9 Big Problems With Future Scientific Breakthroughs

7. Teleportation

Anyone who commutes on a regular basis has, at some point, fantasised about the invention of teleportation.

One of the most likely ways it is thought that we will one day teleport, is not by transporting our physical atoms, but by sending ourselves to our destination in the form of information, where a perfect replica of our body and mind is rebuilt from this information.

One of the major things we'll have to overcome, however, is not technological, but psychological. To figure out why, we have to go back to the late first century and the Ship of Theseus paradox.

This paradox deals with where an object's "essence" is contained (stay with me), it goes like this:

During a ship's lifetime, the parts that break and decay are replaced, until none of the original is left - so can it still be considered the same ship? What if you took the old parts and built another ship out of it - is this the original?

Teleportation presents a similar problem, but with the human body and mind. Be as utilitarian as you like about it, but humans set a lot of stock by the sense of "self" and, if you were continually broken down and rebuilt, would you still be you? What if you weren't broken down at one end and there were suddenly two copies? We don't even really understand the mechanisms behind consciousness and self-awareness, let alone whether we can reproduce it using a machine.