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I was considering the problem with teleporting organic matter, and was curious to know if I can use this to avoid killing anything I teleport?

Qmechanic
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user37390
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    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about Star Trek. – DumpsterDoofus Jan 15 '14 at 00:28
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    Its not about star trek. in real life, teleportation is possible, but instead of dissolving your atoms in one place and reforming them in another, it destroys you in one place and builds a new copy of you in another. the copy would swear to whatever deity it believes in that its the original person, but it woudnt be – user37390 Jan 15 '14 at 01:18
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    you are living in a different reality than the one of physicists on this board. – anna v Jan 15 '14 at 04:46
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    I am most emphatically voting not to close this question. For my reasons why, see my meta post http://meta.physics.stackexchange.com/q/5409/26076 – Selene Routley Jan 15 '14 at 08:28
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    @user37390: See these previous questions about teleportation: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14276/why-cant-quantum-teleportation-be-used-to-transport-information, http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1203/could-teleportation-ever-really-happen, http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/77760/quantum-teleportation-the-alternative-to-destroying-atoms, and http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/39363/using-quantum-teleportation-in-a-way-to-have-the-effect-of-matter-teleportation. – Kyle Kanos Jan 15 '14 at 14:44

2 Answers2

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Electron-positron collisions convert "matter" into "radiation". In fact pretty much any particle-anti-particle collision will do so. The reverse process also occurs, but the probabilities of photon-photon interactions are quite small, so arranging this as a method of tele-portation seems pretty tenuous.

When typical baryons collide with anti-baryons, the possible outcomes are so complex, what with the various quarks and anti-quarks annihilating and rearranging htat the notion of high-fidelity reconstitution occurring seems astronomically improbable. You would almost never have a pure matter to energy conversions.

DWin
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  • my question is, could turning say, a dog,into x-rays,[or any other form of electromagnetic radiation] shoot it at the speed of light to some other destination, and then convert the x-rays back into matter – user37390 Jan 15 '14 at 04:09
  • My answer was meant to imply that I thought that to be highly unlikely (in the extreme). You would need 100% efficiency for conversions of nucleons to EM radiations and 100% efficiency in capturing the xrays and 100% accuracy in reconversion to quark triplets (protons and neutrons in the right nuclear bundle). I would say pretty much impossible. – DWin Jan 15 '14 at 06:08
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Not if you believe in baryon and lepton conservation

Another approach is to assume the receiver has a stock of material and all you send is a description of the organic matter-think a 3D printer. The description can be transmitted over any information channel. X-rays would work, though other wavelengths are more convenient. I recently saw a photo of a 3D printed cube frame made of sugar-that is organic matter. Assembling a living organism from atoms is much harder, though.....

Ross Millikan
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  • Religious beliefs (such as baryon number conservation) often fail. – DWin Jan 15 '14 at 03:15
  • @DWin The probability of baryon number conservation failing has been the study of proton decay experiments, and the limits are so small that it is irrelevant for real life. It is not a religious belief of the type the OP's question is based on – anna v Jan 15 '14 at 04:50
  • @annav:The question of baryon stability is different than the question of conservation of baryon number in particle interactions, is it not? – DWin Jan 15 '14 at 06:10
  • @DWin: they are linked. If baryon number is conserved, the proton must be stable. You can have some interactions (color, EM) conserve baryon number and another violate it. – Ross Millikan Jan 15 '14 at 14:43