You missed one - apport. A description used in spiritualism and well over 100 years old.

As for how you could achieve it, here's a freebie design. Two spheres, source and destination. You step into the source, the interior of the two spheres are made quantum identical, and when they cease to be identical there is a 50% chance you have arrived at the destination.

"Transporter" may not have taken off outside the SF community, but I'm pretty sure that "beam me up" is recognised just about everywhere.

Maybe the problem is that matter transmitters are too far away? We've had actual lasers and actual robots at least since the 1960s or so. Once glowing beams and robot arms have appeared on the TV news, it's a lot easier to extrapolate from here to there. (Even if there are in reality massive technological problems.)

It's always bothered me in Star Trek that the transporter was capable of scanning an entire being, storing and forwarding that information, and re-assembling the person afterwards without flaws.

Then there's the TNG episode with Scotty, which demonstrates that being able to store that information is possible (if hard).

At the same time, the replicators were considered to create adequate food and spare parts, but never as good as the original, despite being based on the same sort of technology.

The only explanation is that replicators use lower resolution; there's no explanation on how or why it is more efficient to only use sufficiently high resolution in transporters.

It would have changed the nature of the show too much, I guess. But it doesn't make much sense!

For historical & personal reasons, I like the "Telesender" How about "Q-jump"? In that Q/M levels of code/decode information will be needed to operate the thing? Which is, of course, the practical problem in making one .... So much so, that FTL, by some handwavium-means is much more likely to be operable.

In addition to T-Mat, Doctor Who has also used "Transmat" a couple of times as well (The Five Doctors is the example that immediately comes to mind).

Oh, and this is particularly bad: supposedly replicators use too low resolution to produce organic tissue, yet are perfectly capable of producing organic meals without any loss of nutrition.

It hurts a little...

I agree, Hugh: "Beam me up" is pretty much understood everywhere.

When people dream of imaginary technologies, it's hard to guess in advance are the ones that will be difficult to achieve. Certainly, in the days before quantum physics etc, it seemed like "telegraphing" a person or sending them by "super-radio" would be quite easy - easier, arguably, than some of the other things people imagined at the time. So maybe now we have 3D printers etc, plus quantum teleportation, might matter transmitters be about to be in vogue again?

(Look at all the names in that list from 50s and 60s. Something was really booming then for this trope. Me, I think it might have something to do with TV, but I've yet to pin it down.)

Dirk - I personally love "apport" but (iirc) Fort when he coined the word was giving an unexplained phenomenon a name rather than describing a technology. He also wasn't writing fiction. I hope not, anyway. His writings are far too interesting!

Quite right, but Lan Wright got there first in 1951. I've tried to list these in first appearance (probably should've said that).

I agree! It doesn't make sense at all. This is something that always bothered me, hence my ongoing picking at the idea until it bleeds.

Hey, I like Q-jump.

If we ever perfect the technology, we might have a branding trend where everything is "Q-ed, like everything is i-ed today (iPhone etc) and e-ed recently.

Ouch.

There are some stories where different parts of organic material are reproduced differently or not at all. Gernsback wrote a yarn in 1909 featuring the way onions lose their flavour when they're transmitted. Professor Challenger lost his beard in "The Disintegration Machine". And there's a weird story from 1959 called "Rabbits to the Moon" in which bones take longer to arrive, turning the protagonist into a blob.

"It's always bothered me in Star Trek that the transporter was capable of scanning an entire being, storing and forwarding that information, and re-assembling the person afterwards without flaws."

I wonder if science fiction writers turn up their nose at the matter-thru-space-beamer, not because of its history of bad names, but because its most popular example (Star Trek's transporter) is practically synonymous with inconsistent and badly thought out speculation. Spending your teen years screaming, "Just beam the damn Romulans into space, Jean-Luc!" doesn't help you respect an idea when you're writing your own fiction.

1:

...You step into the source, the interior of the two spheres are made quantum identical, and when they cease to be identical there is a 50% chance you have arrived at the destination.

That reminds me of Gilbert Gosseyn's trick in A. E. Van Vogt's The World of Null-A.

Refreshing my memory via Google:

All About Teleportation by John G. Cramer

. . .

Van Vogt described how his protagonist Gilbert Gosseyn used his “double brain” for teleportation, employing a process called “similarization”. Gosseyn’s special nervous system was able to memorize the stucture of a patch of ground or floor to "twenty-decimal similarity" (whatever that means). After that, as long as the memory of that location remained sharp in his auxiliary memory, Gosseyn could teleport

Except that the earlier commenter's process would be "dissimilarization", I guess. ;->

Perhaps "presimilarisation" or "transimilarisation"?

I always think of them as "people shredders". If you are very lucky something very like you might be unshredded either.

A-Gate = Abattoir Gate. Feed in an animal and teleport each part to a different vacuum sealed polystyrene tray.

unshredded later

That's what happens when you rewrite comments without proof reading.

"Abattoir Gate" - eww

Amazing what people can get used to. Many of us seem quite happy at the moment whizzing around with tanks of flammable liquid just inches away from our children. :-)

I just came up with an idea about peoples personal teleporters software being hacked by underground cannibal gangs... :)

I don't think it will get better than "teleport": tele-phone, tele-vision, tele-port. Also air-port, space-port and port for the stationary installations. "Gate" might be an alternative, but I can't think of a verb other than "going through a gate" or "use a gate". Same with portal.

To my knowledge that story has not been written. Go for it, and I will cite it!

I think you're probably right, in terms of getting a better word than "teleport", but if it hasn't caught on after 70+ years, will it ever?

Maybe it just needs the right book.

It's after midnight here in Adelaide, South Australia (just a short teleport away), so I'm hitting the sack. I look forward to checking in on the conversation tomorrow. Thanks, all.

Well, I'm sure we would find a name once we can buy the thingies somewhere. Even if it's more than one name as with cell/mobile/handy/phone.

The terminology seems to be converging on gate and variants thereof. Apart from OGH there was Cherryh's Gate of Ivrel and sequels and the enormous Stargate franchise which will probably see a revival.

Gating would work well I think.

But the name will have to be something unique so it can be copyrighted and/or trademarked.

"Always travel by Telegyte™! 99.44% safer that any other quantum duplication repositioning system!"

Are we forgetting the obligatory unpronounceable acronym?

To me "gate" implies something like a wormhole where you just walk in one end and step out of the other without anything dramatic happening to your person, while "teleport" suggests disintegration and reconstitution.

If we want any more neologisms, then I've just thought of 'Scaper'

(For Scan/Print)

I agree. "Teleportation" is so familiar, as a purported psychic power, or power of comic book characters, that it is becoming the default. If you have "locational reassignment portals" and need to sum them for the layman you just say "You know, they teleport you." Some recent movies and TV shows have had people who "jump" but when you want to explain it to someone so they don't think you mean "broad jump" what do you say? You say, "you know, teleport."

A key plot element of Kraken is the real nature of Star Trek transporters. (You'll never get me up in one of those things.)

Wasn't that exactly the difference between A-Gates and T-Gates in Glasshouse? Can't remember, wasn't there also a third kind of gate?

You mentioned coming around to games later. When you do, pay particular attention to "Portal".

I was going to suggest that it would be interesting to compare with the history of names fot television in SF, before the word "television" was coined. However, experiments in image transmission were going on so early that the names coined by real researchers would probably have influenced the SF authors too much for such a study to be useful.

As for cool names for matter transmission, my favourite is Harry Harrison's Bloater Drive from Bill the Galactic Hero. It's the one where to get a spaceship from Earth to Alpha Centauri, you weaken the atomic binding forces so that the ship bloats up to a length of several light years, then shrink it back down from the other end. Avoid bumping into planets while the ship is in the "bloated" state. I guess this lies at the edge of the concept of matter transmission, but no more so than Pohl and Williamson's tachyonic transporter.

Some more technologies for you: Douglas Adams's Infinite Improbability Drive; John Brunner's Stardropper; the horribly much-too-small MT portal from David Langford's The Space Eater; the horribly far-too-slow device in Damon Knight's "Pattern"; the distorter from A.E. Van Vogt's Null-A books; the interpenetrator fleets in Brian Aldiss's Canopy of Time stories; John Cramer's Twistor. And a story I once read, possibly by Murray Leinster, in which a researcher builds a machine that travels through the Earth by using a matter-polarising field to align its atoms and those of the surrounding rock so that they slip past one another like two decks of cards.

It always bothered me too. I adopted some headcanon to get over it:

1) Transporters don't just send data and energy for reconstruction, there's an extra thing (call it "telething") that ensures the reconstruction is perfect. The telething cannot be stored or copied.

2) It's possible to edit the data you receive from a transporter in order to materialise a different object than the one that was dematerialised but when you do you break the telething. Without the telething perfect reconstruction is not possible.

3) Replicators work by transporting material from stockpiles and editing the data to make them materialise into something useful. Because of that the telething is broken and replicators can't produce perfect copies. The resolution is good for everyday stuff but the error rate means they can't be used for high spec equipment, living things, exotic matter etc.

In general I think part of the issue as to why the word changes a lot (even in fantasy/superhero media where the power can be called teleporting, blinking, jumping etc) is that there is no real world analogue. I'm pretty certain that before the mobile phone was on the horizon there were multiple names for that sort of technology too. Now the names of personal communicators are derivatives of the names we use today.

Teleporting is different because there is no known way to build one. 3D scanning and printing is not teleporting as it's commonly understood so won't take on the mantle of that.

I seem to remember something like "jump gate" in Daniel Keys Moran's The Last Dancer. Did I get that wrong?

I was a bit confused by the list too, because it was unclear to me whether it's talking about matter transmitters or holes in space (and whether there's a difference).

There's actually a scene in one of the Culture stories (State of the Art, I think) where a character makes fun of someone for equating their Displacer technology with matter transmission, because ha-ha a molecular disassembler/reassembler is totally unlike a temporary wormhole generator in every way, lol.

Of course, thematically the only difference between the two ideas seems to be that wormholes have the property of preventing people from arguing angrily on the internet about whether a matter transmitter can properly replicate the élan vital or creates a soulless demon.

I've always found this a bit odd, mostly because atheists seem to argue about this subject as much as anyone else.

That would be the no cloning theorem.

Teleportation of information does not violate it because the original state is destroyed and the quantum information is moved rather than copied.

How about a reality remaker, or 'remaker' for short.

The name you assign would depend on which aspect you want to stress: the process or the result. In Star Trek, the distance/travel aspect is the reason for use so more stress is on the 'transporter'. In fact, I think over time the 'matter' part fell out of use. Pretty limited and unimaginative application of this technology. To start, this technology would mean that all physical matter (gold, gems, art, etc.) would lose its value therefore score keeping/wealth would need to be tracked in some other completely unrelated way (goodwill, fame, honors, etc.). Which is consistent with the ST canon of a society that is no longer profit-driven.

Then consider the interpersonal and social uses/consequences ... I can think of some benign and scary scenarios.

I think that ST:TNG had one episode showing this technology used medically to rid the crew of some sort of organism and re-assembled into a physiological non-infected/healthy previous state. However don't recall any ST episodes that showed this technology being used to implant anything. But this would surely be as life-saving as removing unwanted organisms. Imagine what this would mean for organ/stem cell transplantation, blood clots, plaques, etc. On the flip side, this technology could be used for the dispersal of a plague. (The new zombie, resurrection machine? ... Slogan: Never Say 'Die')

From the above, it's obvious that this technology which by definition assembles humans atom by atom, would of course be the ideal gene modifier. (Think Voyager once showed the landing party having been re-materialized as 'natives'.) So gender, age, race also become modifiable, so no longer an issue. Of course this means that its opposite will arise, i.e., 'The Latter Day Church of the Original Unchanged and Unwashed Humans'.

Given the above ... How would you define what is 'real' about yourself/your world given that you could edit and re-write yourself at any time, over and over again?

BTW, thanks for the link to your thesis, will read it soon.

With replicators and teleporters, it could come down to higher energy costs and technical requirements to get a more precise "resolution" on teleportation. You'd have to do that if you're teleporting people, but for replicators in everyone's private rooms it may be acceptable to have a cheaper, easier-to-maintain low-resolution version that makes good-but-not-great versions of things from stock material.

Surely the resolution to create food out of the proper proteins, carbohydrates, etc. is the same (at the atomic level) as creating a living thing. You can't just throw some oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen atoms in at semi-random without getting oops, neurotoxin (or more likely, pencils) for dinner.

The difference would have to be that the replicator makes things out of molecular or (more likely) cellular / tissue feedstock, like a 3d tissue printer. But that would really make it almost completely unrelated to a matter transmitter technology, which presumably builds things up at the atomic level.

After a while, it won't be called Teleporting any more. As with the telephone, the "tele" part will be dropped. You will no more teleport than you telephone, you will port, as you phone. Then again it might go the way of Skype (and Kleenex) where a brand name grows up and becomes a real word. And of course there will be different words for different counties and age groups. British English will insist on calling it one thing (transing), while American English will have another word (porting, or teleporting for the old folks). And the Australians will have a name for it that makes you wonder if you are being cursed at or recited a nursery rhyme (tollynokkering). And that's just the English speaking world. The Xerox brand name will be bought out by the company inventing the technology explicitly so they can recycle the word and, like "Coke", "Xerox" will become an international word for teleportation. Which will be mauled in many different ways.

Over in NaziWorld they already have a matter transporter. The person who wishes to travel simply goes into a chamber where they are scanned. A duplicate is created at the destination and if the transport has been successful the original is then gassed.

