Benm
0
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2007
- Messages
- 7,896
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- 113
As for the Mars story: Terraforming the planet seems impossible, but if additional structures could be built from material on mars, it could be less cramped than a space station. Obviously mars does have soil, but i'm not sure to what degree that could be used to build airtight, pressure-resistant structures or how much extra material from earth would be needed to do that.
The risk from virusses or such already present on mars seems pretty low - there is no evidence of any life there, and anything on the surface has been frozen, dried, irradiated and such to a point where it would be likely to be viable. Even then it would have to be compatible to earth biology, which would be unlikely if it developed on its own, but likely in some kind of panspermia scenario.
Teleporters are things from science fiction entirely. The heisenberg-compensators do not exist.
If the technology roughly works like what is displayed in star trek they could easily by re-configured as replicators, allowing you to xerox people has often as you wish... you could even have a 'print 1000 copies' function on one that does exactly that.
Interestingly it could have a very nice 'safe game' function too: just scan but not destroy the departing passenger, saving the scan in memory (which must me large enough to do so for the system to work).
If i got severly injured tomorrow i could just print of tonights saved version of myself, and euthenise tomorrows me to make sure there are no duplicates - it would just be an 'undo' for any mishap, including accidental death.
Even crazier, it could be used to make longer term backups, perhaps restoring a person before they developed cancer, reloading and saving a version of them 10 years ago. Or be 10 years younger in the present era for entertainment.
I don't believe a teleporter like that can ever exist, but if it can, it would fundamentally change what it is to be human, and individual, or even just alive.
The risk from virusses or such already present on mars seems pretty low - there is no evidence of any life there, and anything on the surface has been frozen, dried, irradiated and such to a point where it would be likely to be viable. Even then it would have to be compatible to earth biology, which would be unlikely if it developed on its own, but likely in some kind of panspermia scenario.
Teleporters are things from science fiction entirely. The heisenberg-compensators do not exist.
If the technology roughly works like what is displayed in star trek they could easily by re-configured as replicators, allowing you to xerox people has often as you wish... you could even have a 'print 1000 copies' function on one that does exactly that.
Interestingly it could have a very nice 'safe game' function too: just scan but not destroy the departing passenger, saving the scan in memory (which must me large enough to do so for the system to work).
If i got severly injured tomorrow i could just print of tonights saved version of myself, and euthenise tomorrows me to make sure there are no duplicates - it would just be an 'undo' for any mishap, including accidental death.
Even crazier, it could be used to make longer term backups, perhaps restoring a person before they developed cancer, reloading and saving a version of them 10 years ago. Or be 10 years younger in the present era for entertainment.
I don't believe a teleporter like that can ever exist, but if it can, it would fundamentally change what it is to be human, and individual, or even just alive.