Teleportation:
The Ethical Implications of Dr. Michio Kaku’s Proposed Technology
Even with modern advances in technology there are still a few constants in the life of a typical American. The cliché pairing of death and taxes will always remain, but there is another constant of considerable importance to many Americans, travel time. Whether it is going to and from the workplace or taking a cross country trip, it takes time out of our lives to get where we are going. Most people never stop to consider how much of their life is spent in semi meaningless travel, but estimating conservatively that an average American spends a total of 30 minutes in travel to and from work, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, we end up with a total of 125 hours a year spent in the car, just to get to work. It is interesting to think about what else could be accomplished with all that time if we could eliminate the commute. To that end, a perfect solution would be a technology that allowed teleportation. Instantaneous travel from one location to another; what use is a car and a commute at that point? One prominent physicist has put forth an interesting proposal regarding a scientifically viable method for teleportation. Dr. Michio Kaku has envisioned a device that would allow a subject to be scanned into data, and then the data would be transmitted to a receiving site, where the subject would be constructed from materials by a replication device. The catch? The original is not actually moved, just copied.
Dr. Kaku’s Proposed Technology
Dr. Michio Kaku has put forth a proposal, using scientifically viable technologies that should be available within the next century, to create a machine to allow teleportation of people and non-ferrous objects. This technology would employ a large magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device to scan the body to be transported, encoded X-Rays to transport the data obtained by the MRI, and a molecular construction (replicator) device to build the body at the destination site (Kaku, 2010). Each of these technologies comes out of currently viable science, though they represent significant leaps in quality of technology before the teleportation device can be constructed.
Figure 1: Collection of images taken by a 2 mm x 2mm x 2mm resolution fMRI of the human brain
(Harel, et al, 2010).
MRI technology (see Figure 1) is currently capable of scanning to a resolution of ≤ 2 x 2 mm2 (Carr, et al, 2010, p. 298). For the teleportation device to work as proposed the scanner would need to function on the atomic scale, obtaining data about each individual atom in the body to be transported (Kaku, 2010). This represents a resolution on the order of 10-12 x 10-12 mm2. In other words, the resolution of an MRI machine will have to be 200 billion times better before it becomes viable for teleportation.
When the MRI can scan data from all of the (on average) 2 x 1024 atoms storage and transmission of that much data becomes the next hurdle. This amount of data is approximately equal to 1044 bytes of data, or 9.095 x 1032 terabytes (TB) (Johnson & Bailey, 2005, p.3). With the largest commercially available internal hard drives topping out at 3 TB, that is about 300 nonillion hard drives, or around 2 septillion times more than the amount of information stored digitally in the world. Clearly some major increases in hard drive technology are necessary.
Beyond storage we have the problem of transmission. In March 2010 a world record for data transmission speed was obtained by researchers from a company named Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT). Ishihara (2010) reports that the NTT team was able to transmit data at 69.1 Tb/s using a “432-channel [wavelength-division multiplexing] WDM transmission of 25GHz spaced 171Gb/s PDM [pulse duration modulation] 16-QAM [quadrature amplitude modulation] signals over a 240km fiber with spectrum efficiency of 6.4 b/s/Hz” (p. 29). Basically, the team used a series of signals with low transmission speeds together to generate a much faster data transfer rate. Using this advanced fiber-optic method it would still take 3.669 x 1024 (3.7 septillion) years to transmit all the data in a human.
Over long distances a different medium would be needed, as it’s unlikely a fiber-optic cable will ever be stretched to the moon, let alone an adjacent star system. Neutrinos become a fair option over a great distance and are already being tested for interstellar communication. This method would allow about 143,000 bits of data per year to be transmitted (Learned, et al, p. 17), which is a lot of block text, but not much of a human. Using a single beam of neutrinos it would take approximately 1.4 x 1040 years (a long time) to transmit the data from a human. If neutrinos were to be used for such a task it would be important to use multiple beams together to transmit faster, though the beam would have to become quite large to be able to carry that much information.