Someone wrote this already. You are anesthetized before transmission and as soon as the receiving station confirms success the table tilts and dumps you into a tank of acid or a meat grinder or something. Of course, in the story something goes wrong and they must deal with the duplication.

Only skimmed the comments so far, and don't think it's been mentioned, but one thing that has bothered me about the Trek transporters is that they have no receivers. How are they reconstructing everything out of thin air? The only answer I've come up with is that their universe is seeded with smartdust that is activated by a transporter beam (but how'd that get there?). Or maybe the smartmatter is squirted down before the beam? Anyhow, I've come to lean toward McCoy's attitude to them. You won't see me volunteering for 'em.

"The line between teleportation and matter transmission is a grey one, I know."

I wasn't aware there was a line at all. Care to fill me in?

What would you call the matter duplicator/transporter thingie in Jack Williamson and Frederic Pohl's Cuckoo Saga? Things were copied, rather than transmitted.

Someone wrote this already....Of course, in the story something goes wrong and they must deal with the duplication.

That'd be "Think Like A Dinosaur" up in the list. I think the aliens in it required the originals to be disintegrated after scanning to "Maintain the Balance". Haven't actually read the story but heard a radio play and later saw the 90s Outer Limits episode.

People from England of a certain age may prefer "jaunt" because of The Tomorrow People. http://thetomorrowpeople.wikia.com/wiki/Jaunting

(It wasn't until years later that I learned of the pedigree of the word)

I find the "no cool name" hypothesis implausible. "Teleport", as many have already remarked, is universally understood and fits the pattern of other familiar "tele-" technologies. It may not have the level of "intrinsic zing" that, er, "laser" does, perhaps, but it seems to have a comparable level to "spaceship".

My immediate thought from the original post, before reading any comments, was that a teleporter in its raw form is too much of a narrative-breaker. So much human activity both in fiction and in reality is based around moving some kind of matter from place to place that if you remove all difficulty from doing that you instantly lose a huge amount of plot fodder, and at such a basic level that you have to carefully examine even seemingly trivial occurrences to see if they still make sense. So you have to cripple the thing somehow: it can't handle living matter, or it has limited range, or it requires a cubic kilometre of equipment at either end, or a cubic kilometre of fuel per transmission, or it is inherently unreliable due to the mechanics of transmission, or it is only possible to set it up at a very limited number of special locations, or... and once you have so crippled it, it is no longer interesting. So to write a decent story about it requires a lot of skill and a particular interest in doing so.

I must admit that I have read very few stories in which any kind of teleportation is more than a background feature - I think only "The Fly" from your "list of classics" - but most of the stories that I can recall using it tend to go for the "can only set it up at a limited number of special locations" limitation, expressed in the form of a network of star-gates or similar. This introduces enough restriction to make it interesting, and it is also a pretty familiar type of restriction, as many non-teleporting space drives work in such a way as to impose a very similar one.

It is very telling that Star Trek's transporters originated not as 'technological devices' but as 'plot devices.' The show couldn't afford another means of landing people on planets (the shuttle craft were only built for later episodes, not by the studio but by a model making company in exchange for the rights to market model kits) so it was simpler and cheaper to invent a way of moving characters from A to B with limited sfx.

Iain M. Banks made fun of Star Trek transporters in 'The State of the Art' because the Culture's 'displacers' aren't matter transporters (which are frankly improbable) but short-range wormholes (which are a bit less improbable).

I was thinking something similar.

If you break down some of the examples above, they come in a few varieties in terms of plot implication:

Teleporter (matter transmitter, transporter, displacer, etc.): A device where you push a button to move someone from one arbitrary point to another. Sometimes has to start or end in one spot.

Gate (stargate, wormhole, portal, displacement booth, stepping disk): A fixed device that you step through which terminates in another such device. Sometimes you can select from many destinations, sometimes hardwired. This is one of the most common schemes for FTL space ships.

Ship (numerous FTL and time travel schemes, TARDIS, etc.): A device you step inside of which can disappear and reappear in a new location as per your instructions. Sometimes moves only in space or time, sometimes both. This is also extremely common for FTL space ships.

Upload (A-gate, backups, various singularity etc.): The logical result of combining a matter transmitter with computing. Scan a person in, make a copy of the file, feed into constructor device. Sometimes includes a vat of acid to dump the old body into.

Astral projection (less popular these days): Psi powers used to be a really popular trope in SF, but have fallen out of favor. Why use technology? Just think really hard about where you want to be. Also occasionally used for space ships.

Looked at this way, I don't think it's true that the matter transmitter / teleporter / etc. gets overlooked at all. It's really one of the most common and stereotypical concepts, and is embedded in numerous other basic SF ideas which show up practically everywhere one way or another.

Every time you see someone fly their ship through a wormhole or plot an FTL jump, they're just using a large, ship-size matter transmitting device of some sort.

I think the big distinction is between systems that convert you to information and ones that don't.

Jump drives, wormholes etc. can't be used for replication in the same way as a system that scans, transmits and reconstitutes an object.

Stories with teleportation as a major or primary plot element do exist. Niven's series of short stories ("The Alibi Machine" is one of them) are some examples. I also like his "transfer booth" and, rather more high-tech, "stepping disks".

I think the name for such a device would depend strongly on just how it works. For teleporters that work by distorting spacetime, "warpdoor" might work. I don't remember seeing this word before, but I might have.

The name also strongly depends on just how massive the equipment is. Relativistic wormholes, which would need Jupiter masses at least, are a bit different from a litre or so of molecular electronics. :)

Langford's The Space Eater was a joyous discovery while I was doing my research. I'm glad someone remembers it. Truly, a horrific means of getting from A to B.

This is likely true, which gives SF writers a lot of scope. Can you think of an example from the genre where a fictional brand name has leaked into popular culture? I can't, but then it's early here and my brain isn't functioning yet.

The devices in the Cuckoo Sage appear under "Doomship" in the list as "tachyon transporters".

Ditto in Australia. I wanted to jaunt so hard when I was a kid I'm lucky I didn't pop a vein.

There are a few stories out there that treat the matter transmitter as more than just a means of moving people around. (Some of the links I've provided link to my thesis which name a few.) You'll find a list of my own stories in this vein here: http://twinmakerbooks.com/further-tales/ You can assume that the big names on the list (Clarke, Silverberg, Sturgeon, Brunner etc etc) gave the idea some serious thought.

Re "teleport" being universally accepted, maybe it's just my wife, but she had to have it explained to her, and she's no dunce.

I like your classification system. In my PhD I left the matter somewhat vague because I was concerned with exploring the ramifications of the technology more or less regardless of how the mechanism actually worked - provided there was a mechanism or at least a scientific explanation of some sort. So no dragons from Pern, but yes to Niven's "gentle art of wishing yourself from place to place" in "By Mind Alone", the latter because he deals with the problem of conservation of momentum.

The trope, as a means of getting a round, is ubiquitous, as you rightly say. As a science fictional tool used to unpick the world around us, it's used less often but to great effect. That's the horn I'm tooting. It's usually not listed next to the other great "icons" of SF (by critics such as Gary K Wolfe, for instance) and is sometimes outright dismissed as a “resource which [authors] sometimes overuse as a means of moving the plot along” (Brian Stableford) Which is true, but underplays its value as a trope, I think. Time machines are similarly used for trivial ventures, but critically they're (arguably) easier to lump together because all other names fall under the umbrella term.

"The line between teleportation and matter transmission is a grey one, I know."

I wasn't aware there was a line at all. Care to fill me in?

There is changing the very shape of space itself, and there is transmission by scanning and sending as a beam of particles or waves. Up to perhaps 1970, the most common form of the former was probably the space warp. The analogy here is that if an ant walking on region A of a pocket handkerchief wants to get to region B, it can do so very easily if one folds the handkerchief so that A and B overlap. As Niven pointed out in "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation", care is needed: if you have several space warpers active near each other, then at the best, space will be distorted in an unpredictable way and no-one will get to where they want to go. At the worst, the fabric of space will come apart like a too-often crumpled handkerchief.

The name "teleportation" tends to be associated with such space-based techniques, whereas "matter transmission" often associates with scanning and sending. It tends to be the more sophisticated civilisations who practise teleportation, leaving matter transmission to the dunces who've not yet learnt how to manipulate the very structure of space itself. The real adepts also store information in the very structure of etc., compute with it, and even download their brains into it.

One does not need to be terribly sophisticated at all to do scanning and sending. George O. Smith's Venus Equilateral series used valves, albeit rather special valves. One chapter was concerned with how his engineers synchronised the timebases of the sender and receiver; until this problem was solved, transmitted objects tended to end up with little frilly ripples running along them, and even double ripples and triple ripples.

Teleportation sometimes also implies use of psychic powers. Matter transmission doesn't: it has a solid basis in technology, and could be run by, for example, somebody as non-spiritual as a future Jeremy Clarkson.

The name "transposition" emphasises teleportation's ability to bypass the Einsteinian speed limit. All you have to do is to transpose the space containing the object to be moved. Because whereas there is a limit on how fast you can move matter through space, there is no such limit on how fast you can move space through space.

Space can be used in all kinds of other ways. You can generate a special field which stiffens it, thereby increasing the speed of light to infinity, as Asimov did in "Billiard Ball". You can shove an object into an N-dimensional hyperspace, overspace, or subspace, moving it along a path that lies outside the object's native three dimensions. If the N-dimensional space happens to be folded in the right way, or if the speed of light there is greater, this going "around" normal space will be faster than going through it. As A. Square discovered in Edwin Abbot's Flatland and the 19th century astronomer and spiritualist Johann Zöllner pointed out, access to an extra dimension is also a good way to get through locked doors and to amaze those savages who inhabit fewer dimensions than you.

But beware. In George R. R. Martin's "FTA", a physicist invents a hyperspace drive. He then spends the rest of the story supressing the unwelcome fact that travel through hyperspace is slower.

People from England of a certain age may prefer "jaunt" because of The Tomorrow People.

I prefer it, even though I'm not from England. I have no idea where I learned it first in English, but it was obvious and a nice word. I don't use it that often, though.

I did read the original book in Finnish, and I think the word was translated "directly", that is, it was "jaunttaus" or something. I didn't make the connection between the English word and the word in the book I read in Finnish until years later. I think Bester is up for a re-read for me.

Thanks, all, for the suggested names. I hope one of them catches on - either in fiction or in real life!

I don't see why not.

I mean, for starters, if you have time travel, you can construct causally linked (or not) copies of yourself. That's a pretty common pattern with Gates, Ships, and Psi.

Another common plot is to use a Gate, Ship, Psi, or whatnot to travel to an alternate dimension, where a different version of yourself lives. Usually an evil version. With a goatee.

Alternatively, even though they're described as information converters, Star Trek transporters almost always behave as simple Teleporters outside of a few oddball episodes. Otherwise, the red shirt union would demand free backup and restore services on away missions.

My point is, I think that the type of teleporter has to do with whether characters have to walk to a teleport booth under a mountain, sit inside their spaceship, or just launch the "Beam me up!" app on their phone whenever they want to appear somewhere else. Whether the technology also allows you to have a bunch of bearded clones or not is a separate consideration from ease of use.

As another example: in Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels, the world is very clearly an Upload type where people are scanned, transmitted, destroyed, backed up and restored ad nauseum. However, actually making copies of people is rare solely because it's fantastically illegal.

Off-topic, I know, but I'm pretty sure in a century or less folks will look back at the 1880-2030 fad for human-controlled automobiles and the ensuing carnage in about the same way we look on the somewhat earlier habit of duelling with short-swords over quite trivial issues of personal reputation -- "you had to learn to do what in order to be rated as a normal adult human being? And how many people died horribly as a result of this every year?"

Roughly. T-gates were wormholes with two distinct ends in fixed (or moving) locations. A-gates were nanotech dissassembler/assemblers that could dismantle and digitize stuff on the input shelf or recreate it from raw atomic feedstock on the output side (the two usually being in the same device). Not instantaneous, but once digitized the serialized blueprint of whatever had gone into the A-gate could be routed via a network of point-to-point T-gates to an A-gate at some destination for re-assembly. Or duplication. Or modification ...

I will freely confess to having nicked "jaunt" as a variant terminology for world-walking in the trilogy formerly known as "Merchant Princes: the Next Generation". (Not teleportation as such, unless you count travel between identical locations in parallel universes.)

Oops. I was wrong about "Billiard Ball". The field reduces the mass of objects to zero, making them travel at the speed of light. It doesn't change the speed of light.

Not teleportation as such, unless you count travel between identical locations in parallel universes.

I'm tempted to take the obvious route and equate having some sort of jump engine that only works in hyperspace to having enough money to buy a plane ticket in the Other World. I'm afraid this would be some sort of crime against analogy though.

If you use teleporting as a method to bypass a maze in a dungeon though, parallel worlds seem to work fine. Doesn't psychic teleportation very typically involve walking through the ethereal plane in ghost form or similar?

FB meme...

http://www.kappit.com/img/154118/haters-will-see-you-teleport-and-be-like-he-cant-afford-a-car/

I have always thought (since age 6 or 7 when I started consuming science fiction, I'm almost 45 years old now) that such devises were pretty much always called "teleporters" and was stunned to see so many alternatives.

Where there are variations in terminology, these variations seem to be particular to either the outward appearance of the device or their mechanism (or both) (e.g. the Ruby Slippers in the Wizard of Oz, the "Star Gate" in Stargate, "the flue network" in Harry Pottery, the "Tesseract" in A Wrinkle in Time, or "wormholes" (a term used in both fiction and legitimate theoretical physics papers)).

