We’ve all bemoaned the lack of teleportation technology. But according to the Daily Mail, scientists say that it could be a long, long while.
Teleportation has become a standard fixture in modern science fiction. Probably the most recognizable are the transporter pads in the various StarTrek series. But according to researchers at the University of Leicester, if teleportation technology existed, it’d be far from instantaneous.
And this is only assuming that we have the ability to upload a person into transferrable data, DNA and all. This includes the entire contents of a person’s brain. Resulting in one heck of a torrent file; around 2.6 times 10 to the power of 42 bits.
And let’s say that the USS Enterprise NCC 1701 has the data banks to hold copies of its entire crew, with room to spare—which wouldn’t be so hard to believe. After all, there was a time I had an MP3 player that held 128mb. Look at us now.
Even if we had the capacity and ability to store the entire genetic and neurological makeup of a person, David Starkey and his team reckon it would take the entire age of the universe since the Big Bang (estimated at around 14 billion) multiplied by 350,000 to transfer a person from Earth to orbit.
In other words: all of eternity. And although having your atoms scattered across space has been explored in the Star Trek universe, it didn’t exactly seem to be all that appealing in fiction, and certainly not in the real world. If anything, it’s rather pointless. Not to mention the sheer amount of energy that would be required to even initiate such a transport.
All in all, it won’t be happening anytime soon. So for now, teleportation is a thing of science fiction. Which is just as well. I wouldn’t want to teleport unless it had the special effects to go with it.
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