CREATIVE ADVENTURES — 11
Imagine You Can Use Teleportation
How Would You Use This Superpower?
Teleportation is defined as the ability to travel instantly from one point to another without passing through the intervening space. This has been one of the most popular acts across all science fiction movies and series, including ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Doctor Who’. Beam me up, Scotty, would you?
There have been some scientific papers and experiments in relocating particles. Chinese scientists were able to teleport a photon from Earth to a satellite that was 300 miles away in space. This is called quantum teleportation, where the properties of one particle are instantaneously transferred to another (i.e. teleported to a distant location in space).
The underlying revolution here is that the information goes from one place to another without physically passing between them. In theory, Quantum entanglement allows you to send one of the particles (and a chunk of information) to someone else holding the other particle.
Imagine that this technology has become real and you can indeed use teleportation. You can beam yourself up to anywhere in the world or in space.
Please respond to the following questions:
- How would you like to use this power? Think of three situations where teleportation would be really handy. Create three short stories where you use this power.
- Imagine that you have four chances to use teleportation, the ability to arrive anywhere without traveling. You can press a button and you can show up anywhere in the world: Sydney, Hawaii, Niagara Falls, or Istanbul. Which cities or places would you choose to go to? Why? Create a short itinerary for each location.
- Imagine that you are living in 2399. You can use teleportation to go anywhere you would like across the solar system. Imagine that there are human colonies everywhere including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn’s rings, Saturn’s moons (Titan, Enceladus, Mimas, Tethys, Rhea, Dione, Iapetus, etc.), Galilean moons (Castillo, Europa, Io, and Ganymede), Uranus, the asteroids, and the Oort Cloud. Imagine three places to visit anywhere in the solar system. You will be wearing an appropriate space suit and you have everything needed to survive, of course. Create three science fiction stories where you will be immersed in a new adventure in each settlement.
- Imagine that you have had a technical issue following teleportation and you are stuck somewhere distant (the year is still 2399). Create a short story on how you get out of this situation. Where are you stuck? Why? How will you seek help or resolve the issue?
- Imagine that the year is 2399 and teleportation has become a widespread technology across the solar system. What are the implications of this technology for daily life, systems, and economics on Earth? You could be teleported from Sydney to New York in one minute. Cars, planes, hotels, flying cars, and rockets would be obsolete. Older transportation systems, such as bridges, airports, and highways would be turned into sustainable parks, shopping plazas, and entertainment centers. What else? Think of three implications of how daily life on Earth would change.
- Think about the economic implications of teleportation across the solar system. For example, the astronomical costs of asteroid mining would be greatly reduced using teleportation technology, ushering in a new era of accelerando, renaissance, and multi-planetary richness.
- Think of three unexpected consequences and risks that emerge from the widespread use of this teleportation technology.
- Imagine you could use teleportation for a weekend tour of Mars or Saturn’s rings. Imagine how space tourism would be transformed in this dazzling new era.
- Imagine you could use a DNA fax machine to send your human DNA and an accompanying incubator to Tau Ceti. You can synthesize or crystallize yourself on any planet in any star system across the universe. This will be a version of you in a place far, far away. Imagine that you can still communicate with your other-self. Create a short science fiction story using this idea.
- Create your own questions and imagination experiments using this theme and its variations.