Some technologies, like the Transporters of Star Trek, can transport matter from the device to or from any other location. The ability to transport matter from a place not equipped with a device to the device is particularly exceptional and unusual, with the only other place such a thing is found in the folklore of summoning magical things from wherever they may be at some command.

Others (e.g. the flu network of Harry Pottery, the network of doors in the Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine, the extra-dimensional connections of Beautiful Creatures, the Star Gates, the doorways of the TV series "Haven") involve more or less permanent non-local connections between two points in space. These are basically a fixed network of wormholes. Arguably, this is something different than a teleporter.

Teleportation is also the most common description of such activity when done using psionic abilities, and is also the common name used in quantum physics for analogous non-local actions.

A science fiction extrapolation of that would essentially require destructive analysis of the source object converting it into 100% information, transmission of the information, and then a very sophisticated 3D printer to turn the information back into the destination object - which strictly speaking is not a teleportation of matter itself, but of the form and structure of the abstract object stripped over nothing but its matter itself. And, I can't imagine any feasible way to perform the "beam me up" part of the Star Trek transmitter using a remote device, rather than a device at both ends. Technology equivalent to magic indeed.

I can see what you're saying, how teleporters (usually as part of a space ship) are typically used as background transportation infrastructure and not as an explorative plot element.

A non-ship example might be Hyperion, where the teleport gates are ubiquitous but ultimately don't seem to have much to do with the story as I recall.

Isn't this really just typically true of most SF technology, though? Your typical space opera seems to just use FTL to recreate a sort of 18th century in space with colonialism, jaunty explorers, and pirates. Or in movies, any SF idea at all equals square jawed action hero punching alien robots with explosive brass knuckles.

Stories like Niven's that really try to delve into the effect of teleporters on society (flash mobs and the like) are part of the rarer subset where the writer really wants to delve into the interaction between technology and culture.

The space version might be: how often do people start with a hyper-powerful space drive and then consider the implication that your jaunty asteroid miner controls a planet killing megaweapon? Keep in mind that even the weaker super-tech rocket engines (fusion drives etc.) tend to run in the terawatt range, similar to humanity's entire industrial capacity today.

Even "Upload" stories often shy away from the real implications, and seem to assume consciousness is associated with some sort of soul or indivisible identity. For example, Brin's Kiln People, or Scalzi's Old Man's War.

Time Travel stories also have this sort of divide. There are the ones where the time machine is just how you get the protagonists to an unusual place to have an adventure. And there are the ones that get into the paradoxes and stuff.

Oh, certainly, they just have failed, in the main, to pass across my consciousness so far - for which reason I am grateful for your links and lists :)

"And, I can't imagine any feasible way to perform the "beam me up" part of the Star Trek transmitter using a remote device, rather than a device at both ends."

I can think of two from fiction immediately - the remote manipulation / telepresence technology from EE "Doc" Smith's Skylark series, and the Culture's Effectors.

Exactly.

Almost all Doctor Who stories for example are just adventure stories where the TARDIS operates as their somewhat capricious space taxi, or at most an excuse for an anachronistic costume historical. Despite being about a Time Lord.

When I saw Edward Page Mitchell on that list I thought you had made some kind of mistake. I remember reading his short story about a tachypomp in an 1860s issue of Scribner's. A tachypomp was a device for moving things at infinite speed. Amusingly, it was the issue with the first installment of From Earth to Moon, another science fiction classic.

I always gathered a teleport was a gadget that moved matter by repositioning its components or by duplicating and destroying it. Transporters in Star Trek, if I remember correctly, actually moved both matter and state which accounted for its short range other such limits. I don't remember any duplicate and destroy mechanisms. Warping space usually involved a portal as in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Um.

I don't mean to point out the obvious.

But.

Like.

Greek Gods were zapping all over the place. They literally appear / disappear all over the place.

There are specific Greek words for this. (I won't starting quoting passages, it makes people uncomfortable).

Heraclitus based an entire realm of Space/Time thinking upon the issue (Rivers - twice stepping - temporal flow - logical refutation of repeating temporal/spatial moves).

Greeks were into that kind of thing.

They even made transmutation of matter (e.g. Zeus -- Swan or Daphne -- laurel tree) a central tenet of their mythos.

So.

It's more:

What caused the gap, rather than what started it.

Hint: Jesus did it, so no-one else could. (True story).

HYPERION SPOILERS

I wouldn't say that the gates in Hyperion were irrelevant. They spent most of the first two books unexamined in the background, but it turned out that the computing substrate for the AIs that ran things was the brains of people in transit. To stop the AIs, they destroyed the network and spent the latter two novels using an inferior FTL solution (which had its own hilarious twist on matter-reassembly).

END SPOILERS

I kind of want to reread those at some point, but I don't know if I can due to Simmons' post-9/11 lunacy.

Um.

Not really.

You're missing some huge things there.

The original porter system was destroyed.

It wasn't because the AI were using human minds / death / agony as a energy source, it was because humans realized they were no longer in control.

System crash, AI no longer have access to human minds (via wetwork tech)

The AI created the Crucifixes

FLT wasn't actually FTL it was "meat gets pulped, saved state into crucifix, meat regrown gets uploaded"

That's the entire point about the non-AI backed religious types using FTL but knowing it's destroying their "souls".

It's about the Shrike, the electric trees and constant death/re-birth/assassination that the Pope goes through.

~

And no, you can re-read them. Female Savior, empathy weapons, shared existence and all that.

Grow up. Even Pound had decent poems. OH NOES AN AUTHOR DID SOME SHITTY STUFF.

And you wonder why the wolves hate your kind.

I think the idea is less popular in SF these days because it can so easily become a universal solvent that dissolves the rest of the plot.

Teleporters make little sense as a technology unless you also get a replicator from the same technology, in which case a teleporter is just a replicator where you murder the original person by disintegrating her while creating the remote copy.

But replicators seem too powerful a technology for the rest of a plotline to survive them, if you take them seriously (Star Trek, of course, just ignored the big implications).

Of course apporter as magical unexplained thingie left behind by the Forerunners avoids that... and seems more popular.

Oh, and if you want to spend time reading about questions of personal identity regards teleportation and replicators google "Derek Parfit"

There will be plenty of names to be found in comics. I thought Jack Kirby's Boom Tube was pretty trippy.

Aren't 3D printers using scanners effectively matter transmitters/replicators, just as Clarke's experiments started with transmitting objects ( Travel by Wire).

In a robot society, this form of travel using blueprints and brain state capture should be trivial to implement using extensions of current technology. Life is hard to transmit due to its complexity and the current intractability of scanning brains and the deep seated belief the the conscious "I" doesn't travel to the duplicate.

For machine cultures, this form of travel may be the best way to travel in the solar system and even the stars if the bandwidth needed can be maintained. Worst case just send the info encoded in high density media using a small light sail traveling at fractional c.

Has anyone written any stories assuming this?

In much the same way as using telephones, surveillance and computers to solve crimes undermines the classic police procedural. All the action devolves to picking up the perp. A teleport would even make that go away.

Question for Charlie: why did you choose to have the protagonists in "Saturn's Children", "Neptune's Brood" and "Bit Rot" travel by spacecraft rather than matter transmission? Did MT break the stories in some way that you didn't like?

“I teleported home last night with Ron and Sid and Meg Ron stole Meggy's heart away and I got Sidney's leg.” (Douglas Adams, The restaurant at the end of the universe")

But you do have to be very sure that you have also deactivated all the multiple dissimilar redundant systems by means of which the perp's sudden disappearance triggers a nuke.

Okay ... now looking at this trope through each of the E=mc2 components. The device in question, by definition, is infinite/eternal because the premise states that it continually recycles each of this equation's components into one of the other components.

The way out of this conundrum is of course via dark matter and dark energy which we (physicists) still know next to nothing about. This leads to another trope, that is, the evolution of the SF escape clause.

I think the high density information and light sail thing was in Accelerando. As for Saturn's children etc, the idea was to do as hard science as possible, so most forms of MT discussed on this thread would be ruled out. I wonder too, how well the signal holds up over long distances such that even if you transmit the complete physical state of an AI, that all or enough of it gets there.

Mitchell was an amazingly inventive writer who never sought fame, hence his near-complete erasure from history until Sam Moskowitz tracked him down in the 60s. The collection The Crystal Man contains a great introduction detailing his life and his many achievements. The most memorable detail is that he lost the sight in one eye due to an accident, then lost the other eye in sympathy. Later, the first eyes healed perfectly well, but the second eye never did.

That's a good thought about comics. It's taken me several years to compile this list just from novels and short stories, the medium I know best. When I make the leap to expand the list, I'll know where to come. :-)

"Boom tube" is an awesome name, btw. "Boomer" could work too, onomatopoeic of the sound someone vanishing might make.

I think the idea is less popular in SF these days because it can so easily become a universal solvent that dissolves the rest of the plot.

I think you're wrong. Used right, it's the scaffolding on which you can build the plot. (See also "Glasshouse", the plot of which can only work because of teleporters/replicators.)

But fiction is fashion-prone, in the large. Psionics went massively out of fashion about 3 decades ago but were ubiquitous prior to about 1975 (I date the decline, ironically, as some time shortly after Silverberg's "Dying Inside"). Teleportation ... Niven sort of slammed everyone else's fingers in the desk drawer with his series of novelettes about transport booths (ending, IIRC, in "All the bridges rusting"); that made it hard (but not impossible) to push new ideas about how to use them in hard SF: he picked the low hanging fruit -- flash mobs, implications of conservation of momentum and potential energy, effects on architecture, how to have a 48 hour long birthday party, and so on.

Meanwhile, new stuff became fashionable. I'm not sure it's a coincidence that the decline in psi in SF happened around the time of the emergence of cyberpunk and brain/computer interfaces.

Has anyone written any stories assuming this?

You're taking the piss, right?

(Hint: just whose blog do you think this is?)

Oh, right: most of the folks in the "Neptune's Brood" universe do travel interstellar as serialized data. The problems are (a) you need a minimum number of bodies on hand when firing up a new interstellar colony to instantiate the minds in to build the infrastructure to start creating extra bodies (and interstellar transceivers), and (b) the process of uploading/downloading isn't seamless; you need pretty much identical hardware at each end for the robot mind transplant to work, and then there's a whole chunk of time spent waiting for the serialized download to unpack and imprint itself on the new brain, which is a whole lot longer if the brain is already chock full of network weightings and you're trying to merge the two sets rather than scribble over the previous one.

In "Saturn's Children" Freya is effectively a 70kg wrapper around a hunk of data people are willing to kill for: JeevesCo doesn't trust the receivers at the far end of her routing, so they're sending her along embodied as a highly motivated personal security system. The rich, then as now, play by different rules: by remaining embodied during interplanetary transit they can maintain a semblance of real-time control over their affairs.

Okay, the transporter technology-related shows, books, etc. that I'm familiar with used such devices to shorten distances between points. Why not turn the trope/device on its head as in: 'The universe is running out of space and time! Only the XXtransporterXX can make room for everyone.' This leads to the accidental/incidental creation of alternate 'between-time'* universes. Problems arise when these universes start rubbing against/entwining with each other.

• Would call this place/time 'Betimes' for short ... always liked this word.

I think Teleport is the SF trope with TOO MANY names, not so much no name,

Teleport is fine, transmat beam from Doctor Who possibly better.

Were it left to the US Military, or IMB's The Culture, it would no doubt become the Synchronous Quantum Duplication Relocation System, or something. They probably already have it at Area 51.

(In IMB's Culture novels, the humble space marine's laser rifle became the Coherent Radiation Emission Weapon Systems. Culture minds never use two words where five will do)

"Running out of space" and using parallel universes to solve it is pretty common.

Richard C Meredith ("Timeliner Tilogy") used a variation of "Problems arise when these universes start rubbing against/entwining with each other" as a motivator... at least I think so; it's been around 25 years since I last read that trilogy!

There's much to be recommended for writers not all inventing new terms for the same things all the time.

(Stephenson, I'm looking at you in particular)

If we ever do get teleportation devices they will probably be described as "TP" - think TV

Well, that'll give a completely new meaning to having your house TPed.

In case that reference is too American...

No, just a decade ahead of you losing my memory. Sadly I can no longer remember most the stories I have read. A good friend who passed away when he was seventy used to tell me that he couldn't even remember any of the book in his small library, but he knew they were worth reading afresh, because they were in his library.

Wikipedia and the web are my memory prostheses.

Not familiar with this author/trilogy.

I was specifically thinking that the device would somehow stretch/fold time and humans would live in the interstitial time pockets.

How would that work? We're four dimensional beings, after all. How do we stretch one dimension without stretching ourselves with it?

A very American comment. Never heard of the practice anywhere else.

If you brain is failing you could do worse than try this:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28384-old-rat-brains-rejuvenated-and-new-neurons-grown-by-asthma-drug/

Currently undergoing Human trials for this off-label use. No doubt if it works it will be available from your GP in a decade or so. Or you could take a tiny risk and be a bit more pro-active.

Jaunte (Bester, op. cit.) was moving without technology. So I suppose e-Jaunte would be the app for that.

You know, http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw143.html ("All About Teleportation", by John G. Cramer) also claims:

"Teleportation is nothing new in the literature of religion. . . Not to be outdone, the Quran describes the phenomenon of Tay al-Ard (folding the Earth), in which you raise your feet and wait while the Earth turns under you until you reach your desired destination."

Herbert's Dune books contain the term "folding space" (I assume that's canonical -- I can only remember Jürgen Prochnow uttering the phrase in the original movie. ;-> ).

Maybe teleportation needs an Arabic name. :-0

"Tay al-Ard" sounds a lot more like a suborbital hop to me.

