What if....... were real

[Mellow]

Maha Vailo has asked a couple of "what if... were real" questions/threads....

So that made me wonder... what would be the single SciFi thing (Person, event, technology etc) that you wish were real?

I'll start with an easy one because I haven't thought this through too much yet....

Teleporters.

(with Bender a close second)

[Ronald Brak]

What if Teleporters.were real?

Well I guess we would have to assume that to teleport someone 1 km must cost at least as much energy as it would take to physically move someone 1 km, otherwise we could create perpetual motion machines.

If teleportation was cheap, goodbye cars and trains and ships (except for recreational purposes). Goodbye commuting.

If teleportation was expensive it might be mostly limited to expenive propersitions such as space travel.

Of course with teleporters you have to worry about people beaming an atomic bomb or possibly just a couger to your desk.

[Moose]

Inexpensive FTL travel.

[Moose]

possibly just a couger to your desk.

The trick is in getting it onto the transporter pad. Nice kitty! :think:

[Disinfo Agent]

Time travel. :(

[Maha Vailo]

What if teleportation was real? It is real, in a way. Google "quantum entanglement."

Scaling it up is the tricky part.

On the lighter side of things, what if Pokemon were real?

- Maha Vailo

[Weird Dave]

Well I guess we would have to assume that to teleport someone 1 km must cost at least as much energy as it would take to physically move someone 1 km, otherwise we could create perpetual motion machines.
Not quite. If you teleported water to the top of a mountain, you could extract hydro-power as it comes down. But teleportation to somewhere at the same altitude could cost less energy than driving there, because your car spends much of its energy overcoming friction.

I worry that even if it was invented, teleportation would never be used for people. Even if it was thousands of times safer than driving, the tabloids would have a field day the first time arrives having been turned inside-out. I think that might scare people off, if they are no more intelligent about risk than we are today.

I'm not sure what I'd choose - so many cool gadgets in Sci-Fi. How about a machine that makes people be nice to each other? Solves just about every problem...

[Moose]

Not quite. If you teleported water to the top of a mountain, you could extract hydro-power as it comes down. But teleportation to somewhere at the same altitude could cost less energy than driving there, because your car spends much of its energy overcoming friction.

I think that's Ronald's point. If the energy required to teleport a mass up a gravity well is less than the harnessable energy of that "falling" mass (as you suggested), then you have perpetual motion (as Ronald suggested).

[Doodler]

I'm not a religious man, but this kinda parallels an arguement about the integrity of the soul. If its quantum entanglement, how do I know its really me on the other end, and not just a copy? Does the source point me die as a result or is it an actual transfer of my physically intact, consciously aware of the process, self?

That's the kind of thing that'll keep the philosophers up at night.

For the device I'd like to see? Inertial dampening/Artificial gravity.

All the speed in the universe is utterly useless it if it takes forever getting there because you're upper limit of acceleration is limited to how much you can pour on every second without your bones being liquefied.

[triplebird]

On the lighter side of things, what if Pokemon were real?


Then I would have a Dodrio (my avatar) as a pet. (Wouldn't be too much different than keeping an ostrich. Just watch out for all the heads.) :D

An Abra (or equivalent) Psychic Pokemon would be useful too. I'd send an example to James Randi and collect an easy million. ;)

[Weird Dave]

I think that's Ronald's point. If the energy required to teleport a mass up a gravity well is less than the harnessable energy of that "falling" mass (as you suggested), then you have perpetual motion (as Ronald suggested).
Yes, that would be perpetual motion, and hence (probably) forbidden. But I thought that Ronald Brak was saying that teleporting someone from (say) sea level UK to sea-level New York must cost as much energy as taking a ship or plane. Maybe I misunderstood?

[Doodler]

The additional energy is the luxury of near instantaneous travel. Its not an energy saving device, its a time saver.

[Dragon Star]

What if "easy" were real?

[Gillianren]

What if uterine replicators and related technology (Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga) were real?

For a start, no post-partum depression for women having their children in the replicator. Post-partum depression is caused by hormonal changes; if the whole thing happens in a tank, no hormonal changes. (She never talks about breastfeeding, so I don't know about that aspect.) What's more, women like me could stay on their medication while their children were in utero, a thing that isn't always possible now.

She never really gets into the expense involved, so I don't know about that. It's almost certainly more expensive, which means it would definitely be a limited-use technology. But women who can't have children for whatever medical reason probably could, which would have horrendous effects on the amount of adoptions. (The society that invented them also has mandatory birth control unless you apply for a parenting license.)

[korjik]

I'm not a religious man, but this kinda parallels an arguement about the integrity of the soul. If its quantum entanglement, how do I know its really me on the other end, and not just a copy? Does the source point me die as a result or is it an actual transfer of my physically intact, consciously aware of the process, self?

That's the kind of thing that'll keep the philosophers up at night.

For the device I'd like to see? Inertial dampening/Artificial gravity.

All the speed in the universe is utterly useless it if it takes forever getting there because you're upper limit of acceleration is limited to how much you can pour on every second without your bones being liquefied.

Shut up and get on the transporter pad Dr. McCoy!

[Swift]

Inexpensive FTL travel.
My vote. I would also take inexpensive, easy sub-light travel (Earth to orbit and within the solar system).

On a personal note, I wouldn't mind some 25th century health care and life extension. I'm not looking for forever, but I wouldn't mind 500 or 1000 years in good health.

