• Question: Do you think we will ever be able to dissasemble our own particles and reassemble them in a different location using a machine ?

    Asked by Daniel to Chris, Joanne, Kathryn, Kieran, Sarah on 14 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Sarah Guerin

      Sarah Guerin answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Well, physicists have managed to teleport photons- tiny bundles of light that are very very very small. This is the first step to a machine like this, but there are lots of hurdles to overcome to firstly be able to do this with bigger and bigger things, and also organic molecules (people and animals etc). I like to think it is possible, but maybe not for hundreds of years- great question! đŸ™‚

    • Photo: Kathryn Schoenrock

      Kathryn Schoenrock answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      This would be awesome- but I think Sarah is right- could be hundreds of years. Isn’t it exciting to think about everything we still have to learn about different areas of science?

    • Photo: Chris Werner

      Chris Werner answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      The others have mentioned a teleporting machine which moves photons, so the technology is there and has really progressed in the last 20 years, but even in Star Trek they had problems with it! First, you’d have to extract all the information from your body, which requires knowing the physical state of every atom, which would require total disintegration. Each time you’d step into a teleporter, you’d effectively be committing suicide and then getting reborn at the other end. Not to mention the amount of information it would take to get put back together. Its a mammoth task, possible but improbable.

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