so this image gave me time to think about teleportation machines.
I do think that travelling arbitrarily close to the speed of light (i.e. practically instant) might be doable, and probably actually is, but it would be so expensive that nobody would use it anyways.
i mean, you can just build a rocket and accelerate it arbitrarily close to the speed of light, using enough fuel. but the cost of doing so is prohibitively expensive, so there’s no practical way to actually ever do that in practice.
slow travel is just much more economical, that’s why teleportation is out of the question. but that’s economical reasons, not a fundamentally physical one.
this comic argues that through teleportation machines, travel would become instant and cheap. and i think it’s the opposite: the faster, the more expensive.
teleportation machines probably work by accelerating every part of you to the speed of light and slowing them down again on the other side. so it really is like a rocket acceleration.
and no, they wouldn’t kill you any more than stepping on an airplane does.
there’s also this existential comics about it that argues:
but that’s already the case on an airplane. if you drink a cup of water on the airplane, the atoms inside your body get swapped out for new ones; that literally happens all the time. so it partially kills you? but nobody thinks that way. (ship of theseus)
I never understood this take, or most takes implying that the “take 'em apart and put 'em together” form of teleportation wouldn’t be the holy grail of science.
Being able to teleport something is cool and all, but the thing that people should care about much much more is what that actually means: you are disassembling and reassembling a person or object at the atomic level.
This means, you are able to take an arbitrary collection of atoms, and build it into an arbitrary formation.
That’s not a teleporter, that’s a matter printer. Any and all economic implications of teleportation become mute, as the entire concept of an economy becomes irrelevant with the ability to print anything out of literally dirt and rubbish.
Even the concept of human life becomes practically worthless, since if you can put together a human, what’s to stop you from putting together 2? Or 20? Or put together the latest backup of someone who died?
If anyone ever manages to invent this kind of teleportation, it would matter for about 3 seconds before being eclipsed by whatever consequences this has for humanity as a whole - good and bad.
Why is your post title about the economic implications of teleportation, but the post body is about the scientific feasibility of traveling the speed of light? Lightspeed is slower than teleportation, so you can’t use it to discuss the implications of teleportation (imagine teleporting 4 lightyears away instantly vs spending 4 years traveling at the speed of light). Discussing the economic implications of teleportation needs to assume that viable teleportation is possible for the discussion to happen at all, so the feasibility of any other method of transportation isn’t relevant.
The skeletons that pop out aren’t related to the function of the machine, the wizards that built them just thought it was funny.
Or the wizard couldn’t figure out how to teleport bones specifically so it just teleports your flesh and conjurs you a new skeleton on the other side.
It was originally a bug, but became a feature when cases of osteoporosis among adventurers dropped by 99%.
You’re literally in a world full of magic and fairies, but you aren’t willing to accept the Teleportation Stone destroys your body and then transports your ephemeral, eternal soul-essence, before reconstituting you into a new form?
“The Prestige”
i mean, you can just build a rocket and accelerate it arbitrarily close to the speed of light, using enough fuel.
This isn’t really true.
Let’s ignore things like engine weight and fuel weight for a moment, and say that we’ve got an engine-less, fuel-less (maybe electric?) rocket going through a vacuum. It is able to accelerate and decelerate without consuming any resources. As such, the total mass of the rocket will always be the same, right?
Not exactly. We’ve discovered that as things approach the speed of light, their mass actually increases, meaning that more energy is required to continue accelerating the same object at the same rate. So in our magic rocket example, say the magic motor is able to accelerate the 1000kg rocket 1m/s/s. As the rocket gains speed, that same rocket will have more than 1000kg of mass, and the motor will not be able to accelerate it the full 1m/s/s. Eventually, the rocket will become so massive that the motor is unable to accelerate it a meaningful amount at all.
Now… This is in a hypothetical situation with a magic, fuel-less motor. In the real world, more engine power means a heavier motor which means you need more power which means you need more fuel which means you’re heavier which means you need a bigger motor which means…
If it were just a matter of, “it’s really expensive to do it”, Musk would’ve already teleported a car by now.
It’s worth noting that combining the relativistic correction factor into mass is actually quite problematic. It’s a vector (directional), while mass is scalar(directionless). You suddenly need to ask what direction your mass is. Furthermore, a hypothetical person on the ship will still measure their inertial mass as normal.
As it stands, it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed to light, but you can get arbitrarily close to it, with a finite amount (huge, but finite).
nah, like, i mean, exponentially more expensive. rocket equation
as you go faster, you need exponentially more fuel (with chemical rockets). so it gets really expensive really fast.
you could improve the speed somewhat by switching to electric / nuclear propulsion or by using a solar sail. While electric / nuclear propulsion just increases the effective exhaust velocity, which gives you greater Δv achievable, solar sails fundamentally change the game because they don’t require exhaust to accelerate the spaceship. Instead, any star’s light pushes the ship forward through the pressure that radiation exerts on a surface (thus the name solar sail). Yet while it allows arbitrary maximum speeds, acceleration itself is a very slow process this way, so it might take thousands of years to reach peak speed, which only pays off if you do interstellar travel.
I think the chart you posted helps prove my point. Mass go up, energy needed exponentially go up. That doesn’t just mean “more fuel”, it means more power behind the thrusters. And that chart isn’t even taking into consideration the gain of mass as you increase in velocity, just the mass of the vessel itself.
any star’s light pushes the ship forward through the pressure that radiation exerts on a surface
As you approach the speed of light, the amount of light that reaches these sails decreases, making them less effective, while mass is still increasing.
You have no idea what is actually true. All of what you said could later turn out to be false, once we learn more about the universe. So while this is a fun speculation based on current knowledge, it may effectively be completely useless in the future. And right now, it doesn’t even give any actionable arguments for anything.
oh i would say, a better understanding of the world is not “actionable” but it gives a better understanding of things, which gives me peace of mind, so it’s worth something.
I think the bigger change would be the job market, housing market and the other businesses around to support commuters. First of all imagine applying for a job, now it’s not just the people in your community you are competing with but everyone world wide. Someone can live in Somalia and get the job at Walmart across the street from you. Your competition for a construction job, now a couple billion. You may be able to build a decent house but are you able to beat those odds?
No one would live in the city anymore. What’s nice about the city? Job opportunities… Doesn’t matter anymore. Close to entertainment? Doesn’t matter. Lots of food choices? Doesn’t matter. Close to friends? Still just a second away even if they are in different country.
The restaurants around office buildings? Pointless, either jump home and make lunch or teleport to Paris or Tokyo doesn’t matter.
Any shipping business? Meaningless. No reason we can only teleport people. Imagine every train driver, truck drive, pilot, boat worker, delivery driver unemployed.
