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

[Kenneth]

Except that Newton's three laws were not invalidated by Einstein and are still valid within certain constraints. Newton treated forces as vectors (wheras Einstein and his successors expanded force into multiple dimensions). Within the confines of our planet Newton's laws cover almost all motions.

Newton's law of Inertia didn't comprehend the effect of speed on inertia (which was added by Einstein when he indicated that inertia increases as your velocity increases) hence the assumption that faster than light travel is not possible as long as you have mass.

If they figure out a way to invalidate the conservation of energy law, that would be an achievement and I will eagerly wait for that research

Personally, if they could figure out how to replicate matter (a key element of any sort of transporter technology) I think that would be a fantastic occurance, however, it would take some tremendous breakthroughs in energy generation to make that sort of technology valid, even without the matter mapping questions.

I think pure research is great and some of the work being done in cosmology and physics is very interesting. However, I am not sure if I would clasify transporters as a high priority pure research project. However, I acknowledge that others may get different milage on this issue.

Kenneth

 

[Jack Briggs]

And what's really interesting is that the "transporter" itself was an economic decision made by Roddenberry way back at the beginning. It's cheaper to show crew members "materializing" on a planetary (or other) surface than to go through the trouble of filming a model spaceship landing on that same surface. It was an afterthought, basically -- to save money on production of the show.

 

[Seth--L]

Yeah, but was Roddenberry the first Sci-Fi writer (TV or fiction) to come up with the idea?

 

[Steeve Bergeron]

I completely agree with you there. We definitely don't have the knowledge to do that at this time or in a near future. But that doesn't mean it will never happen. Scientists have been proved wrong several times in the past. If there is something I'm sure about is that it will certainly happen again.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Seth, no. Teleportation has occurred many times before in literary SF.

 

[RobertR]

The key word is "some". That's very different from saying nothing can be said to be impossible.

 

[RobertR]

The stars my destination....

 

[Jack Briggs]

I was thinking about Mr. Bester's (brilliant) novel when answering that question, Robert!

 

[Steeve Bergeron]

Nobody said that everything would suddenly become possible either. The point is, who can really say what will be possible or impossible in the future? We can extrapolate based on what we currently know, but that doesn't make it the absolute truth.

 

[RickER]

I would hate to have my body torn apart at the atomic level while still concious. Also the original Fly movie was from the 50's. I am hard pressed to think of an earlier movie or TV show that used one.

 

[RobertR]

There are two types of things we can't do:

1. Things that are simply beyond our current ability to do, such as reaching the nearest star, or building a practical fusion reactor.

2. Things we can't do because fundamental physical laws prevent us from doing so.

It's things in category two that we can say with certainty won't be done. Ever.

 

[Kevin M]

At least the fundamental laws of nature as we currently understand them.

 

[RobertR]

Don't hold your breath waiting for a new "understanding" (or sales pitch) that repeals them.

 

[Kevin M]

Not in our lifetimes.....or perhaps the next five lifetimes, but it would be arrogance in the extreme to think that we so fully understand the basic reality of the universe to unequivocally state that "this is impossible...for all time"....we aren't even out of the crib as far as technology & scientific knowledge goes.



"Any technology sufficiently advanced enough will appear as magic to less developed civilizations" - Joseph Cambell.

 

[Brad Porter]

For those of you that make similar analogies to this one regarding the level of our scientific understanding of existence: how would we recognize that our understanding was mature and how would it differ from the way that we view our current understanding? I ask this because this analogy implies that there are either a great deal of observed phenomena that have no current explanation (or a completely flawed explanation) or there are a great deal of unobserved phenomena that will one day be observed and require a fundamentally new understanding. I can't agree with the former and you can't support the latter. Pre-20th century science was the crib stage. We're way past puberty now.

Brad

 

[Kenneth]

I think the original argument was not over whether transporters are impossible (for all time) but whether it is intuitively obvious enough that they are impossible currently and we don't need to spend government money to make that assertion. If private industry wants to invest in transporter research then power to them. Government research should focus on better space technologies and power technologies (since they gate a lot of other things).

I also agree that characterizing us as infants at this stage is a little bit of a stretch. Maybe in a thousand years we will slap on foreheads on how droll it was that people didn't comprehend the basics of faster than light travel. However, some universal laws are observable and necessary for a stable universe. I wouldn't expect these to be rewritten (although we may discover exceptions that weren't obvious).

Finally, although I like Joseph Campbell, the quote on technology resembling magic is from another admirable scientist and author (Arthur C Clarke).

Kenneth

 

[Steve Christou]

"Ya canna change the laws of physics Jimmy!" "Scotty beam me up!"
I'm surprised Joseph and his amazing technicolored quotes hasn't made an appearance here yet, this subject is right up his alley.

Who knows how science and technology will evolve in the next 100-200 years? We're only at the beginning, the cusp of a new age of scientific development. I'm just sorry I won't be alive to see the scientific wonders in mankind's future (erm is 'mankind' PC oh who cares) That's if we don't blow ourselves to kingdom come first.

 

[Kevin M]

Kenneth is correct, it was Clark, I believe Campbell wrote an article on the subject in (I think) Analog where he also explored the idea as a basic problem with reverse engineering alien/future technology and he used Clark's observation in this piece, that might be where I made the mix up....or did Clark write that as well?

I understand the fact that we have observed and understand the basic principles of "universal laws that are observable and necessary for a stable universe" however remember that quantum mechanics was a "fringe" theory in the face of "classic" physics until it helped explain quite a few things that "classic" physics couldn't regarding atoms and even then quite a few respected scientists argued against it's acceptance (hell, even now they can't agree on black holes),so the notion that we have a firm grasp on much of what is known regarding the universe is again to my ears an arrogant sign of ego, also remember that gravity and the round earth theories were "fringe" at one point as well.


Oh, in all of this I forgot to voice my opinion on whether demolishing ones atoms and then reassembling them at a far distant location was practical or possible...no, I don't. If this sort of thing it to ever happen it will likely be based on some sort of dimensional shift.....or maybe I just want the work on the Orgasmatron to take precedence over this.

Perhaps crib is a bit of an underestimation but I certainly don't think we have grown pubes yet.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I sincerely doubt that anyone has changed their opinions since the last time this was discussed. For those who wish to wander down memory lane, I offer this link Blade Runner tops scientist poll

Amazingly enough the laws of physics governing the operation of the universe have not altered radically since last fall.

- Walter.

 

[Kenneth]

Well there are plenty of things we identify as scientific principles that have limited immediate and future value. We have discovered the idea of Tachyons (the time traveling particle). That doesn't mean we'll be taking field trips to visit the Eloi and Morlocks anytime soon (or necessarily ever). Remember too that we have not invalidated true "basic physics" very often. Newton didn't get a trip to woodshed when Einstein came along. Nor have we relegated Einstein to the junkheap as various physicists tweek his theories. There are certain laws of the universe that have to apply or you don't have a stable system. We understand some (possibly many) of these, but certainly not all. There also appear to be exceptions to these laws that occur in unstable systems (black holes, quasars, etc). These exceptions may someday allow us to do "impossible" things like faster than light travel.

However, our current levels of science (and our needs) would seem better suited to research on space exploration/colonization and power generation. Personally, the technology I think we are on the cusp of (that would have enormous benefits) is teraforming a planet. I think we could begin teraforming Mars in a couple of decades (if we focused time and money on those activities). Teraforming a planet like Venus or one of the outer moons is still probably hundreds of years away though.

Cheers,

Kenneth