Teleportation

Does "The Fly" ring a bell ? I remember watching that movie when I was in India like 6-8 years back ... I completely freaked out by the end of the movie ... the movie gets very gruesome at the end ... I had almost forgotten about it till today when I read a little bit about "teleportation" ...

Whats teleportation ? ... its basically a (future) technology wherein an object can be transported from one place to another ... nothing great ? well, how about this ? moving it instantly without using any conventional techniques ... in an instant ...

There are a number of proposed ways to achieve this. e.g. e-teleportaqtion, q-teleportation, vm-teleportation, sf-teleportation etc ... e.g. q-teleportation in simple words is to fax the 3D object ... completely scan the original object and obtain its structure information ... then pass this information to the new location. At this new location, reconstruct the whole object again using the information to create replica of the original. Then the original copy is destroyed once this process ends. Much more complications arise when the original copy is not deleted ... but for now ignoring that ... so teleportation is like fax in 3D... Scientists have successfully teleported small particles such as photons so there is a ray of hope there in q-teleporting . The other techniques such as vm-teleportation is basically using wormholes & there is more that goes on ...

But the ultimate question is, is it possible to teleport human beings ? there are trillions & trillions of atoms in human body ... more than that, let the technique be anything, what will happen if teleportation of human beings comes true ? Wil it be good or bad ? Lets see ... hmm ... I guess, when the technology will arrive, it will be pretty expensive ... but consider it is affordable to general public then there will be no gas price increase tension (a big one especially now !), no time spent on travel ... no travel accidents (or is it ? different type of accidents ? ... some information is lost while travel & now reconstructed human is missing a hand ???? )

Anyone can go anywhere ... basically, its like apparate and disapparate as you Harry Potter fans would say ... is that good ? well, what it means is no privacy to anyone .. moreover, any thief can get inside any bank vault anytime .. well so can police .. but how will you secure your money / belongings ?

What about the ethical issues ? What if something goes wrong ? Will the new replica have the same emotions / soul as the original one ? will he / she be different in behaviour ? Most of the questions are solved / answered if the q-teleportation is not the one that is used ... instead if vm-teleportation is used, at least the original object is untouched ... but few big problems remain ...

I found this topic pretty interesting and a very nice one to discuss ... there is so much to talk & write here ... I will just wait for your comments ...

Further reads :

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050708_teleportation.html

http://www.crystalinks.com/teleportation.html