THE TROUBLE WITH TRANSPORTERS

Quantum teleportation has been achieved. But can it work for people?

- Kathiann M. Kowalski

Just in time, the Enterprise transporter beams Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy away from the frozen asteroid Rura Penthe. It lets them escape from a hospital elevator on 20th-century Earth. It beams furry Tribbles to a Klingon warship.

Throughout hundreds of TV episodes and various movies, the transporter has dematerialized Star Trek characters and beamed them to their destinations. Why did series creator Gene Roddenberry choose teleportation as a travel device? Not for the reasons you probably think. He had limited money for special effects, and the transporter was a cheap way to get characters from the Enterprise to their destinations. So then, why don't we use real transporters? The answer lies in the laws of physics.

Beam Me Up?

Taking people apart isn't so easy, especially at the level of the atom, say physicists. Your body has about 10^28 atoms. That's a I followed by 28 zeroes. Electric fields hold them all together in complex molecular patterns. Much stronger forces hold each atom together. Breaking all those bonds would require heating you to millions and millions of degrees. Talk about sunburned.

If you tried to turn those atoms into energy, it would be even more difficult. For that, you'd need about 100,000-ton nuclear explosions. Either way, dematerializing someone would be quite violent. Even if you succeeded, how would any transporter rebuild the person?