USA Today article: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/usat110504.html "It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek, a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones." --- http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf Report date: 25-11-2003 Sponsor: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFMC) 10 E. Saturn Blvd. Edwards AFB CA 93524-7680 The concept of teleportation was originally developed during the Golden Age of 20 century science fiction literature by writers in need of a form of instantaneous disembodied transportation technology to support the plots of their stories. Teleportation has appeared in such SciFi literature classics as Algis Budry’s Rogue Moon (Gold Medal Books, 1960), A. E. van Vogt’s World of Null-A (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1945), and George Langelaan’s The Fly (Playboy Magazine, June 1957). The Playboy Magazine short story led to a cottage industry of popular films decrying the horrors of scientific technology that exceeded mankind’s wisdom: The Fly (1958), Return of the Fly (1959), Curse of the Fly (1965), The Fly (a 1986 remake), and The Fly II (1989). The teleportation concept has also appeared in episodes of popular television SciFi anthology series such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. But the most widely recognized pop-culture awareness of the teleportation concept began with the numerous Star Trek television and theatrical movie series of the past 39 years (beginning in 1964 with the first TV series pilot episode, The Cage), which are now an international entertainment and product franchise that was originally spawned by the late genius television writer-producer Gene Roddenberry. Because of Star Trek everyone in the world is familiar with the “transporter” device, which is used to teleport personnel and material from starship to starship or from ship to planet and vice versa at the speed of light. People or inanimate objects would be positioned on the transporter pad and become completely disintegrated by a beam with their atoms being patterned in a computer buffer and later converted into a beam that is directed toward the destination, and then reintegrated back into their original form (all without error!). “Beam me up, Scotty” is a familiar automobile bumper sticker or cry of exasperation that were popularly adopted from the series... This study was tasked with the purpose of collecting information describing the teleportation of material objects, providing a description of teleportation as it occurs in physics, its theoretical and experimental status, and a projection of potential applications. The study also consisted of a search for teleportation phenomena occurring naturally or under laboratory conditions that can be assembled into a model describing the conditions required to accomplish the transfer of objects... The author proposes an additional model for teleportation that is based on a combination of the experimental results from the previous government studies and advanced physics concepts. Numerous recommendations outlining proposals for further theoretical and experimental studies are given in the report. The report also includes an extensive teleportation bibliography... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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