19 KiB
[BST] Exploiting teleportation?
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Author: u/lumenwrites *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3lftih/bst_exploiting_teleportation/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-09-18T14:54:36
Post:
What are some clever and creative ways to exploit teleportation?
(You can teleport anywhere you can imagine, you can bring some amount of matter and even people with you).
P.S.
Somewhere on this subreddit, a guy summarized all cool tricks and ideas from the Jumper novels, but unfortunately I can't find that post.
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (9 minutes later)
Spoilers for all of the Jumper series (which I think are worth the read): this post is probably the one you're thinking of.
u/lumenwrites [+2] (11 minutes later)
Yes, exactly, thank you very much!
u/drageuth2 [+3] (4 hours later)
Universal transportation like this is probably most easily exploitable as a means of setting up space infrastructure. Make a deal with NASA or ESA or your local space agency of preference, to take payloads up to geostationary for even just a tenth or a hundredth of the cost of a rocket (get lower and start taking on 'charity' jobs once you have enough money to be comfortable the rest of your life,) and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams while helping humanity explore space and colonize the planets.
If teleporting into the middle of something doesn't kill you (let's say that it causes you to swap places with a person-shaped piece of whatever you're teleporting into) then there are obvious applications here for deep-core mining, asteroid mining, and espionage if you absolutely must lead a life of danger.
Depending on how much matter you can take with you, this may also be a means of practically creating negentropy/infinite energy: Take a big heavy thing, make a generator with some sort of bucketed vertical treadmill that can take the heavy thing and turn its fall into electricity, and teleport the heavy thing to great height to let it fall over and over again.
u/Sceptically [+2] (4 hours later)
Make a deal with NASA or ESA or your local space agency of preference, to take payloads up to geostationary for even just a tenth or a hundredth of the cost of a rocket
But don't forget your space suit.
u/drageuth2 [+2] (4 hours later)
Obviously that's part of the deal, and it's why you go to them instead of opening up your own business. Because they already have space suits to give you, and have people (probably) smarter than you to figure out all the little details and possible problems.
u/Sceptically [+4] (7 hours later)
When messing with exotic abilities, it's best to think carefully about anything that might impede your continued survival. Because the other guy might be a little less motivated to be thorough.
Of course, consulting with smarter people is probably a good idea too.
u/drageuth2 [+3] (10 hours later)
Mmhmm, and I'm glazing over a lot of detail and carefulness in favor of laying out general goals.
Like, how would you test whether you can safely teleport into matter? I'd probably do it by first seeing if I can teleport 'in place' (For example, see if I can teleport from a sitting position to a standing one) and if I could, I would try teleporting myself so my hand has the tip of its pinky inside of a small rock. Worst case scenario, it hurts like hell and I need minor surgery.
If it works, see if it works on larger scales; try intersect-teleporting a couple of fingers, then a hand, then a leg, and so on. Test everything carefully
u/Geminii27 [+2] (19 hours later)
Given that you can apparently take matter with you, teleport so that the tip of a long thin piece of wire you are holding ends up inside solid matter (aerogel, to start with. Then glass, so you can see the result). And that there is a lead shield between you and it, with radiation detectors on both sides.
u/drageuth2 [+2] (19 hours later)
hmm, good idea, in case the matter annihilates or is violently torn up by electrostatic force or something, yeah?
u/Geminii27 [+3] (20 hours later)
Yup. Teleportation isn't exactly a well-known science; the result could be anything.
Well, nearly anything - presumably teleporting into a volume of air doesn't make you explode or become fatally radioactive. The most likely scenario is that you swap volumes, so teleporting into solid matter would just mean that you get embedded in it and a statue of yourself appears at your source point. (And if you teleported into a load-bearing solid, you might get crushed because you've removed a critical volume of concrete or steel holding up tons of pressure.)
Likewise, probably not a good idea to teleport into extremely deep water (pressure) or hostile environments without a suitable environment suit.
u/redrach [+2] (6 hours later)
What if the teleportation always leaves you nude? Say, because the process involves regrowing you from scratch at the destination and copying your memories over.
u/Sceptically [+2] (7 hours later)
That would count as forgetting your space suit, so don't do that then. Unless, of course, you're really really really good at breathing vacuum.
u/DocFuture [+3] (a day later)
Like many of these questions, it all depends on the rules of the world you are in, and on things you haven't specified, like:
What happens when you port to somewhere that changes your potential energy? (i.e. nearly everywhere)
What happens to your velocity vector when 'at rest' where you arrive is different from where you left?
Do you have to touch things to bring them with you? Can you port part of a solid object?
What happens to air/water/solid objects in the volume you are porting in to?
You'll get whole families of different things to do based on different answers to these questions.
