Teleportation – Will It Ever Be Possible

 

– Metaphysics of Teleportation

One of the deepest theological questions at the merger where physics and philosophy collide. In the present time, we can only teleport photons, particles of light and atoms like caesium and rubidium. However, in the coming years we do expect to be able to teleport molecules, maybe water, carbon dioxide. After that who knows? Maybe even DNA, maybe organic molecules.

Now to teleport a human raises ethical dilemma, because the original human body has to be destroyed in the process of quantum teleportation. Therefore, if Captain Kirk, zap himself across the room, you have now seen Captain Kirk die. You have seen his atoms fall apart, but here is this other Captain Kirk on the other side of the room who has the same bad jokes, who has the same character, all the personality quirks as the original Captain Kirk.

So the imposter says, “No, I’m real. I have the memories, the personality, and the quirks. I am Captain Kirk”. Well you just saw the original die and if you believe in a soul that soul went to heaven or maybe the other place, but that person is dead, so who is this imposter over there? Teleportation - Will It Ever Be Possible Does the imposter have a soul? So it raises the question are we nothing but information? Is the soul, the essence of who we are, nothing but information? All we can say, it is physically possible to teleport an entire human being across the room or maybe onto Mars. It is physically possible to do that and it raises a valid question. What happened to the soul if your original copy died and somebody out there has all your memories? What does that mean? Answer is we don’t know.

In a little over a century, humankind has advanced from an uncertain new understanding of the behaviour of electrons at the atomic scale to reliably teleporting them across a room. What new technical mastery of such phenomena might we have in 1,000, or even 10,000 years? Only time and space will tell.

In the meanwhile! Beam me up SCOTTY!!!