The final stage of the machine for teleportation is the molecular construction device, which Dr. Kaku calls a ‘replicator’ (2010), a direct reference to the Sci-Fi series “Star Trek” (See Figure 2). This device would take the instructions from the MRI data and reconstruct a complete duplicate of the original subject at the destination site. Current technology shows promise, but nothing on the order required for teleportation. One method being explored is diatom nanotechnology. Essentially this idea makes use of the properties of silica precipitates. Minor modifications to these substrates allow for specifically designed constructs that are useable in medication and filtration systems (Drum, 2003, p. 327). With some continued development these silica structures could be used as a base for construction of more complex structures, or in conjunction with another molecular construction method employing S-Layers, a more organic version of the same concept. S-Layers are the outer layer of prokaryotic organisms (bacteria, etc)(Sleytr, et al, 2007, p. 323). These constructs can be used as a base for filtering membranes, biosensors, functioning lipid membranes and for the formation of metal clusters in molecular electronics (2007, p.324). It is entirely possible that these structures will eventually allow humanity to reconstruct just about anything from the molecular level up. The amount of time it takes to generate the intended object is up in the air for the time being, but progress tends to make any technology faster, so a machine based on these principals may eventually be able to produce the results necessary for teleportation. S-Layers may even be a great place to start in speeding up the revolution, as there is evidence they will be able to replace semiconductors for use in electronics on the molecular level (2007, p. 332).
Figure 3: A visual representation of the completed teleportation device as Dr. Michio Kaku envisions it. Included are powerful magnets encircling the subject to power the MRI device and a powerful X-Ray transmitter at the top of the device (Kaku, 2010).
Why is the Technology Ethically Questionable?
The end result of the teleportation produced by Dr. Kaku’s proposed technology is an exact duplicate of the original subject. This wouldn’t be an issue if the technology moved the original to the new location. The difficulties come into the equation when an observer realizes that if the transmission and reception sites were in the same room, the technology would be reduced to a giant organic copier. There are a lot of things wrong with the idea of people being able to make exact duplicates of themselves at will. Who is held accountable if one of the copies does something wrong? Are all of the duplicates at fault, since they are all the same person? How can these duplicates generate any sort of individual identity, and if they don’t desire to do so, how can the rest of society keep track of who is who? Ultimately the concept of individuality is closely connected to the idea of personal responsibility. Does splitting that individuality into parts also split up the personal responsibility? Or does each of the copies become their own person, with a new name, or at least a distinguishing designation to set them apart?
Another major complication is the fact that this technology would produce a perfect, exact duplicate, with all the same memories as the original at the time of ‘teleportation.’ Who is the ‘real’ person? Surely both the original and the copy would be certain they were the ‘real’ person. Would this ultimately relegate the copy to some form of second-class citizen status?
The idea of cloning tends to draw a lot of vocal detractors who say that man was not meant to play God and create life (Morales, 2009). How would these people view an exact duplicate? In the case of conventional cloning a zygote is created with the same DNA profile as the person to be cloned. That embryo would then be placed in a surrogate and brought to term. In the end, the clone might be an exact copy of another person’s DNA, but they would experience life differently, and very likely become a different person in adulthood than the donor. While the creation of the clone will continue to come under fire from the general populace, at least there is a divergence between the original and the clone. With Dr. Kaku’s teleportation the duplicate is exactly the same. There is no growing up differently, just two identical adults with the same past and the same desire to return home to the same life. Who gets to return to their own life? What happens to whoever loses that coin flip?
How Can We Work Around the Duplication Issue?
Since it will be some time before the technology proposed by Dr. Kaku becomes available he says, “…we’ve got a while to iron out that little wrinkle [duplication]” (2010). There are two methods that might work to decrease the negative impact this technology would have on the sensibilities of the general populace. The first would be the use of the same replication technology used to recreate the subject at the destination point to disassemble the original at the departure point. The principles upon which the ‘replicator’ technology is based require a device capable of constructing matter on the atomic level. Provided that the technology progresses to a point where it is fast enough the same method could be used to quickly deconstruct a departing body into constituent atoms, which could then be used in future construction of incoming subjects. There would be some questions here as to whether or not the process would hurt the departing individual and use of the technology this way would require testing before being put into use.
Another way to avoid all the difficulties with having copies of people around would be to use the teleportation technology to populate distant colony worlds with copies of volunteers. The people being transported wouldn’t actually go to the colony planet, but an exact duplicate of them would. In this way a person (or a whole family for that matter) could elect to move out to a colony to help it continue to grow without leaving their home on Earth. Volunteers would have to go through vigorous testing to ensure that they truly wanted to participate in colonization, because otherwise a number of people would make the decision, knowing that they wouldn’t have to bear the consequences. By transporting the duplicates so far away the original and double would diverge completely and not have any continued effect on each other’s lives. This would allow for a great deal of additional diversity on a colony world, as well as a great source of new colonists without the dangers of interstellar travel.