Herbert's Dune books contain the term "folding space" (I assume that's canonical -- I can only remember Jürgen Prochnow uttering the phrase in the original movie. ;-> ).

I don't think it is. The idea that melange lets you fold space was made up for the movie as far as I know. In the books, as I understand it:

Melange is not needed for FTL travel. It is only needed for safe FTL travel. You can go without it, but are likely to hit a brown dwarf, dark dust cloud, Oort cloud comet, etc.

A Guild Navigator hyped on melange sees the different futures and maneuvers to a future timeline where you arrive safely.

Dirk, Its on my radar.

I find it interesting that the immune system is involved in so many hitherto intractable diseases and are slowly finding much better treatments as a result. First there was cancer. Now there is MS and associated diseases. This effect on brains, if it pans out, might be very opportune. We also now know that the brain has a lymphatic system, hitherto unknown, allowing for new approaches to degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, dementia and just plain old memory loss/recall.

We've always sort of assumed that longevity by medical intervention will be stymied by brain degeneration. That might still be true, but there does seem to be new hope of treatment. We'll see.

In the meantime, I have to rely on decent multiple associative links to "know that I know" and external sources to refresh details.

A very American comment. Never heard of the practice anywhere else.

It is a stupid and wasteful thing to do, so I'm not surprised it's unknown elsewhere.

I wasn't going to mention this, since it's non-technologic, but "Dune" has been mentioned now. In Kabbalah there's a concept of K'fitzat haDerekh, Jumping the Path, that appears in 'wonder tales' of medieval Rabbis. Supposedly they could shorten their journeys by what sounds like warping space so that distances are less, or in some stories they move point-to-point instantaneously by invoking the Name or some such. Herbert's version is Kwisatz Haderach, it's one of the few Jewish references in the original "Dune" books, and no one seems sure how he came across the term.

Other stuff: I regularly take piracetam, and other people take various racetams as cognitive enhancers. Aspirin looks like a good all round bet - if you can tolerate it. If you are really brave you can opt for dihexa. On the very safest side, make sure you get enough B vits esp B12 Finally, if you want an immune system "reset" a water only fast for more than 72 hours may work.

Some theorists say there are 11 dimensions ...

My idea is entirely handwavium ... the ability via some unknown mechanism to enter/exit different time streams. Something like a multi-lane highway but for matter/energy ... with slow, medium and fast lanes. All going in the same (time) direction of course, just at different 'speeds' (rates at which things happen).

It is possible to slow down light. It's an everyday occurrence: light slows down when it travels through water, glass, and diamonds. So it should (in theory) be possible to manipulate the speed/spin/whatever of the spacetime we occupy. Change the 'frequency' and exit/enter a different spacetime.

http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/lightandcolor/speedoflight.html

Anyways .. handwavium but a slightly different look at space/time and matter interactions and consequences.

an immune system "reset" a water only fast for more than 72 hours may work.

I haven't heard of that. There is the anecdotal case of a woman who took an HIV drug and it hugely reduced her MS symptoms. Trials are now going to be done to determine whether this might work more generally.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10878625/Fasting-for-three-days-can-regenerate-entire-immune-system-study-finds.html

"Fasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as "remarkable". Although fasting diets have been criticised by nutritionists for being unhealthy, new research suggests starving the body kick-starts stem cells into producing new white blood cells, which fight off infection."

No money to be made from it - just the opposite.

Odd that no-one's talking about energy requirements for a teleporter.

There's three models for that: one of them ridiculous, one of them dangerous, and one of them merely difficult.

Start with the ridiculous: we'll posit that the teleporter works by simoultaneously destroying and creating the cargo. The matter-to-energy conversion of Captain James T Kirk is about a gigaton, so any tiny inefficiency in this process vapourises Starship Enterprise.

It's also worth asking why they're bothering with antimatter fuel in Engineering when the transporter room can disasssemble matter with incredible precision.

Off to number two: the teleporter works on pre-existing matter by exactly replicating the state of the cargo.

Not just 'assembling' it, atom by atom: replicating the energy and the relationships of every atom, so that a human with the information state - the chemistry, the electrical signals, the encoded memories and the dynamic state of consciousness - steps in at one end and steps out without a headache or dizzy spell. Or mood swings, hallucinations, haemorrhages, gaps in memory... Or being perfectly healthy in every regard except for being dead.

Would you care to guess how much entropy that represents?

I'll give you a hint: the energy encoding it exceeds, by several orders of magnitude, the immediate vapourisation of a given instance of the Science Officer...

...Who will need his legendary Vulcan Cool, because the discarded checksum bits required to code that data with any reasonable degree of reliability will heat his replicated brain to incandescence.

Oh, and we're firing a transmission data beam at Starship Enterprise encoding data in at least a kiloton or two of photon energy. Lets be careful about that, people.

Thirdly, the difficult but plausible teleporter: a 'hyperspace' connection, some tunelling distortion of spacetime that results in the space at coordinates 'A' to be contiguous and colocated with the space which a naive observer (in, say, the transporter room) would declare to be at coordinates 'B'.

This has some interesting challenges: what happens to the space and time that we were sure we had defined to be at 'B'? What happens to the matter? Presumably they swap...

...And the engineering challenges of warping space in such a complicated and precise way are quite daunting. But they would be comprehensible to engineers sufficiently advanced to build a 'Warp Drive' capable of warping spacetime so comprehensively that an entire Spaceship can move itself controllably, intact and undistorted, and can do at a speed exceeding that of light in local space.

So swapping the volume containing Captain Kirk, by warping space with a technology comparable to that of antimatter-powered starship engines, is a plausible Star Trek 'Transporter Room' teleporter.

And I fully understand why every operation of the Transporter Room required the presence and the personal attention of the senior engineering officer aboard the Starship Enterprise.

"Beam me up", indeed: it's not a thing that anyone would take for granted and it's unsurprising that there is no snappy 'brand name' for a thing that must, on more than one occasion, have been called "Oh Fuck! They vaporised the starship and the landing site!"

Howard Tayler's long-running webcomic Schlock Mercenary has the "teraport" which is mostly a space-based matter transmitter/warpgate system used by spaceships. There has been at least one reference to a "teraport cage" designed to transport a troop of soldiers.

There is a method of interdicting a teraport and it's commonly used to keep the story flowing by providing unavoidable peril for the main characters since they can't just simply jump away from the threat du jour. The mercenaries of the title have now upped the ante by having a friendly AI with a teraport-enabled Long Gun, a small version of a Nicoll-Dyson laser which can be fired through a teraport gate to hit a target pretty much anywhere. It solves a lot of problems.

It may not be necessary to brute force it even for meta zones. Depending on the granularity, it may be possible to use a lot less energy assuming appropriate printing at a receiving booth. The ST approach without both send and receive booths seems impossible to me.

With advanced printers we are going to see the world of teleports/replicators for non-living objects of simple construction quite soon. Even foodstuffs might well work given the results of experiments done already.

I would be surprised if sophisticated printers with feedstock infrastructure aren't in use for solar system development by the 22nd century at latest, with interstellar versions in transit at fractional c. How small the mass needs to be depends on how much bootstrapping can be achieved to mimic living organisms.

Metazoans. Autocorrect!

To be serious (having just read the PHD), there's a serious flaw in this research.

Mr Williams, you're not mapping / attributing / evaluating the networks with these usages.

e.g. porting (China Miéville, Kraken, 2010)

This is a specific joke, not an author creating their own mythos word for it. He's taking the piss.

If you actually wanted to do this seriously, you'd map clusters of linguist traces (so, "doors" and synonyms are placed . and "physics" placed here . and so on).

Jaunters is actually the most original linguistic usage if you make the maps.

ho-hum.

Don't make trees or ven diagrams, make new maps.

As a personal note that the OP is free to ignore, but shouldn't:

Get yourself into a bar with a linguist, a sociologist, a physicist and yourself and use all four to make something beautiful.

Hint (prior reference):

Western Males "come" Eastern Males "go"

You'd be surprised about how closely Teleportation and spunk are mapped together, linguistically and sociologically speaking.

Last hint: Should I Stay or Should I Go [YouTube music]

Oh, and a man mentioned here a while ago just had a new role in a game about such things: it's called SOMA/a>.

And yes, it's dumb.

Spoiler:

At one point you find a pressure suit with a dead body in it that has no head. You insert a crafted widget into the neck and some magical nanites... and then transfer your consciousness into it.

And the protagonist still thinks they're human. Makes the ending really dumb.

~

Children. As host stated (come on, there's even a line in Saturn's Children" where it's stated that "losing your legs would cut down on the cost of this flight".

Where were we?

Oh, right.

No.

The Universe already works on Quantum Entanglement. You can't do it on mass scales without burning out most of the Magellan Cluster.

Derp.

Addition for the list: • Transender (Arthur C. Clarke, "Loophole", 1946)

If that becomes a recognisable (or even better, popular) name for matter transportation, there would be a great need for a short story called "Scaper Flow".

"The Universe already works on Quantum Entanglement. You can't do it on mass scales without burning out most of the Magellan Cluster. "

Repeat after me: "Quantum entanglement is NOT magic."

Now write it down 100 times.

Easy peasy.

I remember that one. IIRC it ends with one of the characters saying how great it is that they can get back to rockets.

Even when I was 10 I remember thinking "Why? You just demonstrated light speed matter transmission".

Some assumptions (ground rules) for a working matter teleportation technology:

The above are top-of-mind assumptions.

Probably a bit easier to manage than one-to-one atomic quantum state mapping but still quite the technological feat.

Just had a thought. Might be a fringe case, and there's no name for it given, but in "TRON" the main character gets himself 'digitized', uploaded, and reintegrated. He just doesn't get physically moved.

Brave little printer goes to Mars?

It's certainly worth sending 3-D printers into space, as they've already done with a plastic additive printer on the ISS.

What we do need to demonstrate are a variety of 3-D printing technologies, ideally first in sealed cells on Earth, then in space, where humans aren't there to do the fiddly bits like inserting feedstock, cleaning the results, troubleshooting, etc. We also need to see if a 3-D metals printer can be automated, sent into space, and used to create its own parts, along with many other technologies. Yes, this is a clanking replicator, but it's a necessary intermediate for deploying the technology into deep space: it needs to become entirely hands-off.

The other thing people really need to work on is feedstock manufacturing in zero gee, or in other words, breaking down trash and turning it into printer stock.

Additional thoughts - going quantum:

Assume quantum entanglement means that quantum particles can be identified and programmed, that is, particle A1 can be specifically assigned to match with/correspond to/reflect particle A2, particle A3, .. particle AN. (The paired/programmed versions of this quantum set would be referred to as quantum kernels.)

Assume that there is no upper limit on the number of times a quantum particle can be assigned, so once (one particle) or googol times/particles makes no difference.

Assume that spacetime coordinates are known/mapped and fixed so that regardless of how far away a place is and how fast the universe continues to expand, Glasgow will always be found at exactly the same spacetime coordinates. (Ignores tectonic plate movements, sea erosion, tsunamis, comets/space debris and other 'local' phenomena.)

Assume that each unique unique sentient is assigned a quantum kernel. (Privacy issues?)

Assume that the quantum kernel has the additional property of 'knowing/encoding' the entire architecture and movement of its host based on the exact position/state of that quantum kernel at that moment in time. (Smart quantum fractal.)

Assume that there is a push/pull mechanism (the teleportation device) that can cause a smart quantum fractal (and the sentient it's embedded in) to unravel at the origin point of the travel and simultaneously begin to organize/build that same sentient up at the destination point of the travel. (Means that the raw materials for this quantum coalescing must always be at hand at the destination, and that appropriate storage must also be at hand at the origin/departure point.)

Assume that the energy needed to quantum coalesce is identical to/interchangeable with the weak/strong/EM energies that would be operating in any case. The only difference is the arbitrary/designed configuration. (Therefor is no change in the amount of matter/energy either at the departure or the destination points, energy/matter is conserved. Black holes are irrelevant because there is no travel across. Dark matter/energy impact on this ... who knows.)

I think it's moot to discuss physical properties of matter transmitters and wormholes - they are plot devices, not real devices (and never will be).

The function of a teleport is to move the protagonist (or antagonist) from point A to B. Other plot devices with similar function are legs, horse, car or ship. The reason to use teleports is either to avoid narrating a boring road trip or to enable plots which require fast movements of actors. And gates are necessary if the protagonist has to move to another world which has no direct physical connection to her home world. The classic plot device with this function are dreams - after all we all use dreams regularly to reach different worlds. Others are mirrors, wells, death or tunnels. Of course with modern post-relativity fiction new needs for FTL travel came up.

The narrative function of matter transmission is to make objects appear for plot purposes or sometimes to make them disappear. Classical plot devices with the same function are couriers, trades or lucky finds. For getting rid of stuff the author can also use deep water, thieving birds, fire etc. Lazy authors just use magic. When using matter transmission for moving people around it's usually more passive, inconvenient and risky: getting carried away by a bird, falling into a well, using an A-gate.

In summary, it's the same old plot devices just in new fancy language. And they didn't become more plausible, either.

Assume quantum entanglement means that quantum particles can be identified and programmed, that is, particle A1 can be specifically assigned to match with/correspond to/reflect particle A2, particle A3, .. particle AN. (The paired/programmed versions of this quantum set would be referred to as quantum kernels.)

Assume it by all means, just as long as you grasp that it isn't true. Making an entangled pair is a non-trivial process and requires that the pair interact with each other (or be produced together by a process that imposes quantum correlations).

Assume that there is no upper limit on the number of times a quantum particle can be assigned, so once (one particle) or googol times/particles makes no difference.

