Monkeys in a Can?
Today, PhysOrg pointed out the obvious in , 'Only human -- the biggest risk factor in long-term space missions':
What's the biggest hurdle to setting up a colony on the Moon or getting mankind to Mars and beyond? Aliens? Asteroids? Money? Try: humans themselves. Experts poring over plans to return to the Moon by 2018 and later stride to Mars believe the greatest-ever gamble in the history of space may ultimately depend on keeping the mind and body sound.
Anxiety, loneliness and tensions with crewmates, a daily battle to maintain fitness and avoid accidents, DNA-shredding radiation from solar flares or cosmic rays -- all these make mental and physical health the key to whether a long-term mission will succeed or fail catastrophically.
Benny Elmann-Larsen, coordinator of physiology in human space flight at the European Space Agency (ESA), says psychological stress could be the biggest problem of all.
“The human factor is the most uncertain factor,†Elmann-Larsen said in an interview with AFP.
A trip to the Moon, as with the Apollo missions, would last only a few days, which is sufficiently short to be bearable.
But life in a lunar colony — presumably several interconnected container-sized structures — would present months of confinement, boredom and monotony.
Boredom and monotony indeed. Being in Low Earth Orbit with an Internet connection and the latest VR gear might not be so boring. All the culture, correspondence, and charisma of the Mother Planet would still be with you. With teledildonics and a webcam, you could even have some semblance of sexual relations with a guy or girl on the surface with their head in the clouds. That could lower the probability of awkward, sci-fi-esque love triangles onboard leading to everyone getting murdered horribly. Essentially, Internet = Good, No Internet = Bad. Look what happened when the people onboard a Russian isolation experiment had a few sips of champagne at New Years:
A 110-day experiment in isolation that was carried out in a mock space station in Moscow in 1999 showed how things can badly go wrong. One module housed four Russian men; the other, three international test subjects, from Austria, Canada and Japan.
Reports within the space community say that during a New Year's celebration two of the Russian men engaged in a 10-minute fist-fight that left blood on the walls before they were restrained by the other men.
The mission commander hauled the only female, Judith Lapierre, a Canadian, out of sight of the experiment's cameras and twice gave her a French kiss that she fought in vain to resist.
The Japanese participant was so traumatised by this episode that he quit the experiment altogether. The Canadian and Austrian, a male scientist, continued with the mission -- but insisted on having locks fitted to their module door.
The recent media hubbub about the diaper-wearing astronaut driving cross-country to use pepper spray on a rival's car window really underlines the point that astronauts can just as easily be obsessive nutjobs as much as anyone else.
How can humans travel into space without going crazy? Well, one line of investigation would be to play around with people's brains to make them less-conflict prone, and more asexual. We love to think that our brains are so complex in every way and we have no control over anything, but there'd be one simple way to greatly lower the probability of disaster, at least with respect to the more violent gender - lower the amount of testosterone reaching the brain. I'm sure this could be achieved through a more equitable means than castration. For the time window in which this issue will matter (from a decade or so from now up until the Singularity, assuming the Singularity doesn't happen within the decade), more advanced neuroprostheses should be available to regulate hormones and even possibly emotions.
In the future, like with anything unfamiliar with our ancestral environment, we'll need to take precautions before sending unsupervised human beings off into space. When you go to the Arctic, you bring canned food, an airplane, and plenty of warm coats. When you go into a mine, you wear a hardhat with a light on it, and carry a gas mask in case of an emergency. When you go into space, you subject yourself to hormonal and neural reengineering to lower your aggressiveness and conflict propensity. More exotic locales call for more exotic precautions.
Most of the time, it's good to let people decide for themselves what is best for them and their family. But sometimes, if there aren't rules, people predictably get hurt or killed. That's just the way reality works. We can't take responsibility for our actions if we are killed by them. Space travel beyond the Earth-Luna system may well be one of those issues.
Beyond the crazy factor, there may be a security risk in people wandering about the Solar System willy-nilly. Check out "Space: a Moral Vacuum?" by Lifeboat Foundation colleague Jeff Krukin, Executive Director of the Space Frontier Foundation. Basically the idea is that space could turn into something like the Wild West, where the strong prey on the weak with no restrictions. This sounds all fun and romantic until your family is vaporized and you are left floating, running out of oxygen.
Furthermore, advanced molecular manufacturing will eventually allow people to convert raw materials into top-grade military hardware at a rate of a meter per hour or more. Using non-planar nanofactory designs could speed up the extrusion speed many times over. At the risk of bringing contemporary politics into the discussion, consider a space-based Al Qaeda cell that disappears into the asteroid belt for a few months, then comes back hauling dozens of space rocks that it plans to rain down on targets of strategic importance. Phased Array Optics technology would let them cloak with respect to almost every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Where is your asteroid shield now?
With all the talk of colonizing the Moon, Mars, and even Titan, you'd think we'd be sipping Lunar Margaritas tomorrow. Little problem - the gravity on all of these bodies is so low, it would kill someone who grew up there attempting a return to, say, his parents' hometown on Earth. Out of the two obvious solutions - cyborg bodies, and spinning habitats, spinning habitats look closer, so people are more likely to come to terms with the gravity issue by reference to artificial gravity than fullerene endoskeletons.
