Fly me to the moon

Ever since a friend brought it up in her blog, I've serendipitously tripped across more information on teleportation theory. Here's the latest bit I've come across, an interesting slide show about information transfer through quantum entanglement. It references that IBM page I linked to earlier, and gets into how an ansible (FTL communication device) would work. Neat stuff.

The notion of travel through converting oneself to information and sending only that still creeps me out, though. Every time this discussion appears on Slashdot, people bring out the same counter-arguments: "Well, you're already a completely different person than you were 10 years ago, since all your cells have been replaced since then." Except for my brain cells, yes. But those are kind of key to this question, alas. (Won't it be interesting, though, when we do learn how to grow and replace neural cells... I understand progress is indeed being made here.) "All you'd feel would be a tingle as you started to be torn apart at the quantum level, and then you'd suddenly be at your destination." That's indeed how the new me-replacement, having inherited all my memories, would feel. Unfortunately, the current me would feel nothing, having been blasted to sub-atoms. To hell with that other guy -- I want to live!

After reading some of The Physics of Star Trek, I learn that what I've started a preference for -- bending spacetime around me so that I can move myself around the universe in seven-AU boots -- is actually FTL travel, not teleportation. Good, then. Let's do some of that. Are you busy tonight? Doop dee doo.

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The second song on THMNE will be called Everybody Smells Like Pie. Don't think I'm not paying attention.