For a few tricks by a teleporter in a story I'm currently working on, see what Journeyman does here: http://docfuture.tumblr.com/post/128307010576/the-makers-ark-chapter-9
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (12 hours later)
I notice that no one has suggested using some minor form of teleportation to only be able to teleport small objects.
What's the use of that? Why you can act as a healer by teleporting out gallbladder stones, tumors, blood clots, and all sorts of nasty stuff like one of the characters from the Hyllis Family series. Also the first book is free.
u/Geminii27 [+2] (19 hours later)
Or the opposite, by teleporting out important things like heart valves, chunks of regulatory brain material, the top of the spinal cord, part of the wall of the stomach or large intestine, part of the blood-brain barrier... Or teleporting in a few cc of poison or coagulant.
Or drizzling 70% pure alcohol into their stomach while they're driving or flying a plane. Contaminate it with vodka or moonshine or something else extremely alcoholic, drop some empties into the vehicle... any investigation would determine that no-one else had been in the vehicle, there was no sign of struggle, the vehicle was not compromised in any way etc. Still potentially very suspicious, particularly if they didn't drink much, but pretty much impossible to trace back to you if you could do it from miles away.
u/Geminii27 [+1] (19 hours later)
What are the parameters?
- How far can you teleport?
- How far can you teleport upwards?
- What can you and can't you take with you? (Mass/size/material limits)
- Can you teleport something without teleporting yourself, or is going along for the ride mandatory?
- Is there a refractory period? (i.e. you can't teleport within X seconds/minutes/hours of teleporting)
- Are there any other limits, such as not being able to teleport controllably around certain materials or locations, not being able to teleport accurately over large distances etc?
- Are you teleporting as a super power, or with the assistance of external devices/magic/phlebotinum?
- Can you teleport from anywhere to anywhere, or only to/from certain locations? Can you add another location to the list? How long does this take / how much prep work?
Minor questions:
- Can you reorient yourself during a teleport (i.e. if you are facing one direction, you can come out of it facing another direction or standing on your head if you like)?
- Can you change body position during a teleport (like going from sitting to standing)?
- Can you dump inertia? (for example, going from falling off a cliff to standing at the bottom of it without splatting yourself)?
- If you can't dump inertia, can you reorient it within the same reference frame? (going from falling down to falling up without having to teleport to the other side of the planet)?
- Is your departure or arrival marked by anything that would be detectable either by human senses or artificial sensors? (bright light, whoosh sound, minor thunderclap, sulfurous smell, gravity blip as your mass disappears)?
All these things are going to affect which tricks you can pull off effectively.
u/DCarrier [+1] (2 hours later)
If you're moving towards your destination, teleporting there will take you back in time. This requires relativistic speeds or astronomical distances.
Edit: That should be away from your destination.
u/Geminii27 [+0] (19 hours later)
Being able to teleport outside your lightcone might give you FTL, but not necessarily time travel, at least from your perspective.
u/Anakiri [+2] (2 days later)
By special relativity, FTL is necessarily time travel. How far back in time you go depends on your FTL speed, your sublight speed, and how far you jump. This is a spacetime diagram:
0t 0.5t 1 | / ' | / ' | / ' | / ' | / ' | / ' 0.5s | / ' // B / ' C/ |/ ' // |/' // /'// A/----------0sThe line marked 0t is the time axis, measured at rest, with the future going up. The line marked 0s is the space axis, measured at rest. The line marked 1 represents the speed of light, moving at one lightsecond per second away from the origin. The remaining lines are the space and time axes measured in a reference frame moving away from the origin at 0.5c. The fact that these axes are skewed is an inescapable fact about the nature of reality: space and time are relative.
Teleportation is instant. You move exactly parallel with your space axis, appearing and disappearing at the same moment in time, without interacting with the intervening space. You start at rest at the origin, at spacetime point A. You wait a while without moving, ending up at point B. Then you instantaneously teleport to point C, disappearing and reappearing simultaneously. At point C, you accelerate to 0.5c, instantly, somehow, by non-teleporting means. You brought a really good engine with you or something. Finally, you try to teleport back to point B. You move exactly parallel with your new space axis, appearing and disappearing at the same moment in time according to your new time axis. You end up at spacetime point A, which is the same point in space as B (according to a rest observer), but earlier in time. Every reference frame agrees that you just telefragged yourself.
u/Geminii27 [+1] (2 days later)
Except your own. And in no case are you able to move from point A to point A-earlier-on-its-timeline.
u/Anakiri [+1] (2 days later)
Point A is point B-earlier-on-the-rest-timeline. (Points don't have lines.) How does this scheme fail to get you from point B to point A?
u/Geminii27 [+1] (3 days later)
Question: What's the flip side of the AC axis look like, ie on the other side of the AB axis? Is it pointing from A to the top left, mirroring AC about the AB axis, or pointing from A to the bottom left, continuing the AC line straight on the graph?
