Book Review: 

Teleportation, the Impossible Leap
by David Darling

 

Greetings, Federation Officers!

They said it was impossible ...

 Looks like teleportation may be a fact about the same time Captain Archer would have taken the Enterprise off for adventure, mid-2100s.

 Teleportation will work through the same miracle that will give us quantum computers a couple of decades down the road from now. It involves a process called ENTANGLEMENT.  This is when two particles are created at the same time by the same source, are joined together by a jolt of electricity, and they ENTANGLE.  When the particles are split up, no matter how far apart they are, millions of light-years apart, what happens to one also happens to the other.  They are forever linked. 

(Sounds like love to me!)

This means that we can entangle two particles, then separate them.  One becomes the source for the information, the other its destination.  And these two particles will continue to share information forever.  Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance". 

The coolest part?  We've learned how to take advantage of this amazing process already.

How will this equal teleportation?  Well, this is how they think that it will work.  And I'll explain in elaborate Feddy language.

The Enterprise will have a teleport station that contains storage tanks for matter and a dang strong quantum computer.  The Away Team will step onto the teleport pad.  The computer will take notes on their bodies, where every cell belongs and to whom.  When the Go button is pushed, the teleport is going to break down the bodies of the Away Team, and put all that matter into a storage tank.  The machine will then send the INFORMATION to the planet's teleport station, where matter from the destination tanks will be reassembled into the Away Team using the information sent.

Sounds both groovy and bizarre.

We are on the road to it now.  We are already doing this with photons, and creating laser beam clones, which is creating a light particle and cloning it like a copy machine.  Not much stands in the way of teleportation.  Really, Dr. Darling says we'll need that quantum computer to hold such a massive amount of information.  The information of a human body will take an humongous amount of storage in a computer, since we have 10^28th atoms in our bodies (that's a LOT of zeros), and we aren't there yet.  Still, a quantum computer can handle that part, so it's just a matter of time before we build the machine that can make it happen.  And we are making incredible strides every month. 

And, sadly, it won't work exactly like ST.  We'll NOT be able to travel to new worlds like this right off the bat.  There will need to be a teleport station at the destination end of the trek. Shame.  Do you remember the movie, The Fly?  How about the Halloween episode of the Simpsons when Homer bought the teleport booths?  Two teleport pods. 

Another roadblock ... We've got to learn what the human soul is. That sounds more difficult than the information storage!  

We may find that we can only send dead things, as in freight, stuff, and junk.  No people, no living things.  But that's not carved in asteroid yet.  So far, the door's wide open to make teleportation a go.  Our grandkids might be hopping all over this planet! 

And there will be all kinds of new things like, a felony charge for illegal interplanetary trafficking.  Day trips to the moon!  Sure would help our gas crisis!

It'll be a whole new world ...

I haven't read a science book in the last ten years I loved like I enjoyed this one.  No, that's not the impossible part.

If you like science, but can't get a good grasp of physics, even though you want to, this book will be a dream come true for you. Dr. Darling explains it all so that a lot of people will understand.  Where was he in MY physics classes?  A gifted teacher, for sure.  Go out and buy this book.  You'll like it and learn more than you'd ever thought you could understand.