lowyhong: *takes a deep breath*

BOOM GRILLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

crazy_dave: Eh ... I dunno ... you'll have to ask the physicists, I'm merely a lowly biologist. :) But I'd hazard not soon, especially not the kind people think of from Star Trek. This is the more likely version.
crazy_dave: :)

GameRager: Question if I may: Why are we even bothering with time travel research? I mean if movies have shown us one thing that can be relied on it's that time travel is too risky to even attempt. Also it's way too fantastical to even think we'd even begin to figure it out if ever.

Irenaeus.: They've managed to teleport sub-atomic particles that were quantum entangled. They even managed to do it at faster-than-light speeds (i.e. it didn't take the a duration equal to the distance between the two labs divided by the speed of light for it to happen), which was probably a bigger physics discovery.

However, real-world teleporters are maybe a hundred years away, for reasons of (a) computational power (you'd need to communicate the entire body's nuclear composition, consisting of ~10^27 particles, each with their type, locations, charges, spin states etc pretty much within a second or so, which would also mean you'd have to effectively teleport at the speed of light), and (b) you'd need some way of forming constituent matter into the "new" body, which would presumably at the first prototypes be done using some whopping big magnets. This is before you even think about teleporting exotic matter which would need even bigger magnets to overcome the Strong force.

ddmuse: A few stray thoughts on the many things said in this thread:

Mathematics, medicine, technology, etc predate "science" by a looooooooong shot. The scientific method is a specific methodology for exploring these areas of knowledge. Using "science" as a noun to describe something more than this framework often results in a false perception of unity or agreement among scientists (most simply defined as those who use the scientific method) and tends towards something of a secular religion based on perceptions of current scientific theory.

Don't get me wrong: Scientific method = good and all that. But equating "science" with human "progress", believing in some kind of scientific utopia in which advanced technology solves all of our problems and we all live in harmony? That seems pretty damn naive to me, and a preference for funding practical work in the world versus astronomy and the like isn't so wrong a concept.

That said, the teens in the OP seem to be just talking out of their asses for the most part. The grain or two of sense in there is obscured by the foolishness of youth. ;-)

HoneyBakedHam: Several posts here (ignoring the dumb ass Facebook prattle) have pointed out that any real life transporter technology would fail with living subjects because it would kill the subject and create a copy... BUT that it could work with objects.

Let's assume that is true (and it probably is). If that is true then why invent the transporter in the first place? It seems like an amazingly useless technology.

Let's say I build future-cars. They are silver. They fly. They fold up into a briefcase. I build them in a low gravity factory on the moon. I have a wife with four breasts and blue skin. Okay...

You want my car. You buy my car by going to my web site... which is a fully interactive 3D holo-showroom which you access through your future-Web enabled cerebral cortex implant. You've shopped and choose an economy model because you are not too rich. You only have a traditional dual breasted wife.

Why would I beam the car to you? In other words, why would I put the car in a transporter device, convert the matter to energy, transmit the energy, and have the car re-assembled on the other side?

Instead, shouldn't I use a device that uses extremely similar technology, but far less energy, and "fax" the car to you. I scan the car on my side and the car is perfectly copied and assembled on your side.

This way, I'm not sitting on an inventory of a million cars. I in fact make prototypes and custom manufacture each purchase in your garage (or a nearby receiving station).

If you can't move living beings, there really is no need to "move" anything. The replicator is the more practical choice.

Don't you think?

HoneyBakedHam: The replicator is the more practical choice.

crazy_dave: Perhaps ... although my understanding is that quantum teleporters cannot act this way - i.e. quantum entanglement cannot be used to instantly transport complex objects or even information content. However, my understanding could be very wrong. :)

So you'd still have to beam the information content (which would be huge since you are beaming everything down to the quantum level) to the replicator - that's a lot of information to record, store, transmit, and duplicate.

crazy_dave: I don't think anyone here mentioned any kind of utopia or equated "science" with "progress"

Miaghstir: I'm not sure I'd like having DRM on physical objects though, and people will try to add DRM to anything that's infinitely copyable.

Of course, a store called Good Old Cars will probably appear shortly after that happens.

HoneyBakedHam: Fair enough... but in this scenario, "instant" isn't really required. No matter how badly you want the car, you can probably wait an hour or so for the whole process to transpire?

ddmuse: There are in fact several posts of that sort earlier in the thread.

However, I'm not looking to argue atm. I'm more interested in the sale (or event, or whatever) scheduled to begin shortly. ;-)

Skystrider: 3D-Printers already exists, get ever more features, decreases ever more in price, and are sexy, sexy things.

I want one. When the price gets right. :D