If it's the former, then teleporting from point C to point B will not make you end up at origin point A, it will make you end up at point 2B along the AB axis.
u/Anakiri [+1] (3 days later)
The full diagram looks like this:
-1 0t 0.5t 1 ` | / ' ` | / ' ` | / ' ` | / ' ` | / ' ` | / ' 0.5s ` | / ' // ` B / ' C/ ` |/ ' // ` |/' // `/'// 0s-----------A/----------0s //|` //'/| ` // '/ | ` // ' / | ` // ' / | ` / ' / | ` 0.5s ' / | ` ' / | ` ' / | ` ' / | ` ' / | ` 1 0.5t 0t -1Different reference frames see lines as skewed, but never bent.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a day later)
But you can change perspectives. Move away from alpha centauri, teleport there, move away from Earth, teleport back. Neither jump brought you back in time from that perspective, but both jumps together brought you into your past light cone, which is past from every perspective.
u/Geminii27 [+0] (a day later)
It's not past from every perspective; it's past from some perspectives which do not include your own.
Example: You teleport in a fraction of a second from Earth to Mars, which is about three light-minutes away at closest approach. You are now outside your previous light cone. You wait a minute and teleport back. If you were carrying a clock, it still agrees with Earth time, and the local school has you arrested.
However, an observer who is two-thirds of the way to Mars from Earth will see events on Mars from one minute in the past and events on Earth from two minutes in the past. From their perspective, they see you on Earth, then you also appear on Mars at the same time. A minute later, you vanish from both planets, and a minute after that, you arrive back on Earth. From the perspective of the observer, you traveled back in time because you were apparently in two places simultaneously, due to lightspeed lag.
However, from your own perspective, you cannot at any stage access previous points on anyone's timeline once you have interacted with it. You can outrace light, but you cannot prevent a signal being sent if you act after you see it being sent. You can take a message from Earth to Mars and back in one second instead of six minutes, but you can't do it in negative one second. The only 'time travel' is purely perceptual, and only by observers external to yourself.
u/DCarrier [+1] (a day later)
You accelerate to 0.1 c away from Alpha Centauri, which is 4 light-years away. You teleport there. That brings you there at 0.0402... years into the past from the lab reference frame. You then accelerate to 0.1 c away from Earth and teleport back. You are now 0.0402 years further into the past from the lab frame. Each teleport did not bring you into the past from your own perspective, but both of them together brought you to the same place but 0.0804 years earlier.
However, an observer who is two-thirds of the way to Mars from Earth will see events on Mars from one minute in the past and events on Earth from two minutes in the past. From their perspective, they see you on Earth, then you also appear on Mars at the same time.
They see you on Earth and Mars at the same time. That's not the same thing. Once they take into account speed-of-light delay, their observations will agree with anyone moving the same velocity as them, regardless of position. But it will disagree with people moving at different velocities.
u/Geminii27 [+0] (a day later)
You are now 0.0402 years further into the past from the lab frame.
No, you're not.
u/DCarrier [+3] (a day later)
t' = γ(t-vx/c^(2))
= (t-vx/c^(2))/√(1-v^(2)/c^(2))
= (0-(0.1c)(4 ly)/c^(2))/√(1-0.1^(2))
= (0-0.1*4yr)/√(1-0.01)
= 0.4yr/√(0.99)
= 0.4yr/0.995
= 0.402yr
Looks like I put the decimal in the wrong place. And come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I got t' mixed up. If t is the lab reference frame and t' is your moving reference frame, it should be
0 = (t'-(0.1c)(4 ly)/c^(2))/√(1-0.1^(2))
t'-(0.1c)(4 ly)/c^(2) = 0
t' = (0.1c)(4 ly)/c^(2)
= 0.4 ly
So, now that I've corrected it, you should actually go back 0.8 years. Is that better?
u/Geminii27 [+0] (a day later)
You're using equations which assume you go back in time when you move faster than lightspeed to prove that you go back in time when you move faster than lightspeed. Tautologies aside, there's no reason that teleportation would involve moving through the intervening space at all - the distance factor in your equations wouldn't apply.
u/DCarrier [+2] (2 days later)
I am assuming special relativity. If your teleportation only works from some preferred reference frame, then you can't use it for time travel. But if it works from whatever reference frame you happen to be in, then it can. It's not about moving through intervening space. It's about the idea that if we accelerated everything involved by a certain amount in a certain direction, there shouldn't be any way to tell that it's all now moving.
u/Geminii27 [+0] (2 days later)
Are you switching reference frames during the teleport, though?
u/DCarrier [+1] (2 days later)
You could change velocity during a teleport, but I don't see how that's relevant. All I'm saying is that if you teleport in exactly the same way except that you're moving, then someone moving along with you shouldn't be able to tell the difference. You'll end up in the same relative time, position, and velocity either way.