Could we live with the shame of putting these noble people out on the street, or making them resort to getting a job that merely cures the sick?

 

[Always]

I'd be freaked, and reserve such a machine for emergencies.

 

[pabloback]

apparantly scientists are experimenting but cant make live objects move as yet

 

[Mensa]

Simple solution

apparantly scientists are experimenting but cant make live objects move as yet

Did they try poking it?

 

[The_old_man]

The original(as far as I know) discription of how to build a "Transporter" was by George O. Smith in his "Venus Equalateral" series. Yes they could record and make duplicates.

 

[Savage Kitten]

if this were really possible doesn't it make sense that they could chose NOT to duplicate certain part of the persons metabolic makeup? Thus eliminating diseases and infections. Or, if they retained a persons "blue print" and say later in life they developed some problem with their internal organs, couldn't the blue print be used to replace an earlier (healthy) version of the organ??

 

[LadyDarkFire]

the thought is frightening, but it also brings into point the bans against human cloning, and how it would technically be violating them. Plus, would the energy it would take to scan and replicate every cell be worth it?

 

[scylis]

Hey Doulton, have you been watching The Outer Limits?

i was thinking the exact same thing

 

[Weird Harold]

the thought is frightening, but it also brings into point the bans against human cloning, and how it would technically be violating them. Plus, would the energy it would take to scan and replicate every cell be worth it?

I think the original would be converted to energy and used to power most of the recreation at the destination. It's really the only way it could be done with any degree of energy efficency.

 

[LadyDarkFire]

Still, it would be rather hard to scan every single cell (which would be neccisary for an exact replica, since you would have to create cells of the precise age of the ones that were there on the original) and you would also have to have alot of matirials available to create the new body. Plus, we would need a lot better knowledge of the human brain than we have today.

 

[Weird Harold]

Still, it would be rather hard to scan every single cell (which would be neccisary for an exact replica, since you would have to create cells of the precise age of the ones that were there on the original) and you would also have to have alot of matirials available to create the new body. Plus, we would need a lot better knowledge of the human brain than we have today.

A Star Trek Style transporter system would only work if it used matter to energy and energy to matter conversions with a small input of additional energy to offset transmission losses.

Scanning every cell wouldn't accomplish a viable transportation, it would take reading every atom and sub-atomic particle with their relative positions and charges to recreate a viable person at the destination.

The limiting factor I should think would be the terabytes of computer memory required to store the pattern for transmission and data transfer speed. (assuming of course that the matter/energy energy/matter conversion was technically feasible.

Back to the original question, I think that such a transporter system will eventually be invented, perfected and used on a regular basis. Since it would logically require using the destruction of the original at the source to power most of the creation of the duplicate at the destination, it would effectively be (and probably be thought of as,) the transmission of the individual rather than making a copy of the individual at the destination.

Although this "isn't a Star Trek Thread," I think I probasbly should point out that the ST writers have explored the potential problems of corrupted transporter files, and re-creating an individual from old pattern files saved from the transporter logs. They've even explored the potential of filtering out foreign organisms to effect a cure for the uncurable.

All of those facets of using a transporter are much less likely than a simple atom by atom and charge by charge copy process becoming reality.

 

[LadyDarkFire]

Weird Harold....

Remind me never to argue about anything with you, I know that you are likely to run circles around me. You have shown yourself to be Very noligable on basically everything.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Weird Harold....

Remind me never to argue about anything with you, I know that you are likely to run circles around me. You have shown yourself to be Very noligable on basically everything.

That's partly a result of a fascination with Science Fiction that has lasted for forty-plus years and shows no signs of flagging. The rest is like my title says: I'm an Opionated Old Fart and not afraid to express my opinons.

 

[LadyDarkFire]

Re: Re: Weird Harold....

That's partly a result of a fascination with Science Fiction that has lasted for forty-plus years and shows no signs of flagging. The rest is like my title says: I'm an Opionated Old Fart and not afraid to express my opinons.

I do like Science Fiction, but I do not have the time behind me that you do. (Have not been around the 44 + years, not even half actually) but you do have interesting opinions, and I learn alot from reading your responces.

 

[Weird Harold]

I do like Science Fiction, but I do not have the time behind me that you do. (Have not been around the 44 + years, not even half actually) but you do have interesting opinions, and I learn alot from reading your responces.

Actually, I just turned 52 about two weeks ago, but I'm still learning things. You know more about acne than I do and I found your posts on that thread interesting and informative.

I've found that if you pick your Science Fiction carefully, you can learn a lot of real science in the process. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Isaac Asimov, and others are PhDs when they aren't playing science fiction author and base their stories on hard science (past tense in the case of the late Isaac Asimov, unfortunately.)

 

[LadyDarkFire]

Actually, I just turned 52 about two weeks ago, but I'm still learning things. You know more about acne than I do and I found your posts on that thread interesting and informative.

I've found that if you pick your Science Fiction carefully, you can learn a lot of real science in the process. Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Isaac Asimov, and others are PhDs when they aren't playing science fiction author and base their stories on hard science (past tense in the case of the late Isaac Asimov, unfortunately.)

You Forgot Arthur C. Clark. And as for age, 19. As for acne, I guess that is also a result of age, I have dealt with it (and the newer products) a bit more recently than you have. And thank you, I try to be informative.

 

[Weird Harold]

You Forgot Arthur C. Clark.

Nope, I didn't really forget him, I just didn't include him or the late Robert A Heinlein and a couple of other well known authors.

I probably should have included the inventor of the geo-synchronous communications satellite though. Several of the golden age science fiction authors are credited with inventing things like the waterbed, cell-phones, etc. The list is far too long for me to make it complete from memory.

 

[LadyDarkFire]

True, plus, we are always discovering new science fiction, and science fact, every day, so the list keeps growing

 

[Doulton]

I must say I didn't find Asimov's stories to be that scientific, although I only read one book of his short stories, and it only had about four stories in it. I think the most real-science-based of the authors I have read (that I can think of right now anyway) is Mr Clarke. Alot of the science fiction out there really isn't science at all, but more like paranormal. I'm tempted to recommend certain books, but I'm sure there are numerous other threads better suited to that