Our tax dollars now tell us that Star Trek's "transporters" are not possible. (1 Viewer)

[Steeve Bergeron]

I'm with you there.

 

[Kevin M]

No one is suggesting that Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg etc. are somehow outdated relics or that their discoveries are to be downplayed, I would never say that. I just think we have, as a race, just hit the tip of the iceberg regarding the laws of the universe.....I have no proof of this just as those of you who feel that we know much of what there is to know can prove your notion to be absolutely true.


...now about that Orgasmatron....

 

[Kenneth]

Well, we might not be as dumb as we look I think only a certain existential head of the defense department can tackle the "things we don't know we don't know"

You never know, it could turn out we actually are the third most intelligent species on the planet and the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything really is 42

Cheers,

Kenneth

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

What good are findings from a species who hasn't even discovered transparent aluminum?

 

[Brad Porter]

At least we've moved you to "improbable".

I really don't think anyone here is arguing that we know "everything" about the universe, so that is a strawman argument. But when every single (credible) recorded observation of existence supports the notion that something has not, does not, and is not at all likely to happen at any point in time then you've got to feel rather uncomfortable cheering for the other side. You may characterize those of us who side with billions of years of data as being arrogant, but we aren't going to be swayed by just your assertions that something might be possible someday, somewhere, somehow... maybe. There's no practical application for the "maybe's", except of course for developing science fiction that all of us geeks will post messages on the internet arguing about.

Brad

 

[Steeve Bergeron]

That's why we have science. I'm not a scientist (no shit! ), I can talk about the "maybe".

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

There was a time when it was "impossible" to fly, or cure diseases, or travel to space. There was a time when every scientific brain thought the world was flat, and was the center of the universe. While we would like to think of ourselves as highly intelligent and able to comprehend just about anything, the fact of the matter is that we are very ignorant of many things, and until there are breakthroughs in thousands of areas of science, our "knowledge" will be based on inaccuracies and false assumptions.

Do you not think that the civilisations of old had the same arrogance that we do about their level of "knowledge?" Mankind has always assumed itself to be highly intelligent, yet we make the same mistakes over and over. We don't have enough of an understanding of human nature alone to be able to live in peace together, and without destroying the very planet that we are trapped on, yet think we can grasp the workings of the universe?

Anything is possible, if you have the necessary information, and the capacity to understand it. That time for humans is a long way off.
You are basing your acceptance onevidence that you can not verify the accuracy of. Every piece of data is open to interpretation, and biasfrom what we assume is correct. We exist on a small spec of dust in a universe that is larger than we have any capacity to comprehend. The scale of our true knowledge is equally small, and limited by the effects we can observe and interpret . We believe in things that can't be proven. Nothing is possible until it is achieved.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Then what is the point of accepting anything?

Maybe if I throw this ball up in the air enough, it won't come down. Sure gravity is constantly "proven," but why should I be so arrogant as to assume we're so advanced that we know all about gravity.

At some point you have to say, "This is what we know, this what we can and can't do." Is transporter technology "possible?" I suppose anything is possible. Tomorrow morning I may wake up with the ability to become invisible, grow a tail, eat all the junk food I want without getting fat, and attract lingerie models at will. But we don't live like that- we act on what we know.

To have transporter technology would require a total re-imagining of science as we know it. Studies like the one this thread was about operate on what we know and based on what we know, no, transporters are not possible. The answer to is ___ possible given some radical new discovery we can't imagine now is of course "yes," but that is just an axiom.

 

[RobertR]

Actually, educated people knew the earth was spherical clear back to the ancient Greeks, so that's not true.

I'm seeing a lot of "we don't know absolutely everything, therefore we know nothing" in this thread. My response is, compare the advances we have made since the use of the scientific method (which does declare that some things are known to be false and others true) with the lack of advance and ignorance which preceded it. I'd much rather live in a world where, for example, I KNOW certain diseases are caused by viruses instead of thinking "we're too ignorant to know the real cause; maybe they're not. Maybe people in ancient times were right when they thought demons were the cause", or where I KNOW that the guy trying to sell the perpetual motion machine run on pyramid power is full of shit. It wasn't a "we don't know what's true and what's not" attitude that took us to the moon.

 

[Kevin M]

As has been mentioned, that isn't the attitude I have gleaned from the "we aren't in our teen's, technologically speaking.." viewpoints, We haven't been at this game for more than three thousand years (with numerous stops and flat out backwards steps in the meantime) and when I look at the progress we have made in the last three hundred years I see a steady march forward in things that we could have been at a few hundred years before christ if the progress hadn't been halted (thanks to certain libraries and scientists being burned away into history) plus the general disagreeance amongst these scientists regarding not only what Black Holes & Quasars actually are but even deeper into the mechanics of time, nuclear bonds (quantum theory tries to explain how the atom doesn't just fall apart but it can't seem to explain why this happens to begin with...I'm sketchy on what this theory implies to begin with), multi-dimensional theories plus the faith that quarks even exist, ball lightning, red sprites, blue jets & elves etc. etc.

