German engineers have created a machine that can take a physical object, scan it, and then rebuild it at another location via the internet.
Effectively a very early prototype for a transporter, the machine has been dubbed 'Scotty' in homage to the USS Enterprise's Chief Engineer, who has a habit of beaming things up and down. The engineers said that, basically, Scotty “ relocates physical objects across distances. ”
A model is then encrypted and sent over the internet to another machine that rebuilds it with a 3D printer.
“ Scotty guarantees that a personal, handmade gift remains unique when sent across distances, i.e. that there is no other copy - an important aspect that emphasizes the intimate relationship between sender and receiver, ” according to the scientific paper published by the researchers.
The current iteration of the machine has some limitations (other than destroying the original object). Firstly, anything to be "transported" must be painted black to maximize contrast for the scanner to recognize. Secondly, the 3D printer that is currently used can only recreate items in single-color plastic. As a result, the final product is typically much less detailed than the original item.
COULD THIS BE ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS REAL COUNTERPARTS TO STAR TREK TECHNOLOGY?
TELL US YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!
WRITTEN BY FALLEN
EDITED BY FLICKY
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And this is why: The problem I see is like in the article, you will get destroyed and rebuilt. I would always wonder if you actually die in the process and a perfect copy of you will appear with all your personality traits and memories. The copy would of course only remember how you beamed up and not be aware of the death of the original. This process repeats every time you beam. Similarly Scotty was saved as pattern in a transporter buffer for many years, was he dead or alive then? Was it just the blueprint for the copy which was stored? And then leave alone the more metaphysical question of having soul, etc.
In summary, I take the shuttle.