There's no way that anyone knows about that would allow anybody to vaporize a solid
object into thin air. That's what you may see in a typical sci-fi flick. That's
because the molecules have to go somewhere. There's no way to make them disappear
or to vanish into thin air.
Stuff can be vaporized, but the molecules would disperse into the surrounding area.
If anyone is close to this, they would be burned badly or even killed. If something
gets vaporized, its components are still there, but in a different state. It's like
water being vaporized. If water is vaporized, it becomes steam. Any matter can
be transformed into a gas in a similar manner. Depending upon how much energy is
required, the vapor could have varying amounts of energy within it. As such, it can
travel a great distance before it loses enough energy in order to condense back into
a liquid and/or solid. Consequently, if you see a sci-fi flick in which somebody gets
vaporized, it wouldn't result in their whereabouts blending into the surrounding
area without a trace. There would be evidence of the vaporization all around. It
might well get deposited on the person firing the ray gun.
Sci-fi flicks don't show that. It wouldn't work well with the script.
Same thing may apply to a Star Trek transporter "beam". For Scotty to beam up Capt.
Kirk, he would have to find some way to vaporize him, encode his molecules without
losing a single one, and send them to the destination, re-encode all the molecules
in the new location without losing a single one. All of this would have to take place
without injuring or killing the Captain. For such a thing to occur would require a
major miracle, or an advance of science so far beyond what we know as to seem like
magic.
Not to be too critical of sci-fi flicks. One has to accept all of these props in order
to watch the movie. But there's just no way to do this. Nor is it ever likely that
such devices could exist.
It did give me an idea, though. This little discussion allows me to segue into the
real reason for writing this post.
The idea is what if you could encode someone's memories and upload it to someplace.
If it were uploaded, it could also be downloaded back into something else. That may
be a little too ambitious in itself, but it may be theoretically feasible.
We would have to learn enough about how human memories are encoded into the brain, and
the how to capture them and re-encode them into a form that a machine could replicate.
An individual may have to be dead before this could be attempted. Also, the death
would have to have been very recent before any degradation could have occurred. Not
to mention the fact that the entire process would have to take place in a short period
of time, for the same reason.
That part seems most unlikely.
Sci-fi is fictional for a reason. Enjoy your Star Trek, but don't take it seriously.