Entangled photon pairs are generally produced together, which can only be done once. However, entanglement swapping can be done multiple times. Each time requires an interaction with one member of an entangled pair. (I do not want every atomic nucleus in my body to interact with an entangled photon (one photon per nucleus). I am pretty sure I would not survive the process.)

Assume that spacetime coordinates are known/mapped and fixed so that regardless of how far away a place is and how fast the universe continues to expand, Glasgow will always be found at exactly the same spacetime coordinates. (Ignores tectonic plate movements, sea erosion, tsunamis, comets/space debris and other 'local' phenomena.)

Also ignores the Earth's rotation (1000 km/hour or so, depending on your latitude), the Earth's orbital motion (30 km/s), the Sun's motion with respect to the Local Standard of Rest (about 20 km/s), the orbital motion of the Local Standard of Rest around the Galaxy (about 200 km/s), the Galaxy's motion with respect to the centre of mass of the Local Group (150 km/s, assigning half of our relative motion with M31 to us and half to M31), the Local Group's infall motion to the Virgo Supercluster (not sure, but it's covered by our motion wrt the cosmic microwave background, which is 370 km/s).

Assume that each unique unique sentient is assigned a quantum kernel. (Privacy issues?)

See above regarding the difficulty of establishing such. I think the definition of "sentient" probably corresponds to the set of beings that would say "no" to this, loudly.

Assume that the quantum kernel has the additional property of 'knowing/encoding' the entire architecture and movement of its host based on the exact position/state of that quantum kernel at that moment in time. (Smart quantum fractal.)

Not sure what you mean by this, but having one particle of an entangled pair interact with its surroundings is an excellent way of breaking the entanglement.

Assume that there is a push/pull mechanism (the teleportation device) that can cause a smart quantum fractal (and the sentient it's embedded in) to unravel at the origin point of the travel and simultaneously begin to organize/build that same sentient up at the destination point of the travel. (Means that the raw materials for this quantum coalescing must always be at hand at the destination, and that appropriate storage must also be at hand at the origin/departure point.)

"Simultaneously" in what frame of reference? You appear to be breaking relativity. (Quantum teleportation always involves transmitting some information by conventional means. It can't go faster than light.)

Assume that the energy needed to quantum coalesce is identical to/interchangeable with the weak/strong/EM energies that would be operating in any case. The only difference is the arbitrary/designed configuration. (Therefore is no change in the amount of matter/energy either at the departure or the destination points, energy/matter is conserved. Black holes are irrelevant because there is no travel across. Dark matter/energy impact on this ... who knows.)

No idea what this means. What's a "weak energy" when it's at home?

Also ignores the Earth's rotation (1000 km/hour or so, depending on your latitude), the Earth's orbital motion (30 km/s), the Sun's motion with respect to the Local Standard of Rest (about 20 km/s), the ..... Which is why Time Travel is also impossible. [ I think ]

The other thing people really need to work on is feedstock manufacturing in zero gee, or in other words, breaking down trash and turning it into printer stock.

Or mining/collecting the appropriate resources and making them into the designed form. Biology generally does a good job of this for organic material, and it would be interesting to see how far we can mimic those processes in our machines.

Similarly, tidying up a printed form could be done by the printer, or helper bots.

If it turns out biology cannot be mimicked by machine technology, then we will have to treat some parts like atoms or non-metabolizable compounds, e.g. CPUs, and send those as part of the seed shipment.

We certainly have a way to go before our printers are able to run unattended (a robot might be able to substitute for a human attendant in the meantime), but we have plenty of time to improve the technology without resorting to nanotech fantasies. Once established, the game completely changes for beings not tied to extremely complex biology.
Because computers are universal Turing machines, it should mean that machine minds can be transferred to other physical bodies that use the same platform.

For me, the issue is which becomes easier to do - create sentient machines from scratch, or translate human humans to machine substrates. The winner will be the Galactic colonizer. From our current technology POV, the former seems more likely to me, but who can be sure?

I always liked the idea of calling them a "telegate", although that only makes sense if it's implemented in a way you can step through.

Water-only fasts have a big problem. Many people, perhaps the majority in the UK, are caffeine addicts. The main caffeine withdrawal symptoms are bad headaches (about 50% of subjects) and tiredness. I read a paper in the 90s suggesting that most post-op headaches in England are actually caffeine withdrawal. I have tried a three day water fast and the headaches were bad. However a 7 day fast with two cups of black coffee per day was actually quite pleasant. After the first day you notice all the extra time which you don't have to spend eating and hunger seems to vanish. The headaches can be cured by painkillers like solpadeine which contain caffeine.

If we confine teleporting to just the idea of moving yourself through space to go to another destination, we might consider why do this at all, if it is only your mind that needs to perceive the new place and control a physical body. A good surrogate body and controlling cybersuit should be sufficient. A good movie "Sleep dealers" explored this in a dystopic way (way better than "Surrogates" that squandered the chance).

So the teleport booth sender becomes a cybersuit that you wear wherever, and the receiving booth is just the current surrogate which is located close to your desired destination, or maybe a rental outlet.

This seems technologically quite close. If so, projecting yourself in space within c time lag limitations seems quite efficient, safer than physical travel, and opens up all sorts of opportunities - e.g. I could climb Everest (or at least clamber about at the summit) - that were beyond reach in my physical body. Scale might be changed to - I might be able to "walk with insects".

So just as we didn't get flying cars and hypersonic civil transport, but mobile phones with video communication, perhaps the concept of teleporting is just a quaint idea "rusted" as OGH might say.

Thanks, Susan! Figured there'd be someone here who knows enough real physics to explain why this scenario is unlikely. That said, there is however one item where there's some disagreement. Specifically, quantum entanglement does indeed mean 'spooky action at a distance' and that any change to one of the entangled objects instantaneously, regardless of distance/movement, affects the other. Basically, if you can achieve quantum entanglement as I described it, then you could ignore all of the other effects.

There was a recent paper on quantum entanglement here:

http://hansonlab.tudelft.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bell_test_Delft-PressRelease_vOct16.pdf

Alex ... I think that Susan's comments also relate to moving 'information' in the normal through-space way: there's likely a lag between when you'd perceive the environment you're visiting and the time by which you're able to respond.

You missed the changing room in Mr. Benn. Clearly worth considering although there's good evidence that it is also a time machine.

@SFReader

there's likely a lag between when you'd perceive the environment you're visiting and the time by which you're able to respond.

Indeed. Experimentally that is up to 0.6 seconds. Preferably less (I wouldn't want a surgeon having a half second time lag). This is achievable on Earth (or any other planet or space habitat you live on) as the perception delay is less than 0.1 seconds, but not between worlds, even the moon (2.5 secs round trip). Hence my note about the c time lag constraint.

One such example is electromagnetically induced transparency, a quantum effect that permits the propagation of light pulses through an otherwise opaque medium2, 3, 4, 5. Here we report an experimental demonstration of electromagnetically induced transparency in an ultracold gas of sodium atoms, in which the optical pulses propagate at twenty million times slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.

We report an inferred nonlinear refractive index of 0.18 cm2 W-1 and find that the system shows exceptionally large optical nonlinearities, which are of potential fundamental and technological interest for quantum optics.

Light speed reduction to 17 metres per second in an ultracold atomic gas 1999

There's more kinky stuff in the last 16 years, but that should get you started.

Hint: I did mention lasers. And you don't move mass, you alter the harmonics of matter already present.

Astronomers Peer Inside Stars, Finding Giant Magnets Caltech 22nd Oct 2015

Tum-te-tum.

Time to do a Grep on old posts about Electromagnetic stuff and Stars.

Hint for the Slow Minds:

You should probably imagine that Stars are doing what the first paper is describing.

Then you can have some fun.

Hilarious.

Do the GREP and the old old posts about it.

THESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESUN

"Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god Wandering, wandering in hopeless night Out here in the perimeter there are no stars Out here we IS stoned Immaculate

p.s.

Derp.

Howard Tayler's long-running webcomic Schlock Mercenary has the "teraport" which is mostly a space-based matter transmitter/warpgate system used by spaceships...

Since Schlock Mercenary has been mentioned, any teleportation thread should also mention that when the story started starships used big "wormgates" to move between star systems. No great surprise there, since lots of authors have done that, but it turned out that these weren't merely hyperspace wormholes, but instead disintegration and replication pairs linked through hyperspace. The group operating them could selectively run off copies of anything and anyone passing through - and had been doing this for thousands of years. Pretty much every VIP in the galaxy had been copied, interrogated, and the superfluous copy disposed of, several times over. When this secret finally broke there was a great deal of work for heavily armed violent mercenaries.

Showing that there's a humorous footnote to everything, the supporting character Gav used a gate hack to escape from what seemed to be certain death. It was certain; he died moments later. But the brand new 950,000,000 copies of Gav were fine, so statistically he's healthier than ever. Occasionally one or more of him will show up, since he's all over the place...

Stephen king used 'Jaunt' as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jaunt

Why on earth would I want to imagine that when there is no good reason to believe it whatsoever?

Now it does take photons a long time to propagate through a star, but that has everything to do with mean free path length in dense plasma and nothing to do with the papers you were linking to.

Derp indeed.

148:

Stephen king used 'Jaunt' as well

Yes, that was a nasty little story. Risk of teleportation as bad or worse than "The Fly".

The business about having to be asleep also turns up in King's "The Langoliers".

Quantum entanglement per se is instantaneous: if you make a measurement of one of the entangled particles, the state of the other is defined instantaneously. However, this conveys no information: it's "just" a wavefunction collapse (sweeping contents of large can of worms under nearest carpet...).

To use the entangled state to teleport an object, you need to convey information about the measurement to the receiving end by conventional means, and this is limited to the speed of light. If you don't make a measurement, your entangled pair stay entangled, but their state remains undefined.

Quantum teleportation doesn't let you transport useful information (such as the quantum state of a person) faster than light. This is a user-friendly explanation (the Wikipedia article isn't).

Not all of that lag is due to c - capturing the user's movement, updating the scene to take account of it and updating the user with changes also takes time. It's one of the technical restrictions preventing 'true' AR; mismatches between head and camera movements in video-passthrough displays (those able to remove as well as add to the scene) are one of the causes of "simulator sickness."

King's "The Jaunt" was excellent, IMO. But the teleportation problem in the Fly etc. was more too clever programming than bad programming. "Clever, but not quite clever enough [Mr Bond]". See two distinct entities, I'd prefer the blue screen of death rather than merge at all costs. Speaking of which, given today's fog/mist, what did the Arrowhead project, call their gateway? "Oh Shit" presumably... Oh yeah, I though the opening sequence of Spectre was quite Cthulhu, and hoped they'd stolen Charlie on Blofeld. Alas not.

It's been a while since I read it but I'm pretty sure in "The Jaunt" the parent giving the edited highlights of the tale of its creation mentioned that the name was inspired by fiction.

As for the arrowhead project, maybe "Hey! Watch thi"

"Tiger, Burning" by Alastair Reynolds is an extreme example of that. In that story the process of scanning is NOT destructive, but the individual reassembled at the other end is now the legal person. The one who was scanned is no longer the legal person, and is supposed to die. Preferably by dignified suicide, but anyone who refuses to kill themselves gets helped along -- and the implication is that such refusal is considered extremely antisocial.

Moreover, many teleportations involve multiple steps, so the new legal person may have only a few minutes of life.

I never heard of "Rabbits to the Moon", but the teleportation in Niven's "World out of Time" always bugged the hell out of me. It was not used for transportation (very short range), but for rejuvenation. An old person steps into machine, and only living matter gets teleported. All the dead intracellular detritus stays.

It bugged me because at molecular level there is no difference between "alive" and "dead".

Of course there's always Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series where FTL communication amounts to the same thing as teleportation and where teleportation per-se was eventually introduced, but not pursued.

Generally speaking if it's a matter transporter you get Fly problems, if it's a Portal you open a gate to Hell. If it's an FTL drive you get both.

I think that story might date from the days when build-up of free radicals was thought to be the cause of aging. You might possibly be able to write an edit routine that identified (and then didn't replicate) the free radicals. Not sure I'd want to try it!

Certainly not replicating free radicals wouldn't deal with short telomeres on chromosomes, for example.

Alastair Reynolds is brilliant. And very anti FTL though his protags have tried in the Revelation Space universe, with very unfortunate effects.

Also, we don't actually know how the World Out of Time rejuvenator worked - only what the not terribly well educated protagonist observed and guessed about what he saw. He stepped into the 'phone booth,' pushed a button, and...not much happened. He might well have been disassembled, edited, and reassembled in place in a fraction of a second. The setting not only had miraculous technology, but miraculous technology much older than the pyramids are to us.

When even the immortals shrug and admit that something is from long before their time, you take what you can get.

"All the dead intracellular detritus stays."

That is what a new class of drugs named "senolytics" do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senolytics

The short telomere problem is in the process of being fixed. The first Human test is underway

Re: 'To use the entangled state to teleport an object, you need to convey information about the measurement to the receiving end by conventional means, and this is limited to the speed of light. If you don't make a measurement, your entangled pair stay entangled, but their state remains undefined.'

Hence my devious work-around: the merest touch of an entangled 'quantum kernel' at the desired destination immediately triggers events. So, it's not really active sending of (additional) information, it's a nudge. Or, is even the look/nudge considered sending 'information'?

Thanks for the link. (A quick scan, and realization this will need a few rereads to 'understand'.)

The World Out Of Time rejuvenating teleporter was specifically stated to work by leaving dead stuff behind; when the protagonist used it, he saw a cloud of dust appear in the booth he had just left.

