Re: Faster Than Light Travel - Reply

Tony Christney writes:

@:) >  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.

  I'm not sure about exactly what probabalistic law the uncertainty
principle follows.  My point was that 2cm is an enormous distance in
quantum terms.	If they had transmitted over 2 picometers, fine, big
deal, who cares - but 2cm is real distance.  After you've moved your
quantum effects into the macroscopic world, 2ly or 200ly is not such a
big jump.

@:) 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.

  That sounds like a technical quibble.  If information can be
transmitted faster than light, it's one of the most significant
technical advances of the century.  Certainly the biggest one since
the lightspeed barrier was imposed by Einstein (1919?).  Filtering,
signal to noise, those are problems that have already been solved.

@:) 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.

  Right.  You'd get the signal from your scanning apparatus (which is
also practically impossible to build).

@:) 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.

  Ha.  Yes this would be a problem.  Someone has already mentioned
that you might not have to copy people at the quantum level.  Even if
this is so, however, copying people at a protein level is still almost
unimaginably difficult.

@:) 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.

  Yes indeed.  I guess it's time to start storing multiple bits per
electron in our quantum computers, huh?

@:) 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...)!

  Yes, getting a GPF while transporting would kinda blow chunks.  I
think, though, that the storage and transmission problems are
solvable.  They're just scaled-up versions of problems we have already
solved so hopefully they'll work out.

-joachim