Teleportation—extreme interdimensional mobility—sounds great. We can all imagine what we could do with such a power, whether it be something good, like effortlessly saving a kitten stuck in a tree, or something bad, like “borrowing” some money from inside a bank vault. However, exactly how we’d do those things is almost never explained in pop culture. One of the reasons why might be that if you try to explain teleportation scientifically, and try make it work in our world, it’s a super power I don’t think you’d even want.[brightcove video_id=”5847048331001″ brightcove_account_id=”3653334524001″ brightcove_player_id=”rJs2ZD8x”]In my latest episode of Because Science, I’m taking a closer looks at another super power that gets a lot less super when you shine the light of science on it. Like the potential pitfalls of super strength, super speed, x-ray vision, and invisibility, teleportation comes with as many problems as Nightcrawler has weird raised-skin tattoos. Biggest among them is that it’s never specified what you are teleporting in relation to. The Earth? The Sun? The Solar System? Yes, the danger of teleportation comes in cosmic portions.
Catch up on the latest Because Science!
- Never do a “superhero landing”
- Can you block bullets like Deadpool?
- Why you don’t want the power of invisibility