Restricted Usage
I propose that the best way to handle this technology is to set up rules to govern its usage before it even comes into being. If the people who create and make use of the technology have a set of guidelines to follow from the get-go it will make things much safer and allow for much more seamless acceptance from the general population. It can be easy for a scientist to lose track of all the details in usage when he/she is developing a new technology. By developing guidelines for the ethical usage of this technology before it comes into being many of the problems inherent with misuse can be eliminated.
One very easy way to end the discussion about the ethical use of this technology is to restrict usage to non-human subjects, specifically foodstuffs and other non-ferrous materials. If we’re not trying to teleport a person we don’t have to worry about the problems of duplication. On the other side of this proposal one can begin to see the true potential of this technology. Being able to duplicate food could go a long way towards fighting the widespread hunger that still plagues many countries on Earth, including the United States. In fact, once the computer used to reconstructed objects has access to the ‘pattern’ of a particular foodstuff, it could duplicate that item at will, provided there is access to a supply of atoms in storage. Essentially, this device could take waste products and reconstruct the atoms in those waste products for use in new food or non-ferrous materials. The replication device that is so important to the technology of teleportation could, in fact, become the ultimate weapon in the war of recycling.
A modification of the “No Human” restriction previously discussed that would make a lot of sense is a “Cataclysm” clause. Basically it would be important to allow humans the use of these devices in cases of major natural disaster. In one example, if humanity did reach towards the stars and start to create colony worlds in other solar systems it is only a matter of time before one of these worlds is threatened by a solar flare or an asteroid on a collision course. Allowing people in these extreme circumstances to make use of the teleportation device to save themselves (after a fashion, at least) would be the right thing to do.
The most important part of the rules governing the usage of teleportation technology would be the repercussions for nefarious or dishonest use of duplication. Punishments could include heavy fines, jail time, loss of privileges regarding acceptable use of teleportation, and very probably the eradication of all duplicates. By the time this technology becomes viable it is entirely possible that there will be any number of more specific or clear cut ways to punish an offender. Any rules governing restricted usage would have to be capable of being subtly modified to fit the times without losing the spirit of the rule.
Challenges Inherent to Restricting Usage
Any time a governing body places restriction on anything it creates an environment where certain people will want to break the rules even more. The constant fight against authority is a major driving force in many people’s lives. More often than not it leads to trouble, but challenging the status quo can have a very positive effect under the right circumstances as well.
In the case of restriction on the usage of teleportation there are a lot of good reasons why the technology should be strictly controlled. As with any technology, the technology itself isn’t evil. Evil comes from the actions and intention of the people wielding or developing the technology. Science and scientists will always strive to think up new things and improve the things society already has access to. That desire for improvement can create some amazing things, and teleportation would be amongst the most amazing. The biggest problem though, is that even while the scientists are working around the obstacles in development, there are people out there thinking up every dishonest way they could possibly exploit the new technology. Being able to create any structure from a random source group of atoms presents a pretty serious opportunity for misuse. Taking that a step further, the device’s ability to choose specific atoms from a source for use in construction of an object would provide a criminal a way to eliminate evidence. Consider placing a murder weapon into the source system for a teleportation device. The moment a request came through for any of the atoms in the weapon the weapon would become worthless in a legitimate investigation. Taking that a step further and a criminal could eliminate the evidence by destroying the body. Obviously some measure would have to be in place to restrict access to the storage room that contains the source atoms for the teleportation device.
The ability to make effectively unlimited food with this device would be a godsend, but imagine the problems that could come up if someone used the device to scan and duplicate illegal narcotics. An effectively unlimited source of a drug like cocaine would be a serious problem for law enforcement and a serious danger to society in general.
To make matters worse, if the criminal decided to copy his/her-self multiple times to would prove very difficult to catch that criminal. Even if you did get your hands on the person it could very easily be a copy. Even though fielding your own football team would be a nice side-effect of teleportation, it seems like a better idea to severely restrict actual duplication of a human to avoid all of these issues.
Figure 4: A graphical representation of Quantum Entanglement (QE). When one atom in an entangled pair changes the connected, entangled partner experiences the opposite effect. By knowing which rotation (Pauli transformation) the first atom experienced a researcher can make use of a complementary rotation to duplicate the exact state of the transmitter atom (Particle).
