[IP] Tax $$$ at work: Air Force report wants $7.5 million for psychic teleportation
Begin forwarded message:
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Date: November 8, 2004 11:48:32 PM EST
To: politech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Politech] Tax $$$ at work: Air Force report wants $7.5
million for psychic teleportation
USA Today article:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/usat110504.html
"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss
of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek,
a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He
describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable
theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."
---
http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf
Report date: 25-11-2003
Sponsor:
Air Force Research Laboratory (AFMC)
10 E. Saturn Blvd.
Edwards AFB CA 93524-7680
The concept of teleportation was originally developed during the Golden
Age of 20 century science fiction literature by writers in need of a
form of instantaneous disembodied transportation technology to support
the plots of their stories. Teleportation has appeared in such SciFi
literature classics as Algis Budry’s Rogue Moon (Gold Medal Books,
1960), A. E. van Vogt’s World of Null-A (Astounding Science Fiction,
August 1945), and George Langelaan’s The Fly (Playboy Magazine, June
1957). The Playboy Magazine short story led to a cottage industry of
popular films decrying the horrors of scientific technology that
exceeded mankind’s wisdom: The Fly (1958), Return of the Fly (1959),
Curse of the Fly (1965), The Fly (a 1986 remake), and The Fly II
(1989). The teleportation concept has also appeared in episodes of
popular television SciFi anthology series such as The Twilight Zone and
The Outer Limits. But the most widely recognized pop-culture
awareness of the teleportation concept began with the numerous Star
Trek television and theatrical movie series of the past 39 years
(beginning in 1964 with the first TV series pilot episode, The Cage),
which are now an international entertainment and product franchise
that was originally spawned by the late genius television
writer-producer Gene Roddenberry. Because of Star Trek everyone in
the world is familiar with the “transporter” device, which is used to
teleport personnel and material from starship to starship or from ship
to planet and vice versa at the speed of light. People or inanimate
objects would be positioned on the transporter pad and become
completely disintegrated by a beam with their atoms being patterned in
a computer buffer and later converted into a beam that is directed
toward the destination, and then reintegrated back into their original
form (all without error!). “Beam me up, Scotty” is a familiar
automobile bumper sticker or cry of exasperation that were popularly
adopted from the series...
This study was tasked with the purpose of collecting information
describing the teleportation of material objects, providing a
description of teleportation as it occurs in physics, its theoretical
and experimental status, and a projection of potential applications.
The study also consisted of a search for teleportation phenomena
occurring naturally or under laboratory conditions that can be
assembled into a model describing the conditions required to
accomplish the transfer of objects... The author proposes an additional
model for teleportation that is based on a combination of the
experimental results from the previous government studies and advanced
physics concepts. Numerous recommendations outlining proposals for
further theoretical and experimental studies are given in the report.
The report also includes an extensive teleportation bibliography...
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