Now You See Me & Jumper: Teleportation

 

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TELEPORTATION:

Also called teletransportation, the process of moving from one place to another without traveling through the intervening space. 

I. Divide the class into two different groups. Group 1 reads silently the text below, edited from the awesome site http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162890-human-teleportation-would-take-so-long-itd-be-more-like-a-death-ray

 Group 2 reads the text edited from another equally awesome site http://www.buzzle.com/articles/is-teleportation-possible.html

Group 1:

Teleportation is always as sci-fi dream, but recently scientists have been able to teleport nano-sized objects across significant distances. We’re still nowhere near teleporting even the smallest, visible-to-the-naked-eye objects, but that didn’t stop a team of researchers from calculating how long it’d take to teleport an entire human being. It’s very, very long.

Since we can’t teleport humans — or even a paperclip — just yet, the researchers performed a fair bit of guesswork that checks out in theory. In order to teleport a human, every piece of data that human holds would need to be broken down and transferable — and the data that makes up humans are the DNA pairs that form genomes in every cell. The researchers were then able to calculate how long the transfer would take — just like you’d be able to estimate how long it would take to download, for example, an episode of Game of Thrones.

 

If the bandwidth used to perform the transfer were around 30GHz, it would take 4.85×1015years to complete. For comparison, the universe is theorized to be around 14 billion years old, which means teleporting a human from Earth to a spot in orbit directly above would take 350,000 times longer than the universe has existed.

You would’ve died long before you reached your destination, unless of course the teleportation process also somehow preserves you. If it could preserve your data, it likely wouldn’t preserve you. So the real you would be dead anyway, and a newly minted copy would be walking around, not acting entirely like you would. You’d be zapped by teleportation rays and you’d be dead. You could call that a death ray.


GROUP 2:

Teleportation is real. It exists theoretically and has also been done practically on a small scale in science labs. But the truth is, what we have gotten to till now is still too far from the fictional teleportation. All across the fiction world, you will have the concepts of teleportation like in Star Trek or the 2008 movie, Jumper. What reality dictates, however, is concerned with only atoms and molecules and their 'information'. Confused? All the more reasons to read on ahead on the matter.

Fictional and Real Teleportation
Your teleportation shown in movies and written in books, consists of transporting physical bodies, human or otherwise, through either some form of time warp or dimensional rifts.

Now, your current state of research and experiments on teleportation (or 'Classic Teleportation') is not that 'developed', if you may. Right now, teleportation only deals with the transfer of information from point A to point B, that are pretty close to each other (compared to two continents or planets). An experiment in 1998 showed the teleportation of a Photon across two terminals at a distance of 3.28 feet (or 1 meter). The latest experiment in April of 2011, teleported packets of light over 9.9 miles (or 16 kilometers) with previously unknown precision. This falls under another aspect of teleportation, known as 'Quantum Teleportation' and leads to the possibility of constructing quantum computers and quantum satellites.

Classic Teleportation
The main difference between the classic and quantum procedures of teleportation is the idea of transportation used. In the classic way, the object would simply be taken from point A to point B really, really fast, thus giving the idea of teleportation. Of course, the idea is old and no one thought it would actually work out that way. The truth is, the evolution of science and technology point to the fact that it indeed might be possible some day.

Now, teleportation takes a look at that old method, tries to do it the same way, but hits this one snag called the Uncertainty Principle (explained later). This prompts the new scientists to come up with a rudimentary concept of copying an object and sending it's information across to a receiving station. The whole idea revolves around the information the object carries. It works like a simple fax machine, like 2-D teleportation. Put paper with something on it on one end, send it to other end where the receiver gets your message. Note that the latter gets the 'message' and not the original paper. And that, is what Classic teleportation is; it suggests the duplication of an object by measuring it, sending over the information over to receiving end, where the object gets reconstructed according to the data and the material that the data 'wraps' itself around. Which means, if human teleportation were to exist this way, it would mean that a person stepping on the sending platform should have a somewhat similar organism on the receiving platform. He would then press the button, all the data carried by the person's structure is copied and transmitted over to the receiving station, where it is fed to the organic blob waiting for it and turn into the person on getting it. Now this obviously raises ethical questions like -

● What happens to the guy at the sending end?
● How similar are the two guys (in terms of physical reconstruction)?
● If the first one is 'destroyed', will that be killing and would it matter to the second guy created?


Whatever the future holds, we will not know accurately. It will keep changing as things advance, develop and deviate. Maybe there is another way we haven't looked at yet, maybe it's the wormholes. Whatever it is, I really hope we will be able to teleport cheesecakes with perfection.
 II. Pair one student from group 1 and one from group 2. Share the most important points of the readings and contrast the articles points of view. How different are their viewpoints? Who do you agree with the most?

 III. Watch the movie segment and answer the following questions.

 1. What are the Four Horsemen plans for the evening?

2. Do you think this is a fair use of teleportation? Why (not)?

3. What are some of the ethical problems teleportation would arouse if it were actually possible?

4. Are they criminals? Explain it.

IV. Now watch the second part of the segment and answer the questions.

Part 2

A. Watch the movie segment from the movie Jumper. Decide how different life would be if everyone had David’s power to teleport. Write at least 5 different things.






1.

2.

3.

4.

5.


B. Talk to a partner and make a list of what both of you would (not) do if only you had David’s power to teleport. Remember that you have to be ethical and think about the possible consequences of your acts.


What we would do : 

What we wouldn’t do:


C. Work with a partner and write down a condition for the sentences below.



1. We would donate 1 million dollars to charity if...

2. We would teleport ourselves to the Sahara desert if...

3. We wouldn't call the police if...

4. We would hide our super power from the other people if...


MOVIE SEGMENT DOWNLOAD - NOW YOU SEE ME - PART 1

MOVIE SEGMENT DOWNLOAD - NOW YOU SEE ME - PART 2

MOVIE SEGMENT DOWNLOAD - JUMPER