Could You Survive Teleporting to the Sun for a Nanosecond?

xkcd’s What If? Asks could you survive teleporting to the sun for a nanosecond.

As always the video provides an entertaining answer based upon physics and calculation.

5 thoughts on “Could You Survive Teleporting to the Sun for a Nanosecond?”

  1. Why would I want to teleport to the sun? I’ve heard of “hot destinations”, but seriously? That said, I have another approach to “teleportation” that does not involve disassembly of an object at the quantum level, and it’s reassembly of it at it’s destination. If were using radio, or whatever to contain that information is beside the point. How about encapsulating the object you want to transport within a membrane that moves at or close to the speed of light.

    The space around the said object moves, and the object it encapsulates goes along for the ride. No quantum disassembly or re-assembly required. If you move the the space, within an object is contained, that object should not experience time, as we understand it in a linear sense. In fact, the distance the object goes should not be an actionable variable. What it contains, likely (I speculate obviously) is the shortest period of time assumed, but never defined by science: A moment. Anyone have any thoughts on this form of “teleportation”?

    • That was always the flaw with teleportation of life forms in Star Trek. What happens to the atmospheric molecules and other random bits of matter occupying that space? Unless it was a complete vacuum and the teleportee was in a pressurised spacesuit, it couldn’t work. (Maybe a Trekkie can educate me.)

      • In the original series at least, transporting wasn’t an instantaneous process, it took several seconds. Presumably whatever process was reassembling the passenger just pushed any air or dust out of the way. It was established, though, that it couldn’t do the same with sizable solid objects, so they had to take care that the destination was clear, or else you ended up intersected with something, which was really bad for your health.

        But the transporter, just like the warp drive, was just a plot convenience to move things along, and Star Trek was never the most scientifically consistent SF series.

      • In the late 2000s “Fringe” series they have a clever solution: they are still there, enmeshed into the molecules of the teleported person.

        And it means the teleported all die in a few weeks due to systemic failure akin to radiation poisoning. Which in a sense it would be, having all those atoms inserted at random places into your genes and cells.

Comments are closed.