So a friend asked a simple question: what superpower WOULDN'T you want?
Answer: telepathy. Why? because I know all the horrible stuff that I think, and I don't want to know what crappy things other people are thinking. I am a pessimist already, I don't need any more reason to dislike people. Plus, what if you "heard" some serial killer or child molester thoughts? ick!
But that got me thinking about the coolest superpower that you can have. Teleportation. huh? That wasn't what you were thinking? That is how we know you don't have telepathy...
So, anyway... teleportation would let you go anywhere you wanted in a nano-second! (maybe faster!) ANYWHERE. I mean, how awesome would that be? you wouldn't need to use cars, or planes (you will still ride motorcycles and roller coasters, because they are awesome too).
Now this leads to my next thought (I have to break it down so ya'll can follow my train of thought), which is that teleportation has gotta be possible. (Those that aren't religiously inclined may choose to ignore this part, but if you do, you miss out on some of my "logic") God manages to appear and disappear in split seconds. How can He do that if not be teleporting? So, if we assume that He created everything (which I do), therefore He created the rules upon which all physics are tied. We assume that He is perfect and a perfect being must follow the rules that have been created. This means that if we understand the rules of particle and quantum physics, and figure out the maximum velocity of self propulsion (so that we don't disintegrate), we should be able to teleport as well! YES!
so... who is good at physics? anybody?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
One might presume that teleportation uses radiant energy, but is the process different for the waves of light within our atmosphere and that of particles in outer space?
So thanks for pointing out your blog to me. Sorry it took me a while to get here. Fun post. I hope you can tell from my long-winded comment that I had fun thinking about it. Sorry it doesn't really follow the tone of your post, but you asked :)
So there are a couple paths to teleporting that I've heard of: (1) actually replicating every particle from one place to another and (2) cross-dimensional interaction. You allude to another method of teleporting that I haven't thought about: just moving matter somewhere else really fast. I'd rule it out because, first, it would sound lame if I told everyone that I “teleport” to work everyday, just really slowly. And second, it'd kill us. Velocity, tuns out, doesn't kill us (as you read this we're traveling almost 500,000 mph around the galactic center); acceleration/deceleration kills us. Skydiving without a parachute won't kill you, but hitting the ground does (actually, the deceleration does). We live in 1-g world—the average pilot passes out at about 5-g I think. You'd have to move faster than 100 milliseconds to not be seen. At the 5-g limit, you could be standing on the other side of a football field in 2 seconds, which might be cool, but far from instant. Besides, you'd need a obstacle-free trajectory and getting such a massive object close to the speed of light would take almost an infinite amount of energy anyway.
The next closest to what you allude to is (1), which is, in my opinion, unlikely for some of the following reasons. First to clarify, physicists understand pretty well (yet far from all) the rules of quantum particles. We've known for a century, for example, that you can't know everything about any subatomic particle. Thanks to the uncertainty principle, you can know either a particle's position or speed, but not both. In short, once you get small enough (really small), you reach the granularity of the universe where everything become fuzzy. Science doesn't tell us why it's that way, just that it is. But the logical consequence is that you cannot “cut and paste” something without ever knowing enough to replicate it exactly. Besides, from a spiritual standpoint, even if you can transport matter, that's only half the soul of man. So far, the “more fine or pure” spiritual matter escapes the discernment of our subset of physics. Moreover, as soon as you can cut-and-paste, why not copy-and-paste? The existence of such teleportation would endow along with it unlimited telereplication and all its moral/ethical repercussions. Brandonjw's comment about using an “energy beam” is valid in the sense that relativistically, there is no difference between matter and energy—theoretically they can be exchanged between one form and another. Breaking apart an atom creates a lot of energy, e.g., Hiroshima. (Also, physics is the same in the atmosphere as in outer space). The problem is that information is not completely conserved between the two states—you lose the baby with the bath water.
But in my opinion, (2) interdimensional cross-talk is much more likely how God and angels work, and ironically, much more out of our reach than other teleporting methods. If you push a pencil through a sheet of paper, anyone confined to that sheet of paper (they can't see 3D up or down) and living in “flatland” would see a circular hole appear out of nowhere and probably worship whatever made that hole. Yet how simple is it for us to poke a pencil through a paper? I'm not trivializing God's work; it just helps me understand how He might operate things. Who knows how many dimensions there really are beyond ours, safely out of our reach, and if God really uses them to send angels or save his servants (John 5:13; Hel. 10:16)? But then again, these seem to be among the simpler set of miracles. So my final take, taken from documented sources, if you want superpowers, pray.
alrighty then. I have to say that Josh is far more knowledgeable on this subject than I am. He actually gets to make a living by thinking of this stuff... which is awesome. Thanks Josh!
he he he! I'm so glad we had this conversation Jeff! I <3 this post.
Post a Comment