Star Trek Transporter Prank Fools U.K. Mall Shoppers
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Whenever you sit down to watch a movie, either at home or in the cinema, you have a pretty good idea that what you’re looking at isn’t real. That’s even the case sometimes with documentaries, which sometimes stretch the truth to bring audiences over to their side. The above video isn’t taken from a documentary about teleportation or anything, but it might work as a nonfictional look at just how naive some people can be when shown something completely unbelievable. Maybe that’s a bit rude. Replace “naive” with “totally in the moment.”
Inside a U.K. shopping center, famed illusionist Scott Penrose and British on-demand service Blinkbox joined forces to promote the release of Star Trek Into Darkness. But instead of using things like posters and signs, they used a non-patented Star Trek transporter to astound the public by taking random members of the shopping crowd and transporting them to different areas of the mall, all through the use of science!
Well, the science of trickery anyway. The transporter is really just a small room with a TV hooked up to the front of it, and all of the “random” members of the audience are really twins planted by the promoters. Connnnnnnnn!!!
It’s a pretty convincing effect, don’t get me wrong. If you see someone get into a box and seemingly disappear, only to reappear elsewhere in the same area, it’s going to require some thought to figure out what happened. But when something like this takes place in a public forum and not in a lab, you know that something is up. And when the person presenting it is a famous illusionist, that’s a good sign that what’s being shown is what those in the industry call “fooly fooling.” I do like watching groups of people get confused at the same time, though. Especially outside of politics. I only wish they had allowed a fly to enter the box at the same time, and had one of the twins appear severely deformed.
Just last month, physicists from ETH Zurich actually did successfully achieve quantum teleportation using a device similar to a computer chip. This is only small amounts of information being sent, of course, but it’s still quite incredible. It’ll be quite a while (or never) before anybody currently on the planet gets to witness an actual human being being transported from one place to another in a way that doesn’t involve a vehicle or walking. But that’s all right, because we have the Blinkbox. Or at least the U.K. does.
Speaking of, get your copy of the newly released Star Trek Into Darkness Blu-ray or DVD today, seeing as how it’s everyone’s favorite entry in the franchise and all. (He says, dripping wet with sarcasm.)