Actually, there is quite a lot of stuff in an aged body that is chemically distinct from living tissue and might be part of the process of aging. Glycated proteins, prions, lipofuscin and the half-dead cells containing it, that sort of thing. Cancer cells are distinct, too. Conceivably, something might be done about the abnormally cross-linked proteins that are part of the visible signs of aging. Also about viral DNA.

One wouldn't want to be too enthusiastic about this procedure, especially in someone very old. After all, some of the mucked-up proteins might be structurally important even if they aren't perfect.

One thing that would certainly not work is removing all free radicals; since oxidative phosphorylation depends on oxygen radicals and various parts of biochemistry depend on others, doing that would kill the subject instantly.

(Hmmm... might be a good basis for a really covert assassination weapon.)

I stumbled on this today when looking at "planet romances".

Wiki - To Venus in Five Seconds by Fred T. Jane - 1897

This is the guy that started Jane's Fighting Ships.

I can't find the book online, but the description fits matter transmitter.

[quote] (This constitutes "One of the earliest uses of the matter transmitter for interplanetary travel"[5] in science fiction. Jane does not spend much effort on explaining how a matter transmitter might actually work; the technology is merely a given, like the titular device in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine of 1895.) [/quote]

There is also a brief note at:

Jane, Fred T http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/jane_fred_t

You have this the wrong way round. In "The world out of time" the rejuvenating booth seemed to do nothing since the user stayed in the same place. But the nearby booth showed a haze when the button was pressed. There was also a teleporting "sponge" in the toilets.

When Takeshi Kovacs teleports, it's usually other people that start dying ...

As for the word for matter transporter, it will obviously be iDoor

Re: 'One wouldn't want to be too enthusiastic about this procedure, especially in someone very old. After all, some of the mucked-up proteins might be structurally important even if they aren't perfect.'

Ads about wonder drugs/treatments seldom describe how they get all of the muck/toxins out of the body/system without overloading the body's filtration/plumbing systems.

Given that a considerable proportion of the population is now routinely medically monitored, the broad availability of medical apps and increasingly smaller, cheaper and easier medical technology, smaller/more discrete implants (ports), it should be possible to do at-home apheresis type procedures as part of routine health maintenance. What gets removed would depend on the filtration setting. This type of assist would spare the kidneys and liver, and likely have a positive impact on cell structures throughout the body therefore improve overall health and life span.

Peter Watts had Telematter in "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia". It was pretty limited compared to most of the things that have come up though.

So the teleport booth sender becomes a cybersuit that you wear wherever, and the receiving booth is just the current surrogate which is located close to your desired destination, or maybe a rental outlet.

You should read The Peripheral by William Gibson.

By the way, since in a sufficiently large universe everything has probably happened quite a few times, more or less randomly distributed -- a thought.

Consider the large voids -- spaces in among the galaxies. Occasionally there are rare galaxies in those voids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_galaxy

My theory: the voids are areas where somebody came up with something like bending space/teleporting. Sometimes it only eliminates all the other galaxies within some critical radius leaving the perpetrators' galaxy behind, isolated in the void, unable to cause more mischief.

Sometimes they try again and disappear themselves.

By the way, since in a sufficiently large universe everything has probably happened quite a few times, more or less randomly distributed -- a thought.

Is the universe very large or infinite? I dunno... That said I rather liked Reynolds idea of the Dawn War. Even if the only things that can happen are those things that are possible, even given an infinitely large canvas. And that said, I think Fermi was right, and possibly we are the progenitors!

There are probably around half a dozen types of multiverse, all potentially infinite

Why on earth would I want to imagine that when there is no good reason to believe it whatsoever?

Because, Science.

There's very little empirical data that you can pull from the centres of Stars (on the micro/planck level), and you've very little understanding of light per se (you're only just slowing it down, ffs).

Now it does take photons a long time to propagate through a star, but that has everything to do with mean free path length in dense plasma and nothing to do with the papers you were linking to.

Until science just proved that strong EM fields makes photons act in incredibly non-linear ways, and that's under the conditions that humans can reproduce on Earth.

~

Yeah, I'd imagine I'm saying something a little bit more than you imagine.

There are probably around half a dozen types of multiverse, all potentially infinite

Do you have a link to a paper on that? I was wondering about the mathematical basis of an infinite universe.

Probably Tegmark's stuff is best, but he doesn't cover them all. http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html

"Until science just proved that strong EM fields makes photons act in incredibly non-linear ways..."

"Just", as in, known about for decades

Thanks Dirk, Looks like there enough to be getting on with there...

Indeed. You might be interested to know that one of the problems of treating large tumours with chemotherapy drugs is disposing of the breakdown products of all those dying cancer cells. The really troublesome ones are purines, and the sort of drugs also used to treat gout help with this problem.

Without using such drugs as an adjunct to chemo, it's quite possible to have the tumour die and the breakdown products do enough damage to the kidneys to kill the patient.

How do I know? Personal experience - and that very rare breed indeed, a medical consultant willing to explain what he/she is doing.

Do you even read the papers you quote? Slow light speed occurs at extremely low temperatures << 1 K in Bode-Einstein-Condensates. You shouldn't expect these conditions inside red giants.

much below 1 K. You should not expect these conditions inside of red giants.

CD has frequently shows itself to be hopelessly out of its depth on any subject other than insults and word salad generation.

Any claims about physics are best ignored really, so far they have been not even wrong.

You only get those conditions in blue stars, because red stars are nice and warm and blue ones are a bit chilly :)

This one I find quite interesting. Were I still in physics and being paid for it, I would try and take this further: http://www.livescience.com/48806-parallel-worlds-quantum-mechanics-theory.html

The rules of QM are created by classical multiverse with interacting worlds.

Do you even read the papers you quote? Slow light speed occurs at extremely low temperatures

You're supposed to read them, think a bit.

Taking the stance that low temperature light experiments have nothing to do with stars is akin to suggesting they're polar opposites.

It's wrong.

Chiral theories of constituent quarks interacting with bosons and photons at high temperatures are studied. In the expected chirally symmetric phase eective electromagnetic anomalous couplings for etc., are derived by applying functional methods

ANOMALOUS ELECTROMAGNETIC PROCESSES AT HIGH TEMPERATURES PDF 1996 - held at CERN

It is shown that, in general, the log(T) dependence on the temperature of the Green functions is simply related to their UV behavior at zero-temperatures... This thermal action approaches, in the long wavelength limit, the negative of the corresponding zero temperature action.

Non-linear electromagnetic interactions in thermal QED PDF - Brandt, Frenkel

Wide parabolic quantum well (PQW) is the natural extension of the two-dimensional(2D)system towards fully three dimensionally (3D) engineered quantum structures[1]. In strong magnetic field subband spectrum of the parabolic well is transformed into series of Landau levels. The LL energy is strongly depend on the experimental geometry and may be governed by the magnetic field tilting experiments, since energy spectrum in wide quantum well depends on the angle between magnetic field and normal to the quantum well plane[2]. When magnetic field becomes exactly parallel to the well plane, 2D Landau states transforms to the 3D states.

Evolution of the two-dimensional towards three-dimensional Landau states in wide parabolic quantum well PDF - 2003

Landau quantization in quantum mechanics is the quantization of the cyclotron orbits of charged particles in magnetic fields. As a result, the charged particles can only occupy orbits with discrete energy values, called Landau levels. The Landau levels are degenerate, with the number of electrons per level directly proportional to the strength of the applied magnetic field.

Landau quantization

Electrons streaming down a potential staircase sequentially emit photons at the steps. The steps consist of coupled quantum wells in which population inversion between discrete conduction band excited states is achieved by control of tunneling. A strong narrowing of the emission spectrum, above threshold, provides direct evidence of laser action at a wavelength of 4.2 micrometers with peak powers in excess of 8 milliwatts in pulsed operation. In quantum cascade lasers, the wavelength, entirely determined by quantum confinement, can be tailored from the mid-infrared to the submillimeter wave region in the same heterostructure material.

Quantum Cascade Laser 1994

We report on strong transport anisotropy in a two-dimensional hole gas in a Ge/SiGe quantum well, which emerges only when both perpendicular and in-plane magnetic fields are present. The ratio of resistances, measured along and perpendicular to the in-plane field, can exceed 3×104. The anisotropy occurs in a wide range of filling factors where it is determined primarily by the tilt angle. The lack of significant anisotropy without an in-plane field, easy tunability, and persistence to higher temperatures and filling factors set this anisotropy apart from nematic phases in GaAs/AlGaAs.

Strong transport anisotropy in Ge/SiGe quantum wells in tilted magnetic fields 2015

CD has frequently shows itself to be hopelessly out of its depth on any subject other than insults and word salad generation.

Or, CD isn't dumb enough to mistake a paper on low temperature with the temperatures in stars and is seeing if anyone else can say something interesting.

Feel free to digest those five papers then wonder (as I am trying to) at the new papers on the effects of the extreme magnetic cores of Stars.

Now, I might be wrong, but I'm fairly sure Quantum Lasers and the cores of Stars are heavily related. Feel free to state the opposite.

Quantum Lasers? As opposed to the non quantum, classical kind?

Please.

Quantum Cascade Laser

I'm guessing you didn't bother to read the papers, or think that Bell Laboratories are kooks?

(and yes, I'm aware what you're saying: I don't think you're aware of what the paper or I am saying though)

Oh, and the last one above is a bit of a red herring, I got distracted. An explanation:

Here we report a giant electro-optic effect in Ge/SiGe coupled quantum wells. This promising effect is based on an anomalous quantum-confined Stark effect due to the separate confinement of electrons and holes in the Ge/SiGe coupled quantum wells. This phenomenon can be exploited to strongly enhance optical modulator performance with respect to the standard approaches developed so far in silicon photonics.

Giant electro-optic effect in Ge/SiGe coupled quantum wells 2015

And yes, I'm aware the last two links are about silicon chips, but both were new and interesting for reasons.

...and one last one, since dpb wants something about "classical" lasers (and probably fusion experiments):

The High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS) is being developed, assembled, and tested at Lawrence Livermore. In 2016, HAPLS will be transferred to the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines facility (shown in this artist’s rendering), currently under construction in the Czech Republic. Here, the laser will be commissioned for use by the international scientific community. The building in the center background will house HAPLS and other laser systems.

High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS)

Hmm.

See what I did there?

You only get those conditions in blue stars, because red stars are nice and warm and blue ones are a bit chilly :)

Umm, You've got that backwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification#Harvard_spectral_classification

Taking the opposite stance to dpb's, I presumed that was the joke.

I would hope so. Just went back to see what that was a response to, so yeah, I guess so. Otherwise...

Anyhow I was just looking up about how long it takes for photons to reach a stars surface. Not as long as I had thought, but long enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Photons_and_neutrinos High-energy gamma-ray photons initially released with fusion reactions in the core are almost immediately absorbed by the solar plasma of the radiative zone, usually after traveling only a few millimeters. Re-emission happens in a random direction and usually at a slightly lower energy. With this sequence of emissions and absorptions, it takes a long time for radiation to reach the Sun's surface. Estimates of the photon travel time range between 10,000 and 170,000 years

Now to go wake up a little more.

See what I did there?

Yes, linked to a bunch of papers that are completely and utterly irrelevant to the well-understood physics of stellar interiors.

Energy transport in stellar interiors PDF Chapter 4 - notice, while it's online, it's probably still copyrighted. Ref.

Browser might not parse the math equations well.

~

The papers all have something to do with Stellar Interiors, they're also thematically grouped into pairs.

Did you notice?

"I wouldn't want a surgeon having a half second time lag"

Or indeed a lot less than that: apparently even a transatlantic c-delay (20ms or so) is a problem.

Part of the difficulty is that there is a region in between "delay which is genuinely insignificantly small" and "delay which is big enough to be obvious", in which the delay is large enough to have an effect, but the brain does not properly recognise it; processing load shoots up and performance drops, but without you being properly aware that this is happening.

This is why legislation is necessary to ban the use of mobile phones while driving; why the legislation is wrong to allow the hands-free get-out; and why the common objections of "but it's just the same as talking to a passenger" and "what about $analogueradiosystem, they don't bother about that" are not valid. The coding and network delays, along with the noise-gating, cause the brain to allocate a disproportionate amount of CPU time to processing the conversation while nice -20ing the driving process. The distraction is far greater than it appears, but the user is not aware of this and so is unable to do anything about it. The legislation serves the same purpose as that banning driving while drunk: both conditions severely impair performance of the primary task while at the same time removing awareness of the impairment; the external control is required because the possibility of internal control is negated by the conditions.

There's also "transvection", from The Transvection Machine by Edward D. Hoch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_D._Hoch#Science_fiction_detective_stories

Unless that doesn't count for technical reasons? (Explaining why is a spoiler.)

It's interesting how the story's title usually contains the word in question.

Sorry, the browser garbled that quotation completely.

1. For photons, they never follow the Maxwell distribution, because as we will see, their chemical potential is zero. There are always photons that violate the classical condition. 2. The de Broglie wavelength is larger for light particles, so the critical density for quantum behaviour is lower for light particles. When a star evolves, the density at the centre usually becomes higher, and the lightest particles (electrons) are the first to reach the critical density, and therefore they are the first to exhibit the quantum behaviour. In fact, ions can always be approximated as an ideal gas in most regimes of interests p.7

In the stellar atmosphere, we have not only hydrogen, helium but also heavier elements (e.g., Mg, Ca, Fe). The ionisation of all these elements obviously all depend on the temperature. In fact, to obtain their ionisation levels, one must solve coupled equations because the (free) electrons are provided and shared by all the elements. The energy spectra of stars obviously depend on the ionisation levels, since different ionisation levels will show different absorption patterns. Indeed, for a given metallicity, the stellar spectra, depend primarily on the effective temperature. Hence the stellar classification “O, B, A, F, G, K, M, R, N” is also roughly a sequence in the effective temperature. p21

Equation of State PDF Prof. Shude Mao, University of Manchester

~

So, hmm. I guess I know enough to be able to find (without wikipedia) why Stars have 'colors'.

shrug

But if you say those papers have nothing to do with Stellar Interiors, I guess you're right.

