Life, Death, and Teleportation

Would teleportation transport you or kill you? And what exactly are “you” anyway?

Has the pandemic made it harder for you to travel? Well, do I have the perfect product for you! From the outside, it looks just like a telephone booth — you know, those small rectangular rooms with coin-operated machines inside, that people used to use way back before smartphones existed. But go inside, tap a screen, and type in an address, and the whole room will start to scan you. Long rods of light move up and down each wall, and then — just for an instant — it’s like you’re not really there.

You know the feeling: it’s the one you get in a dream, watching yourself do something. Only by the time you notice it, it’s already gone. The scanners stop, a light flashes green, and you walk out of the telephone booth…except it’s a different telephone booth, in a different place. Congratulations, you’ve just been teleported.

This is a fictional scenario, but guess what: teleportation is actually a thing! It’s real, and it’s been performed and tested in labs. The only reason we’re not all beaming around the Earth is that current teleportation doesn’t work on humans. It only works on things much, much simpler.

Teleportation is really difficult. Even in its simplest form, it implements all…