We have answered quite a few questions in our short history...and many of these answers were later proven wrong by those who question solid accepted truths, it's a good technique and I don't see it ending anytime soon, it almost seems that for every answer we come up with there are five new questions left unanswered...and more cropping up everyday.

To truly answer the question I will have to say that I find the notion that, while we may not know everything, we are well on our way to having every building block anyone can have to work with to be a sign of arrogance and knowing what human ego is capable of is enough for me to turn an eyebrow and say..."oh, really?"....see....another ego rearing it's ugly head.


Now on to the Orgasmatron...I think it should seat two for those boring weeknights when nothing is on TV....

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

The search for scientific knowledge did not begin with the Greeks, so yes, it is indeed true. We believe what we are taught to believe, whether it is accurate or not. Evidence is always open to interpretation, and ground breaking discoveries are usually little more than approaching a given problem from a new perspective.

Not even a century ago, it was impossible for man to fly. In another century, who knows what more we will "know." I would also suggest that if it were found that teleportation were possible we would still be told it wasn't due to security concerns. What good are defenses when an entity or matter can "beam" in and out without a trace? The ramifications of the technology are pretty scary in the wrong hands. What good is a missle defense system when you can beam a nuke directly to the target? Do you think any government that figured out how to do this would share the discovery? Not bloody likely.

What we can and can not do is a moving target. While there are laws that we can apply based on our limited observations on earth, until we can fully test our theories elsewhere in the universe, we can not with certainty say what we know is absolute.

 

[RobertR]

I suggest the universe wouldn’t make sense if physical laws didn’t apply everywhere. Exactly how “far out” do we have to go to demonstrate their universality? One light year? A hundred? A billion? There goes the “prove the negative” problem again.

 

[Kenneth]

I think we are at the point of agreeing to disagree. The only way you can teleport without violating a slew of physical laws would be to tesseract (like in the "Wrinkle in Time" book). I would be surprised if such a thing were possible and that you wouldn't get something like that for free. Nature rarely provides anything without cost (energy or something would need to be provided).

If you transport or teleport using scientific means then you hit the barriers that we previously discussed (energy to perform the task and the ability to convert matter to energy and vice versa). These are not trivial tasks given our current level of science. Besides it doesn't even address a non-scientific question which I hate to raise of whether a biological creature is more than just a bundle of atoms.

Will I say definitively that teleportation will never be possible? No I will not. Will I say it is currently impossible with our level of science? Yes I will. To a certain extent your arguments of how little we actually know support the argument that teleportation is impossible (for us). Ironic, huh?

Cheers,

Kenneth

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Sheesh, can't we even get the dates right? "Not even a century ago" was anything after 1905. The Wrights flew in 1903. Well before that, man flew using gliders and balloons. If we look back to DaVinci, we see he envisioned the possibility of flight by both glider and helicopter. So to sum up, it was quite possible for man to fly before "Not even a century ago" and flight has been thought to be possible for many centuries.

 

[Kevin M]

Well obviously it wasn't possible or he would have done it sooner, technology had to catch up first.
And just to be clear, balloon's float they don't necessarily "fly" as in how a bird "flies" which was the impetus for mankinds desire to controllably fly to begin with.

 

[Steeve Bergeron]

That's exactly what I'm saying.

 

[Kenneth]

Cheers,

Kenneth

 

[Steeve Bergeron]

Like you stated a few posts ago, they should focus their attention on space exploration. I totally agree with that.

 

[Brad Porter]

A. You should never "blindly believe" anything that is offered in a statement from anyone. B. The evidence is never proven wrong, the hypothesis that attempts to explain the evidence is proven wrong (or the methods of handling and collecting the evidence are found to be faulty (or someone is lying to gain fame or profit...)). Primarily, hypotheses are proven wrong because new evidence is introduced which invalidates them.

So were really arguing in this thread because you and others passionately believe that new evidence might exist somewhere that will invalidate our longstanding hypotheses related to the conservation of mass and energy and we passionately presume that the absence of any such evidence in the entire observable history of the universe is a pretty strong indicator you guys are being either foolish or just contrarian. I'll agree not to recklessly use the word "impossible" if you agree not to divert any of my money to the continued study of "very highly improbable" things.

The human mind is capable of imagining many ridiculous things, but from a practical perspective there's little value to be gained in spending our time and lives trying to achieve them. As long as our kids are given Yoda, Harry Potter, and the X-men as their childhood heroes - then the world will continue to be filled with people who believe in imaginary things in spite of all of the evidence working against them. When these people are put in charge of appropriating scientific funding - we waste cash on crap like remote viewing, psychic research, and other fundamental violations of space and time. We need to work on expanding our scientific understanding and its application with the universe that we live in and interact with right now. And right now - it's freakin' impossible.

Brad

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

My point exactly, give or take a couple of years.

Perhaps a few centuries from now historians will look back and say "gee, those folks on the Enterprise sure were smart."

The first step in achieving a goal is believing that you can.

Do we have the capability now? No.