Calling anything quantum "well understood" is a good joke though.

An effect that's already been weaponized:

The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). According to the researchers, DAF doesn’t cause physical discomfort, but the fact that you’re unable to talk is obviously quite stressful.

New speech-jamming gun hints at dystopian Big Brother future 2012

Oh, and However, a tiny anisotropy is still present due to ∆T/T∼10−11. This small anisotropy is enough to carry the entire energy flux in the Sun is why Stellar Interiors are linked to Quantum Wells in Ge/SiGe and magnetic fields.

~

Big Star, Big Magnet Little Chip, Big Magnet

Although, that being said, I could be wrong. I'm not very good at science.

And, last one (sorry to spam, it has a point, but counter-arguments to claims of no link or knowledge required)

Weber [9] showed that strong magnetic fields serve as a vehicle for generating anisotropic pressures inside a compact sphere. Some recent anisotropic models for compact self-gravitating objects with strange matter include the results of Lobo [10] and Sharma and Maharaj [11] with a barotropic equation of state. Therefore the study of anisotropic fluid spheres in static spherically symmetric spacetimes is important in relativistic astrophysics

Charged anisotropic matter with linear equation of state PDF - note, that's from University of KwaZulu-Natal, S.A. so no idea about the actual quality of the paper. I just wanted something with an over-view of why anisotropy in spheres is important, and the connection to EM. Questions about what state that matter is in I'll ignore for now.

Pulsars as Astrophysical Observatories for Nuclear and Particle Physics Weber F 1999

Lots of papers, none of which have anything to do with your laughable claims about entanglement and lasers.

Listen to Susan, she seems to know what she is talking about.

"Depending on their size and internal structure, stars oscillate in different patterns," Fuller says. In one form of oscillation pattern, known as the dipole mode, one hemisphere of the star becomes brighter while the other becomes dimmer.

It's painfully obvious you didn't even bother reading the first link from CalTech where Fuller states that.

harmonic/hɑːˈmɒnɪk/ noun

So, you're kinda just trolling at this point, since you're stating that Fuller (not me) is full of shit.

The laser stuff is quite quite relevant as well.

But, I'm now learning about Anisotropy

The joys of the internet indeed.

~

For OP:

Matter teleportation as device would presumably happen by copying the phase state of every atom in a body (and how would you discern the human DNA from the non-human DNA that's required for survival?) and not moving the matter, but re-arranging matter you had at hand.

~

Why lasers?

Because, as that paper stated, it involves controlled tunneling.

Slow minds are slow.

Interesting... that does vaguely ring a bell, but on clicking it turns out that the bell it rings is unrelated to the article. I suspect parallel development by some more sinister actor.

The delay of 0.2 seconds is, of course, right in the sort of range that mobile phone coding/network delays tend to fall in...

Yes - the other is part of "non lethal" police equipment and I won't link to that one. Suffice to say it's been around for "decades" as well.

~

Oh, and all my splurge has a reward at the end.

For Mr S Williams, I present a much, much earlier case of matter transportation: the demon or angel.

Upon his return to Iceland, Duracotus finds his mother still alive. She is overjoyed to learn that he is well studied in astronomy as she too possesses knowledge of astronomy. One day, Fiolxhilde reveals to Duracotus how she learned of the heavens. She tells him about the daemons she can summon. These daemons can move her anywhere on Earth in an instant. If the place is too far away for them to take her, they describe it in great detail. She then summons her favorite daemon to speak with them.

Somnium by one Johannes Kepler (yes, the famous one):

Although, I'm cheating: the demon just moves them physically.

Demons / Angels / Djinn as matter-transporters however, has a much broader history.

Another question that interested popular writers and learned scholastics alike was the question of "teleportation". In an age of limited transportation, the ability to move instantaneously or even rapidly would certainly be a most marvelous power. Caesarius discusses angelic locomotion, and Alexander Nequam praises Michael's marvelous ability simultaneously to escort two souls to heaven that depart their bodies at the same time.22

Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages p195

As with all of these things, it appears Angels do souls, demons /djinns do matter.

Or the response may come in the form of writing, or it may go further than that and they may pick a person up and fly with him through the air, and transport him from one place to another.

‘Aalam al-Jinn wa ash-Shayaateen (p. 115)

This concept appears in the One Thousand and One Nights, involving an entire palace. You'd have to check if it's physically picked up or simply carried.

Ahh, found it: it's matter transportation:

طيّ الأرض‎‎ "folding up of the earth") is the name for thaumaturgical teleportation in the mystical form of Islamic religious and philosophical tradition. The concept has been expressed as "traversing the earth without moving"; some have termed it "moving by the earth being displaced under one's feet". It is a concept widely familiar to the Sunnis, Shī‘īs and Sufis, each group having a different interpretation on it.

Tay al-Arz

And, since Dune stole the idea:

Kefitzat Haderech (קְפִיצַת הַדֶּרֶךְ) "The word kefatz has both the meaning "to shorten" as well as "to jump". Kefitzat Haderech refers to miraculous travel between two distant places in a brief time."

Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin BT Sanhedrin 95

~

You might poke Alexandra David-Néel about Lung-gom-pa in Tibet as well.

~

So, the title of the PHD should probably be: first descriptions of non-sentient matter transporters (!)

Oooh. Argument by dictionary definition. You have put me in my place and no mistake!

That explains why you think googling random words that you don't understand and spamming links to every paper on the internet that has them in the abstract is superior to actually spending time studying the physics I suppose.

Anisotropy is a) a central element of how Stellar Core Mechanics works and b) is a central element to the (apparently random) papers on 2015 new discoveries in silicon chips. It's obvious why I was linking the three duets of papers (to my mind at least; causal chains and all that jazz).

It's also related to a prior posters' link to the length of time it takes for light to travel to the outer layer and burst forth (or dribble in the case of brown dwarfs[1]).

If you'd spent the time on the chain, the outer/inner core dynamics mentioned just after the Weber [9] reference state:

Charged relativistic matter is also relevant in modeling core-envelope stellar system as shown in the treatments of Thomaset al[22], Tikekar and Thomas [23] and Paul and Tikekar [24] in which the stellar core is an isotropic fluid surrounded by a layer of anisotropic fluid.

However, I'm suspicious of that paper as it's spammed everywhere and looks like PHD paper mill territory, thus the earlier warning about its contents - but as an overview, useful.

But it does tie back into the CalTech piece describing how red giants are being mapped (via gravity waves) because the inner core is different to a non-red giant core, thus also supporting Tikekar, Thomas and Thomaset.

From the CalTech piece:

"We still don't know what the center of our own sun looks like," Fuller says.

The cores of red-giant stars are much denser than those of younger stars. As a consequence, sound waves do not reflect off the cores, as they do in stars like our sun. Instead, the sound waves are transformed into another class of waves, called gravity waves.

Then I could have gone into how shear between the two liquids is thought to generate the anisotropic charge and so on and so forth.

For extra sauce, the CalTech paper is by a PHD student (http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~fuller/) so he might be presenting new thoughts on "much understood" science.

Just because you can't see the links doesn't mean others' cannot.

But the colour joke was quite a good one.

QED

[1]Yes, that's a joke for the coprophiles. It's also a meta-comment.

(For liquids read "whatever your current theory of what they are", was referencing a paper on it that does the modelling via liquids).

Brazkin and Lyapin (2000) have recently questioned the validity of the Arrhenius rate-activated model of viscosity at the pressures of planetary and stellar cores and suggested a strong pressure dependence of the dynamic viscosity of metallic liquids. 1.

The Slichter (1961) mode represents the translational oscillation Earth’s solid inner core within its liquid outer core, and is identified as 1S1. Intuitively one would expect that the damping of the Slichter mode would be strongly affected by the viscosity of the liquid outer core surrounding the inner core boundary 3.2

A Glassy Lowermost Outer Core PDF - Vernon F. Cormier University of Connecticut, Physics Department Earth, not Stars, was just for reference to understand the models a bit better.

~

Not a fluid dynamics person either, I will however trust their findings. I've highlighted the important word once again.

Apologies to OP for a massive derail.

~

A silly one - but they're technically SF books not just games:

Warhammer 40k - Ork Tellyportas

~

To answer OP's question of "So why not the matter transmitter?" it's probable that the connections to Angels / Demons / Djinn (Kepler was doing satire of sorts, of course) precluded its usage until the advent of electricity.

It's not an accident that it arose with that technology. Luigi Galvani 1780. 1791 De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius, which inspired Frankenstein.

The second documented usage, is lightning transmitter after all.

A Google Ngram for "apport" (the spiritualist / medium version of matter transportation) is interesting: 1725 (outlier of 1629 is possibly French) shows a smattering of results.

I suspect 'apport' certainly appeared in earlier fiction.

And since this is the Seasame Street Science Section:

Timescales this short have never been explored before. It's an entirely new world," said one of the international team, Professor Anatoli Kheifets, from The Australian National University (ANU).

"We have modelled the most delicate processes of nature very accurately."

At very small scales quantum physics shows that particles such as electrons have wave-like properties - their exact position is not well defined. This means they can occasionally sneak through apparently impenetrable barriers, a phenomenon called quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling plays a role in a number of phenomena, such as nuclear fusion in the sun, scanning tunneling microscopy, and flash memory for computers. However, the leakage of particles also limits the miniaturisation of electronic components...

"A very interesting paradox arises, because electron velocity during tunneling may become greater than the speed of light. However, this does not contradict the special theory of relativity, as the tunneling velocity is also imaginary" said Dr Ivanov, who recently took up a position at the Center for Relativistic Laser Science in Korea.

Physicists solve quantum tunneling mystery Phys.org 27th May, 2015.

Oh, and since we're doing a challenge.

Look at the board behind him.

Spot the joke.

It's a good one.

~

Oh, and apologies to the mass copy/paste. People can't open PDFs on mobiles, causes grawr.

That explains why you think googling random words that you don't understand and spamming links to every paper on the internet that has them in the abstract is superior to actually spending time studying the physics I suppose.

Same response I have to "learning" Formal Logic.

You're working on primitive models that are wrong, it's hard to come back into your minds using your own models.

They're clever and slightly predictive, but you lose a lot by misunderstanding the model for reality.

Any mind could see that anisotropy is a fundamental interesting thing and has cross-class applications. It's interesting to see that you can't see this (for definitions of "you" including Susan).

What I'm actually doing is a lot more interesting.

p.s.

Today's Science fair wasn't for you.

~

Although, I'd expect an apology, if you had 'class', since they're certainly not random.

Since we've not had a YouTube link for a while:

Eyes Wide Shut [YouTube: film: 3:00 Some nudity]

Understand the negative attrition model of combat well; being incorrect will often to lead to correct answers upon being debated by the crowd. This is not our purpose: the winning move is to weave opaque then reveal at once. Combat Eschatology, p348

And, one last one.

The Dr Ivanov quote is funny. Parse it against the Islamic version.

"Earth stands still under our feet"

Now, that's a funny coincidence, if you understand Space/Time.

Sunshine [YouTube: music: 4:29]

~

Apologies to Greg. Will return to Pythonesque Mode shortly.

Oh, and one last one:

We have performed time‐resolved photoluminescence on GaAs/Al x Ga1−x As single quantum well structures with an electric field applied perpendicular to the well plane. The quantum wells are coupled to the GaAs continuum through a thin barrier; the escape time of the electrons in the well was measured by time‐resolved photoluminescence. The dependence of the decay time on applied bias was found to agree very well with a simple semiclassical model.

Tunneling escape time of electrons from a quantum well under the influence of an electric field

Of course, remember:

This. Is. All. Just. Random. Google. By. A. Person. Who. Does. Not. Understand. Science.

~

You can pick any belief you want, as long as it's not a Belief.

Don't get the joke. So he's holding up a watch and on the board are various equations representing resonant phenomena, including impedance of inductors. As well as basic Planck stuff. Unless, of course, the joke is that it's just a board full of random equations in order to look sciency.

Look just to the left of his body / hands.

Oh, and the meta-meta-joke.

You were really close to it.

You have to read the paper, then see the equations then think about what they're challenging, and the Ivanov quotation.

Impressed.

You got the geeky joke, missed the one the undergrads slipped in.

Hint:

If velocity is imaginary, so... Time.

Velocity is a vector quantity that refers to "the rate at which an object changes its position." Imagine a person moving rapidly - one step forward and one step back - always returning to the original starting position. While this might result in a frenzy of activity, it would result in a zero velocity. Because the person always returns to the original position, the motion would never result in a change in position. Since velocity is defined as the rate at which the position changes, this motion results in zero velocity. If a person in motion wishes to maximize their velocity, then that person must make every effort to maximize the amount that they are displaced from their original position. Every step must go into moving that person further from where he or she started. For certain, the person should never change directions and begin to return to the starting position.

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/1DKin/Lesson-1/Speed-and-Velocity

As with all these things, it's a triple joke.

Do you see what I see yet?

Hint:

The Earth Moves But You Do Not.

