Teleportation

David Darling

Description

An authoritative, entertaining examination of the ultimate thrill ride
Until recently the stuff of sci-fi fiction and Star Trek reruns, teleportation has become a reality-for subatomic particles at least. In this eye-opening book, science author David Darling follows the remarkable evolution of teleportation, visiting the key labs that have cradled this cutting-edge science and relating the all-too-human stories behind its birth. He ties in the fast emerging fields of cryptography and quantum computing, tackles some thorny philosophical questions (for instance, can a soul be teleported?), and asks when and how humans may be able to "beam up."
Acknowledgments.

Prologue.

Introduction: A Brief History of Beaming Up.

1. Light Readings.

2. Ghosts in the Material World.

3. The Mysterious Link.

4. Dataverse.

5. Secret Communications.

6. A Miracle in Montreal.

7. Small Steps and Quantum Leaps.

8. A Computer without Bounds.

9. Atoms, Molecules, Microbes . . ..

10. Far-fetched and Far-reaching.

Epilogue.

Chronology.

References.

Bibliography.

Index.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Teleportation
• Physics
• David Darling
• Science
• Physique
• Physical attractiveness

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 17 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470248720
• Langue: English

Extrait

Teleportation
The Impossible Leap
DAVID DARLING
Copyright 2005 by David Darling. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc.
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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Darling, David J.
Teleportation : the impossible leap / David Darling.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978-0-471-47095-3 (cloth)
ISBN-10 0-471-47095-3 (cloth)
1. Teleportation. 2. Quantum theory. I. Title.
BF1386.D37 2005
133.8-dc22
2004016045
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my granddaughter,
Emily Varie,
whose generation may see such wonders
Crazy way to travel-spreading a man s molecules all over the universe.
DR. McCOY, IN THE EPISODE TITLED OBSESSION OF THE STAR TREK ORIGINAL SERIES
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction: A Brief History of Beaming Up

1 Light Readings

2 Ghosts in the Material World

3 The Mysterious Link

4 Dataverse

5 Secret Communications

6 A Miracle in Montreal

7 Small Steps and Quantum Leaps

8 A Computer without Bounds

9 Atoms, Molecules, Microbes . . .
10 Far-fetched and Far-reaching
Epilogue
Chronology
References
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
For stimulating discussions and ideas, and also technical help, I d like to thank Ignacio Cirac, Andrew Crayston, Nicolas Gisin, Fr. Gregory Hallam, Raymond Laflamme, David McMahon, Robert Nixon, the Oxford Centre for Quantum Computation, Jian-Wei Pan, Paramount Studios, Thomas Spitzer, Robert Weinberg, and Anton Zeilinger. Once again, I m deeply grateful to senior editor Stephen Power and senior production editor Lisa Burstiner at John Wiley Sons, and to my agent, Patricia Van der Leun. Last and most, thank-you, Jill, Lori-An, Jeff, and Mum and Dad for your loving support.
Prologue
Luk Barr entered the kiosk on Seventh Street, tapped a number into the keypad, and disappeared. A moment later, the gray damp of a New York evening gave way to bright morning sunlight streaming through the windows of his Sydney apartment, half a world away. Would he ever get used to this way of commuting?
He was ten when they teleported the first mammal-a white mouse-from one side of a lab to the other. Now, barely a quarter of a century later, trans-pads were as common as phone booths and shower stalls. Every home, office block, and public building had one; they were at the South Polar Base and on the moon-no one did the lunar run by spacecraft anymore. No rockets took off from Earth. Why bother when astronauts, supplies, and anything else could be teleported directly aboard a space station, and launched to other places from there? Ambulances were fitted with portable trans-pads so that the critically ill or injured could be beamed directly to whichever accident and emergency ward, anywhere in the world, had an open slot at the time. Computers automatically routed the patient and notified next of kin, who could then beam themselves to the hospital within seconds.
The world of the late twenty-third century had been revolutionized by the trans-pad. Of course, people still traveled by the old means, too, for pleasure or economy. Teleportation wasn t exactly cheap yet because of the vast amount of data involved. A typical jump would cost you the price of a fancy restaurant meal. But teleport service providers (TSPs) were cutting their rates all the time, as global data highways became ever broader. And that s what it was all about, this near-magical trick of teleportation. That s what you were turned into when you stood on the trans-pad: data.
Luk had never really understood the finer details of how teleportation worked, any more than most people had previously understood the innards of a TV or a CD player. It had to do with quantum properties of light and matter, and especially had something to do with a weird spooky action at a distance called entanglement. He also knew that teleporting complicated things like human beings hinged upon quantum computers.
The key was information. When you were teleported it wasn t in the form of matter or even energy. On the trans-pad, all the information was effectively sucked out of you and that process destroyed your material body, left you formless. Every atom of your substance was scanned, broken down, and sorted into its component elements. Carbon atoms went into one tank, oxygen into another, and so on. But you didn t get these atoms back. What was sent to the other end, at the speed of light, was just your pattern, your subatomic blueprint-pure information. At the destination, an identical copy of you was made from the atoms in the holding tanks there. And that always got Luk thinking. A moment ago he d consisted of his atoms. Now here he was, someplace else, built up from the stuff of someone else s old body. But what the heck, one carbon atom was like any other.
Not everyone agreed with that. Luk knew one or two originals -people who d never jumped and never would. Some had a morbid fear of it, like the fear of flying. Others were afraid for a different, more disturbing reason: they were sure they wouldn t survive the trip. That s because they believed no one survived the trip. Teleportation was the same as dying. The identical copy at the other end was exactly that-a copy, a clone. But it wasn t you. That person had ceased to exist.
Luk had once gotten into conversation with a fundamentalist original.
Your soul doesn t make the jump you know, this guy had said.
I m not sure I believe in souls, Luk had replied. In any case, I d have thought that if you re copied atom for atom, whatever other stuff you re made of gets copied over too.
That s where you re wrong. But it s too late to do anything about it now. Not even worth praying about, because without a soul . . .
It hadn t really bothered Luk at the time. He d heard all about these fundamentalists and their churches from which jumpers -the vast majority of the population-were excluded. But then he started thinking more about it. What if there was something about you that didn t make the transfer? On the other hand, without jumping there d be so much he couldn t have done. Like being with his family and friends, instantly, anyplace, anytime. Like visiting any point on Earth at the drop of a hat. Only yesterday, he and Rosie had spent a couple of hours at the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia; last week, it had been an afternoon s trek in the Himalayan foothills and back home for supper. No, he couldn t imagine life the old way anymore. But he really ought to try to get his head around the science of the thing.
Rosie was already up and about, pouring some fresh coffee. Three great sights in one, if you counted in the Harbor Bridge through the glass wall beyond.
Say, Rosie. Any idea where that book on teleportation got to?
Introduction
A Brief History of Beaming Up
The idea of people and things vanishing from one place and mysteriously reappearing in another, possibly having passed through solid walls, goes back thousands of years. Stories of ghosts and spirits are at least as old as civilization, and probably very much older. Reports of objects and animals suddenly popping up where they re least expected also have a long history.
In Oriental mysticism and Western occultism there s the notion of apport : an object or person winking out in one place and, driven by some unknown mental power, materializing somewhere else, perhaps far away. The Buddha reputedly vanished from India and reappeared shortly after in Sri Lanka. Devotees of the Indian yogi Satya Sai Baba hail him as the current king of apport. Other instances of supernatural transport crop up in the Bible, including one in Acts 8:39-40: The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip. . . . But Philip was found at Azotus. Also high on the list of odd comings and goings is bilocation -the phenomenon of