Interstellar teleporter

An interstellar teleporter is a hypothetical technology appearing in science fiction, typically in hard sci-fi, which teleports people and/or other objects over interstellar distances instantaneously. In some cases the matter of the physical person or object is scanned or disassembled at the point of departure and information is transmitted so that the person or object may be reassembled at the point of arrival. In other cases (such as "Springers" in John Barnes' Thousand Culture universe), the technology involves a "spatial coordinate remapping" whereby a distant location is remapped to a location adjacent to the point of departure on the device. This assumes existence of two coordinate systems in space: one "real" and one "relative". Another version makes use of wormhole theory, creating a fold in space to shorten travel time. All such forms of teleportation are purely hypothetical.

Examples

* The Door in Lloyd Biggle Jr.'s short story "The Rule of the Door".
* Gate in Ken Macleod's "". Macleod's gates are entrances to the wormhole skein, a network of Visser-Kar wormholes, referred to as Carlyle's Drift.
* Ramsbotham Jump in Robert A. Heinlein's novel "Tunnel in the Sky".
* Farcaster portals in the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons".
* Runcible on Neal Asher's novel "Gridlinked"
* Springer technology in John Barnes' series of novels:
** "A Million Open Doors"
** "Earth Made of Glass"
** "The Merchants of Souls"
** "The Armies of Memory"
* Wargate in Bruce Balfour's "The Forge of Mars".
* The Stargate featured in the movie Stargate and the follow up series' Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.
* An intergalactic teleporter made a brief appearance in the John Carpenter horror movie They Live.
* Wormholes feature in Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga, connecting over 600 worlds.
* Land-based wormhole gates in Robert Charles Wilson's novel Spin.
* The Rowan series by Anne McCaffrey features psionic, rather than technological, means of interstellar teleportation.
* The USS Voyager in finds a species with subspace teleport technology able to cross thousands of lightyears.
* The Mass Relays in the "Mass Effect" games.

ee also

* Teleportation
* Jumpgate
* Jump drive

References

Roy Sorenson. 2003. "". Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515903-9. Pp. 144-145.

External links

* cite news
author=
title=Teleportation breakthrough made
date=2004-06-16
work=BBC News
url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3811785.stm
accessdate=2008-08-05