Re: Faster Than Light Travel - Reply

>Alan E. Aebrain Carmel J. Brain writes:
>
>@:) Of course, so does Newtonian physics, within its realm. Case in
>@:) point: FTL transmission of information has been achieved over
>@:) macroscopic distances, about 2 cm if memory serves.
>
>  Quantumly speaking, I think the difference between 2cm and 2ly is
>not great.

Pardon? I think that at any scale the difference between 2cm and 2ly
is very significant! Tunneling through a 2ly barrier is much more
difficult than tunneling through a 2cm barrier. Probability of
transmission
goes like an inverse exponential.

>@:) A piece of music was played, and transmitted via tunnelling,
>@:) arriving at a speed not less than a large multiple of c, and
>@:) recognisable as the tune being played (very distorted, a lot of
>@:) signal loss). Still, even such a small crack in the FTL door
>@:) rather puts the Kibosh on the absolute "Thous shalt not transmit
>@:) any information faster than light" prohibition.
>
>  Wow.

If 2cm produces much signal loss, imagine the distortion even over
10cm. I wonder if the signal would even be readable with extreme
filtering. Probably not. However, I would like to find out more about
this experiment. It is interesting how you can trick nature in this way.

>@:) Now this does not an FTL drive make. But it _IS_ interesting. I'll
>@:) see if I can dig up the references to the experiment.
>
>  Please do.  Note that this system, cleaned up and expanded to large
>distances, provides about a third of the technology required for
>teleportation.  Scanning an object at the quantum level and storing
>all information about it is, of course, no mean feat, and I haven't
>heard of any way to construct an object particle by particle but
>... well, it's imaginable at least.

I don't think that this technique actually stores or scans any info.
>From what Alan has written it seems like they used a regular electronic
signal, but tried to pass it through an "impenetrable" barrier.
Similar to a tunneling electron microscope, which presumably also
would transmit info FTL, at least for part of the system.

The three major technical problems with teleportation I would say are:

1. The uncertainty principle. Makes it impossible to actually make an
exact copy of any object. Star Trek makes a point in including a
"Heisenberg compensator" into their teleporters. How it works is
anyone's guess.

2. Storage space. How many particles (ie. neutrons, electrons & protons)
make up a human body? Storing this info would require an enourmous
amount
of memory.

3. Bandwidth. You think that a 28.8 modem is slow, imagine trying to
transmit billions of terabytes with no signal loss (oops, sorry, your
arm timed out on the transmit, come back tomorrow...)!

The trillion dollar question is: any solutions?

>-joachim

Tony.