Another potential candidate for viable teleportation technology comes from a science called Quantum Entanglement (QE). QE is a state attained by a pair of particles under very specific circumstances. One method is called a quantum squeeze. Wildeuer (2010) states that,
A quantum squeeze can be put on a photon to convert a blue photon into 2 red photons, each with half the energy of the original. These photons then hit a beam splitter and produce constructive and destructive interference. In the end, the constructive interference can result in sub-Poissonian distribution (photon bunching) and the destructive results in super-Poissonian distribution (photon anti-bunching) (p. 836).
This photon bunching results in multiple entangled pairs, as the atoms (in this case, photons) become so close to each other that they begin to behave the same. When two particles are entangled any changes made to one particle will result in the opposite change occurring to its entangled partner, no matter the distance (Horodecki, et al, 2009, p.875). From there, knowledge of how the changed particle was spun (the nature of the change made) allows the researcher dealing with the entangled partner to duplicate the original completely.
One advantage of QE over Dr. Kaku’s proposed teleportation technology is that if it were capable of working on a human it would allow a person to be moved rather than copied. If this technology were to become viable I envision a contained ‘sea’ of entangled particles being held in a large portal structure, similar to the event horizon contained within the Stargates from the television series Stargate: SG-1 (see Figure 5).
The key to this structure and this technology would be the creation of entangled pairs and keeping those particles from decohering (entangled particles tend to lose their entangled nature after some time has passed) during transit to a destination site. Current science has researchers testing greater and greater distances of transmittal to truly test the boundaries of how far QE is viable. In Ursin, et al (2007) an experiment is discussed where one particle from an entangled pair is sent 144 km via fiber-optic cable to another lab before testing (p. 482). This represents a great distance and shows that later experiments between Earth-bound labs and the lab on the International Space Station might be possible (p.481).
Once these entangled pairs are safely at their respective sites another procedure called Entanglement Swapping can be performed to generate a large number of entangled particles (Horodecki, et al, 2009, p. 876). These quantum repeaters may eventually be capable of creating enough entangled particles on either side of a vast distance to make a portal large enough for a human to walk through. At that point, theoretically a person would just need to come into contact with the portal on one side and each of their atoms would be transported to the other side.
Some rigorous testing would be required to insure that this method wouldn’t just create a number of random atoms moving however they please on the opposite side, effectively disintegrating the subject.
Another smart thing to incorporate would be deterministic transmission. In a research paper by Zhong-Xiao, et al (2005) it is shown that by using a deterministic transmission we can check for information loss before transmission of important data (p. 20). This idea basically amounts to a pre-screening to make sure no information is lost during transit. This will come in handy to make sure a full person is teleported, rather than just an arm and an ear.
This technology would be a great alternative to Dr. Kaku’s technology because it would transmit the individual while eliminating the ‘original,’ eliminating all the ethical implications of duplication. It would also be instantaneous teleportation over a great distance rather than requiring transmission time. A great deal of additional research is required on the science of QE before this concept can be shown to be scientifically viable, however, and that is why Dr. Kaku’s method still has a great deal of merit.
Conclusion
It is not hard to see that the topic of personal transportation is an important one. The ability to get from point A to point B within a certain amount of time is of a great deal of importance to all of us. Some people have a desire to ‘arrive in style,’ preferring to focus on how they get to their destination. Others just want to get their as quickly as possible. Teleportation seems like a wonderful compromise between the two ideals. There isn’t many things more stylish than just appearing somewhere and what better way to get to your destination than skipping everything between points A and B? Luckily, Dr. Michio Kaku has dreamt up a very viable plan for how teleportation should one day be a possibility.
This paper has explored the one part of Dr. Kaku’s technology that hasn’t been discussed in depth previously, the ethical implications of duplication and society’s reaction to these duplicates. Potential restriction for usage on the technology have been put forth to help society (more specifically the government) find ways to deal with the difficulty presented by a machine that can create perfect clones. Ultimately the technology is an important one to pursue, even with its pitfalls. The ability to generate food from waste atoms is too powerful to ignore. Beyond that there would be no better way to support any colonization or exploration effort than to be able to teleport them food or other supplies when necessary. This technology, and its potential successor based on QE, represents a major shift in how humanity will view the world, and by extension, the universe around them. If we remove the obstacle of great distance from the equation then the trend of exponential growth in technology can only continue into the coming centuries.
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