Is the idea of being "fused" to/into a material as a result of a teleportation accident plausible?
Assuming it were possible to phase through matter/teleport, is it possible within the laws of physics/chemistry to end up stuck/fused to solid materials? Obviously we lack the real world ability to test this out, but are the distances between molecules in materials like plastic, wood and metal great enough that the molecules of the human body could mesh within them?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/118008. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
My first thought was that the saying that we're "99.999% empty space" would easily solve this problem. The atoms would just push each other around a bit, and the parts that intersected the wall would get denser, create new alloys. Or possibly explode.
Apparently the empty space thing isn't exactly true.
But really what does "being out of phase" mean?
From a higher dimension of reality point of view, it could mean that the individual has moved into a higher dimension that doesn't intersect with normal baryonic matter.
It's a stretch, but there is actually a little bit to support this idea in the real world in the shape of sterile neutrinos and dark matter.
Evidence points to both of these things existing (or possibly being the same thing?), and they do interact with our reality through gravity, but not in other ways. We don't really know why dark matter can't be detected through any normal means, and so into this uncertainty comes a possibility for worldbuilding.
M-theory suggests that there are lots of other dimensions that are alongside our frame of reference, but that we can't interact with. It is a possibility that instead of being some new, unknowable particle (that would really mess with the standard model), dark matter is instead a "normal" form of matter that is just "out of phase" in a dimension of reality that we can't interact with, except for gravity.
Dark matter isn't very dense, locally being on the order of 10^-21 kg/m^3, so you wouldn't have to worry much about bumping into it.
So how does this answer the question? Well, if you could phase into a different dimension that doesn't contain walls (or air, or floors... which is a problem), then maybe when you phase back any air (or walls) would be exchanged with your mass, so if you were to phase back inside of something solid you would just replace those atoms, and be perfectly encased in the wall, but not dead/explody.
Teleporting could work in a similar way, with a you shaped chunk of space being replaced with you. If that chunk of space contained just air then no problems. If it contained a wall then whoever is manning the transporter controls is going to get annoyed about having to clean drywall dust off his pad again.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads