Teleportation the Improbable

The obvious intro is that teleportation is at our present time impossible. Here's the hook, it's also unfortunately improbable. This is not to say that at some point in our future we will not invent/understand the technology that makes teleportation possible. I believe that we will. But, even when we do find the means to “teleport”,  that ability will still be improbable.

The theory of teleportation that I am about to totally diss (that's how kids talk these days right?) is the classical theory of teleportation (like on “Star Trek”), not to be confused with quantum teleportation (like in the film/book “Event Horizon”; which is the bending of space, a quantum state, in order to “step through” the black hole, or rift that has been created between quantum states.)

Although both theories run into the exact same issues, the classical theory is the easiest to discuss in layman’s terms without having to also break down the pseudo-science/math behind the theory. So, all probability issues can simply be transferred over to the quantum theory, as well as time travel; which falls into the same category of travel/movement through quantum space/time. Sorry that was way too geek even for me.

Put simply, the reason that teleportation is improbable is because everything in our 3-Dimentional world is in constant motion.

At its equator the earth is rotating at a speed of just over 1,000 miles per hour, and at the dead center of our poles does not rotate at all or maybe just a little (this is all theoretical, we actually don't even know if gravity is real). As you travel from one pole to the other, every single point on the earth is traveling at a different speed. (We don't notice this as we walk across the earth because of the scale of it and the speed that we are able to move across it) In contrast, if you were to fly in a jet plane the ground beneath you is moving either very fast or very slow depending on which direction you are traveling in. This is called "ground speed" and can very in the thousands of miles per hour from your "air speed". In other words our earth is not flat and is in constant motion.

To be exact it takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 04. 09053 seconds for a single point on the earth to make a full rotation around it's own axis. No matter where you are on the earth this is always true. In contrast, depending on how large the circumference of the earth is where you are currently residing (your position from the equator) determines the speed at which you are at this moment traveling. Still following me?

In addition to that the earth rotates around the sun at an average speed of 67,000 mph, which varies depending on the time of year; caused by the fact that the earth varies 4 million miles in its distance from the sun during the course of each year because of the oblong shape of its path. On top of that the earth is also slowly moving away from the sun (as far as we know) so that the earth takes an additional 4 minutes each consecutive day for the sun to reach the same place in the sky. The earth is also moving along with the sun and other planets around the center of our galaxy, and our galaxy itself is part of the milky way which is moving through space. That's as far out as our science now knows about the universe. It could be much bigger.

In a nutshell everything in the known universe is in constant motion at all times in just about every conceivable direction and never at any constant speed or position (and on the larger universal scale no object ever crosses the same path twice). ((Fwew!))

Now comes the complicated stuff.  (sarcasm)

 Let's say you were inside a car driving down the freeway at 70mph (yes I know we all drive faster than that on the freeway, but let's just pretend). What would happen if you were to suddenly jump out of the moving vehicle and onto the ground beneath you? Splat, right? Simple high school physics. An object in motion will want to continue to travel in that same motion.

The theory of teleportation insinuates that when you jump from one quantum state to another both quantum states are of the same mass and traveling at the same speeds and in the same direction. In theory this sounds great. If you were in that same car driving 70mph traveling down the freeway and were to jump into another car traveling at the same speed and in the same direction; no splat.

But lets recall what I just explained about the universe (ah, now it's all coming together). Teleporting in actuality is like jumping from one vehicle going 70 mph into another vehicle going 1000 mph and traveling in a different direction and both vehicles are constantly moving away from each other. Very big splat, if you can even manage to land in the other vehicle (good luck)! And this is just teleporting from one place on earth to another place on earth! Now Imagine teleporting to another celestial body, like our own moon, that doesn't rotate on an axis at all. (For serious! You should try looking at the moon through a telescope. It will trip you out! It never rotates.) That's like jumping onto pavement from a vehicle going 1000 mph. Pretty much you'd just fly off into space. Forever. Like forever! The universe is that big.

Remember that our earth is not just rotating it's traveling through space, and the path that it travels on is itself traveling, and that as well is also traveling on a larger scale as well. Any volunteers to do the math in order to calculating the exact location of both; where you are, and where you are going to be "teleporting" to in terms of where we are in the known universe which is in constant unpredictable motion? I didn't think so.

Even if we were able to calculate where to teleport someone, if we were to be off by just .000000000000000000000000001 that someone would end up halfway inside the earth (as it rotates through space into the position that had once been calculated as a landing spot) or turned into an experiment on Will It Blend (yes pop culture references!), or flying endlessly through space (if the ending location is rotating at a different speed than the point of origin).

Do we even know the exact dimensions of the universe to even be able to chart our location in it? Before you can state with any acuracy where you are you have to first fully understand what it is you are in. That's like a molecule floating around in the Atlantic Ocean pretending to know where it is on earth.