IBM has a new ad out (as seen in the February 26 and March 4 New Yorker) with a remarkable claim. It says an IBM scientist and his colleagues have discovered a way to make an object disintegrate in one place and reappear intact in another. Beam me up, Scotty! Is this a publicity stunt? Is it true? They say there’s a teleport exhibit on their Web page at http://www.ibm.com/news/ls960202.html and give a phone number as well. Can’t get through. Can you? –Charlene McKee, Orleans, Massachusetts
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We turn to the ad. (You can’t miss it; it’s in the, uh, fat issue of the New Yorker edited by Roseanne Barr.) After a bit of nonsense about Margit telling her E-mail pal Seiji she’s going to teleport him some goulash, the ad says their plans are “a little premature, but we are working on it. An IBM scientist and his colleagues have discovered a way to make an object disintegrate in one place and reappear intact in another. It sounds like magic. But their breakthrough could affect everything from the future of computers to our knowledge of the cosmos.”
OK, so maybe a practical guide to teleportation was too much to hope for. Still, as we read on, the suspicion forms in our mind that perhaps the ad copywriters didn’t read the article before writing the ad, or if they did, didn’t understand it. On page two Bennett and company write, “It must be emphasized that our teleportation, unlike some science fiction versions, defies no physical laws. In particular, it cannot take place instantaneously. The net result of teleportation is completely prosaic: the removal of [a particle having a certain quantum state] from [one person’s] hands and its appearance in [someone else’s] hands a suitable time later.” In other words, you could accomplish the same thing with Federal Express–except that FedEx lets you transport more than one particle at a time.
Is there something you need to get straight? Cecil Adams can deliver the Straight Dope on any topic. Write Cecil Adams at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611, or E-mail him at cecil@chireader.com.
