Today’s San Francisco Chronicle surveys the US military’s interest in teleportation. Last year, the Air Force dropped $25k on a “Teleportation Physics Study” to examine whether it might be possible to beam people and objects from one place to another. The report was written by Eric W. Davis who holds a PhD in astrophysics. (Not mentioned in the SF Chronicle article is that Davis apparently has also been affiliated with the National Institute for Discovery Science, a private research organization that studies “aerial phenomena, animal mutilations, and other related anomalous phenomena.”) From the SF Chronicle article:
Now at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas, Davis reached both pessimistic and optimistic conclusions in his study. On one hand, he concluded that “Star Trek”-style teleportation faces enormous obstacles, partly because it would require the development of extraordinarily high-speed computers and would consume mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, it would encounter all kinds of physics headaches generated by the principles of quantum physics…
However, Davis expressed great enthusiasm for research allegedly conducted by Chinese scientists who, he says, have conducted “psychic” experiments in which humans used mental powers to teleport matter through solid walls. He claims their research shows “gifted children were able to cause the apparent teleportation of small objects (radio micro-transmitters, photosensitive paper, mechanical watches, horseflies, other insects, etc.)…”
Michio Kaku, a noted physicist and author at City University of New York, said “the only way to use (teleportation) as a secret weapon is to allow our enemies to bankrupt themselves thinking they can produce a teleportation machine.”
“The Air Force is to be applauded for investigating technologies that may have value for national security,” Kaku added. “But wormholes, negative energies, warped space-time, etc., require futuristic technologies centuries to millions of years ahead of ours. The only thing going down the wormhole is taxpayers’ money.”
UPDATE: You can download the full Teleportation Physics Study via Evan Poll’s blog (link to post) and also directly from the Federation of American Scientists site (link to PDF).