[korjik]

Inexpensive FTL travel.

I would go with a cheap and easy way to get into space and move around in interplanetary space first.

FTL is second tho

[Certassar]

Reality.

As a solipsist I often have brief moments where I wonder if reality is real. Ridiculous.

[Doodler]

Shut up and get on the transporter pad Dr. McCoy!

:D

Dammit, Jim, you will NOT be scrambling my molecules to the far corner of the universe in that infernal fax machine. I know engineers, its probably running on Windows ME...

[rant continues...]

[Romanus]

If anyone has read Robert Silverberg's novella "We Are For the Dark", a key feature of the story are portals that can take people anywhere that humans have already set foot. That is, you could step into a portal on Earth, and end up on a planet with a human colony 10 light-years away.

That would be awesome.

[BigDon]

Snip

I worry that even if it was invented, teleportation would never be used for people. Even if it was thousands of times safer than driving, the tabloids would have a field day the first time arrives having been turned inside-out. I think that might scare people off, if they are no more intelligent about risk than we are today.




Ever see a bad car accident? Doesn't stop folks from driving.

That said I'd like a nice simple automated freeway system.

[Weird Dave]

Ever see a bad car accident? Doesn't stop folks from driving.

That said I'd like a nice simple automated freeway system.
But people are convinced that they are good drivers, and that they will never crash like all those learners/white van men/little old ladies/boy racers who cause all the accidents. A teleporter (or automated traffic control) would force people to trust the machine, which they may not do. On the other hand, people still fly dispite large publicity given to accidents, so maybe it would be OK.

[The Supreme Canuck]

But the teleporter kills you. No, thanks.

[Captain Kidd]

Yeah, I got got the willies after reading a novella about an alien race that brought teleportation technology to earth. Only one human was allowed to know how they worked, it was his responsibility to "terminate" the original once the transmittal was confirmed as sucessful.

[Redtail]

I would like to go for immortality, kinda "Highlander-esqe" with out having to kill people. I would love to be able to watch humanity/Earth grow and change, make new discoveries etc...

[Redtail]

Yeah, I got got the willies after reading a novella about an alien race that brought teleportation technology to earth. Only one human was allowed to know how they worked, it was his responsibility to "terminate" the original once the transmittal was confirmed as sucessful.


I think I saw that in a TV show once. I believe that the Aliens were Dinosaur like?

[Captain Kidd]

I believe so.

Spoiler warning:

I think the transportee was a college grad student. A bad connected caused the transmission to be questionable, so she was kept alive, under the pretext of a malfunction, long enough to confirm it. The guy fell in love with her, the transmission was a success, he killed her, then met her copy, who didn't know him, again when her research was done and she came back to earth.

[Redtail]

I believe so.

Spoiler warning:

I think the transportee was a college grad student. A bad connected caused the transmission to be questionable, so she was kept alive, under the pretext of a malfunction, long enough to confirm it. The guy fell in love with her, the transmission was a success, he killed her, then met her copy, who didn't know him, again when her research was done and she came back to earth.


Yeah that's sounds like it. It was a while ago on some kind of anthology show. You're right though it was spooky as heck.

Edit: "Think Like a Dinosaur"! That was it.

[Roy Batty]

Think like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly. They did an episode of the new Outer Limits based on it.

[Redtail]

Think like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly. They did an episode of the new Outer Limits based on it.

Yep Outer Limits. Dang I wanna watch it now.

[Captain Kidd]

Think like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly. They did an episode of the new Outer Limits based on it.
Ah thanks.

[Alasdhair]

What if uterine replicators and related technology (Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga) were real?

For a start, no post-partum depression for women having their children in the replicator. Post-partum depression is caused by hormonal changes; if the whole thing happens in a tank, no hormonal changes. (She never talks about breastfeeding, so I don't know about that aspect.) What's more, women like me could stay on their medication while their children were in utero, a thing that isn't always possible now.

She never really gets into the expense involved, so I don't know about that. It's almost certainly more expensive, which means it would definitely be a limited-use technology. But women who can't have children for whatever medical reason probably could, which would have horrendous effects on the amount of adoptions. (The society that invented them also has mandatory birth control unless you apply for a parenting license.)

In the absence of socialised medicine, I'd imagine that most people would rent time on one as and when needed: Ethan of Athos mentions the enormous amount of "social duty credits" required for reproduction (and is shocked to discover that the rest of the galaxy regards the labour involved as "free").

A question that arises is how accurate the replication needs to be; or how inaccurate it can be without adversely affecting the health of the growing foetus, and if any differences could be observed in the resultant children/adults?

[Gillianren]

In the books, there's no observational difference. There's the Koudelka sisters, where two are "natural birth," and two are replicator, and they're all just fine. However, by the time we get to them, there's literally hundreds of years of progress of the replicators--which are an important part of Falling Free, which is set 200 years or so before the rest of the books.

[Alasdhair]

Hmm, perhaps not the easiest theme to explore in a novel, although if anyone could bring it off...

[Dave Mitsky]

Think like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly. They did an episode of the new Outer Limits based on it.

Enrico Colantoni, the fellow who was Elliot DiMauro on Just Shoot Me, played the part of the transporter engineer.

http://www.theouterlimits.com/episodes/season7/711.htm

Dave Mitsky