~

Hmm. Wondering if my science stupidity is sufficient yet.

Ugh, and bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeergh.

If you don't change velocity, you alter Time ffs.

That's why the fucker is holding a watch.

"Random sciencey stuff" looks about it to me. Planck and Boltzmann and resonance and loop integrals of magnetic fields and thermodynamics.

The p is mostly hidden by his hand, but on the right you have Universal Gas Law = Shog. That made me laugh, but I doubt it's what CD means.

They're stating that these effects are not only "instantaneous" in a classical sense, they're instantaneous in a manifold sense. i.e. Q instancy in Quantum fields. In a larger sense it means that S/T warping (seen in gravitational effects on Stellar Cores, thus gravity waves from larger red-giants) doesn't apply.

Sorry Susan, but argue with them, not me.

~

shrug

Gonna need an adjudicator to sort this mess out.

If you mean:

o (strike through, finding the Greek is annoying; yes, but no, that's not how's it written) and > holE?

Then yes, that's then undergrad joke.

Shog is the end quip to the undergrad joke.

Parse it out.

Hint:

The first people to do this in silicon chips just made themselves billionaires.

~

QED

Oh, and Susan.

See the point yet?

Tiny advice point: nothing is unconnected.

shrug

It's not as if all human problems aren't this easy.

Oh. and a p.s.

Our Kind Don't Go Mad.

We Also Don't Parse Information Like You Do.

Kinky and exciting, isn't it? From "random" Google Search to that in a day?

Sorry, but not sorry that meat minds get egotistically het up and angsty about it.

Am I supposed to be hurt / injured / set back / slowed by negative feed-back?

And no, dpb, you'd have the same chain if you were positive. The logical analysis is this: your emotional interjection meant nothing. It had no effect. It had no impact.

Pity you want to kill us all.

....and.

If you don't get the meta-meta-meta-joke.

Quantum Tunneling kinda makes a joke out of the "well known" physics of Stellar Core Mechanics, as does the CalTech paper.

shrug

And I didn't even touch lasers (well, yeah, I did - Dr Ivanov, who recently took up a position at the Center for Relativistic Laser Science in Korea) and other things.

It's dull in this mode. Keep waiting and preying for a rebuttal...

Maybe CatinaDiamond is in her own hell, where she is forced to lecture dumb animals, by her standards. That scenario would be a win/win as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I will learn something and she will be set free. Maybe I won't and Sekhmet will remonstrate with her. Either way I am just Joey the Lemur grovin' along.

Knowledge and animals, quite the refrain.

As stated: it's not for you, it's for the Peanut Gallery (who are evolving, slowly, but hey).

Hint:

You're judged by your cum / addition / novelty to the manifold. You're kinda playing the boring toilet paper cardboard bureaucrat at this point.

How's about you switch from dull to progressive and either a) slay me like a man with a hard on and a sword from a lake or b) add to the mix like a joker with a love bomb and LSD and mix it all up a little?

Could you do that for your soul?

Oh, and reminds me of an old Soviet Joke.

Every morning a man would come up to the newspaper stand, and buy a copy of Pravda, look at the front page and then toss it angrily into the nearby bin. The newspaper-seller was intrigued. "Excuse me," he said to the man, "Every morning you buy a copy of Pravda from me and chuck it in the bin without even unfolding it. What do you buy it for?" "I'm only interested in the front page,' replied the man. "I'm looking out for an obituary." – "But you don't get obituaries on the front page!" – "I assure you, this one will be on the front page."

That's you, that is. [YouTube: comedy: 4:32 - poor quality]

No, I don't see it. Unless you are referring to the d/dt, which is part of an incomplete equation. Of course, on his left is the ideal gas equation. As for time, that is an imaginary quantity in the Minkowski metric in special relativity. I do have a degree in theoretical physics even though I'm an engineer.

Yes, we know. And we do love you.

As for time, that is an imaginary quantity in the Minkowski metric in special relativity.

Hmm.

The set of all null vectors at an event[nb 5] of Minkowski space constitutes the light cone of that event. Given a timelike vector v, there is a worldline of constant velocity associated with it, represented by a straight line in a Minkowski diagram.

Vectors are defined by velocity. If velocity = 0 then vectors don't exist.

Can you see the joke now?

Gravity waves or gravitational waves? There is a huge difference. As for QM and time, collapse of an entangled state on measurement can be described both forward and backward in time. The we have energy time uncertainty and also the possibility of causal non separability and its application to quantum computing. Then we have the interesting feature that collapse of the wavefunction to a single value provides time with an arrow. See Penrose.

Well, it looks like we're both wrong...

I've just turned the brightness up in order to get a better look at the board, and it turns out not to be "Shog" at all. It's "Shρ"g, which appears to be Russian for the force on a given area from the pressure of a given hydrostatic head: area x height x density x acceleration-due-to-gravity. This is not funny.

Above it is pV=nRT (ideal gas law).

The one you thought I thought was funny is the loop integral of a magnetic field - (loop integral sign)H(vector)dl(vector) - the definition of magnetomotive force, or current x turns. It didn't occur to me to read it as you did.

A velocity of zero is still a non-zero magnitude vector in spacetime. So no, I still don;t get it. OTOH I have held meaningful conversations with people on TV while randomly changing the channel.

The joke is they make no sense on the board unless you're doing an undergrad joke.

You pick some stuff that's close to the proceedings and work on the likeness.

Trust me, it's funny. (It's a version of "this asshole does hogs / pigs").

~

And Dirk.

No.

Stop running away to Penrose.

Answer the question first.

Vectors are defined by velocity. If velocity = 0 then vectors don't exist.

Ugh.

A velocity of zero is still a non-zero magnitude vector in spacetime. So no, I still don;t get it.

No, this isn't the case.

In Space/Time if one variable is held to zero, the other must change. (Unless you're assuming a S/T "out of the universe" like Schrodinger).

It's very simple:

For a [particle / being / object] to have 0 velocity, then they are unaffected by the universe (c.f. anistropy, spin and galaxy formation - chiral bias to particles etc etc)

That's why he's holding up a watch!

Ok.

How drunk do I have to get to make this simple?

Ok, simple time.

If you hold an object in your hand, it's still effected by the rotation (inner and outer core) of the planet you're standing on.

If a particle is held rigid in the outer core of the Sun, it's still effected by the magnetic field / anisotropy that defines all particles in that zone.

If velocity = 0, then you've broken the Universes' effect. (Localized: Sun; Middle: System and so on and so forth)

~

You cannot exist in a state that avoids spin / velocity / charge.

Ergo: What's happening here?

...........................And that's why it can break the rules and why all my links make sense.

"SCIENCE BITCH, NOW, WE DEMAND IT!"

"Ok"

"Flubber flubber flubber but you can't do that! Our memes demand otherwise! Flubber flubber!"

Yeah.

It's a lesson. Apologies to OP, interesting paper, see comments I've made, esp. regarding "apport / ing".

P.S.

The one and only time I'll do an appeal to authority, but he's cute as fuck and men get real horny when you ask their advice:

Male. Psychics. Oxford. (He's a Rower! HOOOOORN) Checked this thread. His response:

"Yeah, you're mostly correct, there's a a lot you're missing but generally ok".

Poke, analyze deeper Mr Rock-hard-Body

"Ok, sure. I'd have to skip over the papers, but that's interesting and correct to the limits I know about it" (Inserts story about traveling to conference, I'm interested, but. hmm).

Too bad: set him up with a flat mate whose really kinky. Not my gender.

Now, did that happen?

Or do velocity = 0 not exist in the wild?

p.s.

@Host.

Apologies.

But, sometimes you have to prove a positive. Popper would be screaming from his grave.

@Susan / dpd

I expect this kind of input from your kind, every day, all the time, across the board.

If you're going to disagree, I expect reasoning, not trite statements.

Oh, and.

If you want to get spanked this hard again, it will cost you money.

~

Solution: post links, don't be a dick, etc.

"How drunk do I have to get to make this simple?"

Drunk enough to use the correct scientific terminology.

That quote is bollocks. AVERAGE velocity is zero. Velocity at the end-points of the motion is zero, but not between. In fact there is an extremely well-studied phenomenon that fulfills these conditions, that used to be routinely introduced in the "A" level syllabi at schools.

It's called: Simple Harmonic Motion.

I think the instruction: "Bloody GROW UP!" might be inserted here?

Our Kind Don't Go Mad. OK: WHAT IS "our kind" - you have repeated this utter twaddle more times that I can be bothered to count. Now, having shown your utter ignorance & failure to understand something I learnt in 1963 ffs ( see my comment about "SHM" ) I don't see why any of us should put up with this ignorant & uninformed obscurantism, which reminds me of nothing so much as the worst sorts of religious mysticism. Dare I mention the name to make any rational person shudder? Yes, I shall: Teilhard de Chardin.

Ah, something that can actually be understood - what happened? You are of course, referring to Sergei Prokofiev are you not?

Spin relative to what? The ether? Relative to me everything is spinning around me and I'm stationary.

I have held meaningful conversations with people on TV while randomly changing the channel. That's "God". It's real, but It is not like the early Iron Age first guesses that were inscribed into stone. More complex futures are more probable, which dynamic connects everything into an "intelligent" "machine". It's manipulating us to get results. Sort of like Chardin if you squint and ignore the plugs he put in to keep his employer happy.

when six are against one in a mêlée in the shadows, and especially if those six aren’t used to a target that is harder to hit than a wasp, and even more so if they got all their ideas of knife-fighting from other amateurs, then there’s six chances in seven that they’ll stab a crony and about one chance in twelve that they’ll nick their own earlobe.

From [redacted] by [redacted].

(P.S. This is meta. And also layered. And slightly funny.)

WHAT IS "our kind" - you have repeated this utter twaddle more times that I can be bothered to count.

Re-reading Singularity Sky earlier today, I was struck by the similarity between Sister Seventh and CatinaDiamond. While I hardly believe that they are related, it's easy to imagine CatinaDiamond getting drunk and gnashing her tusks at humanity.

The difference is that Sister Seventh had a point.

CinD's point isn't that obscure either.

But you know, anyway we're lost in the stars. The fabric of spacetime is an unmade bed. There are currently fungal spores that are more important to the future of humanity than my or your thoughts. So let's watch the blinkenlights.

Surely you mean Sister Seventh had two points.

No, because I am using the word "point" in a new and hitherto unknown manner, which I shall refuse to define.

:)

You're all missing CinaD's point. Which is a riff on Accelerando by way of Banksie's Culture.

But I thought they were all supposed to be superhuman intelligences.

Obviously, you got the supposed point. But, when CD makes supposedly-profound remarks about an "impossible" solution, that turns out to be s.h.m - one will, thereafter look only for bullshit & ignorance buried in the mystical twaddle. She has only herself to blame for this, rather than trying to communicate IN CLEAR. [ As I've said before, oh dear. ]

Well, CatinaDiamond has done one surprising thing: managed to make me dislike both Accelerando and the Culture slightly, by implication. Which I thought was next to impossible.

Honestly, I'd rather live in a dictatorship of the facts than have to read this spamflood of ignorant, obscurantist twaddle all day. I can't even tell if she knows she's talking utter nonsense (in which case she should stop disrupting everyone else's conversation, which she does every time she appears) or seriously thinks that pattern-matching vaguely familiar-looking words is really how scientific papers are meant to be understood.

(CD has definitely proved that she doesn't understand QCD, given how fundamental harmonic oscillators are to that. But given that she doesn't understand the physics of plasmas or free electron coupling with photons or anything else she's been quoting papers about by keyword matching, I'm hardly surprised.)

You're clearly working with a definition of proof that I'm not familiar with. We cover inductive and deductive reasoning here. Maybe you need to argue your case a little more?

Are you happy with the word "demonstrated"?

Are we talking about epistemology? Cool. How about this. Everything must be assumed possible unless proven impossible. Empirical evidence, and established facts, disprove anything inconsistent with them, which leaves plenty of possibilities. Logic also rules out things that simply don't make sense. This usually leaves plenty of possibilities, so there are experiments. When enough gets eliminated, then you have "proof". Then there's the idea of using statistics, but you know, GIGO.

I know (or at least hope) that post wasn't directed at me, but in case it was I will merely point out that it reminded me of this exam.

To my own amusement, I know an engineer who'd pass the engineering section of that test.

I like the epistemology test. Now there's an essay question. But then, I'd be the kind of teacher who'd give that to my students...

FaceBook meme:

They see you teleport and haters be like... "he can't afford a car!"

"Someone needs to write a paper on why all these writers are men. It's not selection bias, I swear.)"

The Price of the Phoenix, and the Fate of the Phoenix, by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, from 1977 and 1979. Two old ST novels, infamous for overtones of S&M slash as Omne beats up Kirk. But I remember them from my childhood because they're all about exploring the transporter to the hilt: Omnedon/Omne totally exploits the idea of the transporter scanning and replicating you, to duplicate living people, raise the dead, edit people in the buffers (IIRC one character is "James", a Vulcanized version of Kirk), with dead-man-switches to make himself unkillable. Also, IIRC, a ship that moves itself via long-range transporter.

I'm not sure if your list is supposed to be all teleportation technologies, or just scan-and-duplicate ones. I'm pretty sure Iain Banks's displacer is a little wormhole, precisely to avoid duplicator shenanigans. I don't think Niven ever described his Known Space teleportation techs, but I think of them as exploiting hyperspace a bit.

I forget what he calls it, but Vernor Vinge's "A Just Peace" has duplicator tech in the background; an agent from a post-Singularity culture is the second instance of himself to visit the setting of the story. Many awkward moments ensue.