There is one foreseeable use for space in the next 10-20 years. And that is backing up human civilization with the most advanced Ark we can possibly build. Outside of the Lifeboat Foundation, there are really no serious plans for this, but, opinions can change quickly. Remember that the fallout from even a small nuclear confrontation could lead to widespread crop failure. The problem with sending up an Ark now would be that the astronauts would lack the technology to replace things when they broke. With even pre-MNT 3D printers and a reserve of raw materials, that could change, giving a space station enough oomph to stay around while it assesses exactly what has happened on Earth after a disaster and whether or not a return to the surface is a good idea. It's important to remember that even if a Space Ark is a very difficult project, it's worth encouraging, because 1) people already have the knowledge to consider the details, 2) the political will to do it could emerge nearly overnight, 3) we'll never develop the necessary technological prerequisites unless we start specifically focusing on it.
I personally doubt that space has much of a future beyond the next few decades. The simple reason is that mind uploading is inevitable. Even if we had to "upload" into a biological meat matrix, it would radically upgrade our freedom, quality of life, and ability to express our creativity. There are about 8.87 x 1049 atoms that make up this planet, and look at the complex virtual worlds and experiences we've already been able to create with a tiny, intsy wintsy, itty bitty piece of it (WoW's servers, for example). It could take us subjective quadrillions of years to chew up every last bit of matter on this planet and convert it into qualiabearing information structures.
February 21st, 2007 - 17:03
There are other options for fewer problems for space travel.
Go faster and bigger to places like Mars. btw: Going bigger means you make a nice big ship with rotation sections for gravity and a lot more people and diversions and radiation shielding. Altough magnetic and electrostatic shielding could lighten that weight. But a big ship could have the water and supplies for thousands acting as a shield.
Get there in about 30 days with a nuclear powered VASIMR
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/02/vasimr-progress.html
or mini-mag Orion or actual project Orions launched from the moon.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/10/minimag-orion-and-follow-on-ideas.html
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/12/colonizing-space-going-slower-and.html
For longer trips travel in a bigger ship with more diversions. Think Cruise ship. Hundreds of people or maybe thousands. On board security.
With larger groups, then we have the dynamics of a village where order is maintained by the group against individuals. also, with more people there are more pair bonding opportunities. Some other fish in the sea. It is not Gilligan’s island where if you do not get Mary Ann and Ginger then you have the Skipper or the Professor. It is the Love boat of space.
We can also consider the example of nuclear subs for long duration trips in isolation.
For lower tech option for bigger accomodations, the aldrin cycler
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/2076326.html
5 months to mars but in a bigger space hotel.
February 21st, 2007 - 17:15
All the troubles and hassles described in the physorg article are resulting from thinking small and chemically powered slow.
Only a few adventurists travel on the Ocean with 4-7 people. Although some of the crews of freightliners are small with 1 to 2 dozen people, but trips times are only a few weeks.
Big ships with lots of people take away all the issues with longer space travel. It has been demonstrated with long duration cruises and nuclear submarine tours. If you need more diversions, send a convoy of cruise ships or have them rendevous with cycling hotels.
If we are going beyond Mars then we should big colonies in orbit, lagrange points, moon and Mars. Then we should definitely have Project Orions built and setup from the moon. then we can go to the Asteroids, titan etc… with really big fast ships (megatonnage and going up 1% or so of light speed inside the solar system) A few months to anywhere in the solar system.
February 21st, 2007 - 18:03
If the ship is such a nice place to live, why not stay there? It saves you from having to pull yourself out of a gigantic gravity well every time you have to go to a business meeting.
Don’t think Project Orion will happen. Nuclear explosions waaay too politically sensitive, even from the Moon. VASMIR is definitely the (human) future of space propulsion. (The posthumans may come up with better ideas, and throw out all our plans.) I had never heard of gas core reactors, by the way. Looks interesting!
February 22nd, 2007 - 00:35
What about long duration nuclear submarine crews? Haven’t we and the Russians learned anything from them?
A small number of people in a tense, highly focused environment isolatated from the rest of the world (Including Internet traffic. Military subs have restrictions on the bandwidth of their communication when on stealthy patrol.) for 6 months or more–seems like an ideal example to learn from when considering these problems. Another good example would be the behavior of people in scientific outposts in Antartica, especially during winter. Another example would be monks, nuns and priests in religious monestaries, madrasahs and temples.
Maybe that last one was pretty silly but the point is we’re not totally starting from scratch here. We do have examples of isolated, small crews of people working on highly focused activities.
Then there is the science fictional example of putting crews into cryonic suspension for long duration spaceflights–that would at least reduce the psychological and social problems. Of course the microgravity and radiation exposure would still do damage to the suspended crew. Maybe crews would wake up months or years later and spend the first few weeks of planetfall in medical repair tanks as microscopic cell repair robots reverse all the damage from radiation and low gravity.
February 22nd, 2007 - 08:30
I am unaware of any processes that could affect a person under cryosuspension due to microgravity. It is my understanding that these damages are all essentially biological in nature; if there are no active biological processes, what damage could occur?
Either way, given the power/sustainment reductions of cryosuspension, radiation & microgravity become fairly easily resolved problems. Spin chambers no larger than half again the cryochamber’s size would do nicely; in a proper ‘vacuum’ setting they would require negligible power to keep spinning. Radiation shielding for such chambers would also be quite simple.
Cryosuspension isn’t even necessarily that far away; there has been somewhat successful research into what permits south-african frogs and grasshoppers to fully freeze over. Turns out mainly it is the inclusion of specific sugar compounds in their blood-stream; this has two major effects that are necessary to successful ‘freezing over’ — A) They reduce the size of ice-crystals greatly. B) They alter the *shape* of ice-crystals, ’rounding out the edges’, so that a minimal number of cell-walls are damaged.
All that’s really needed is proper funding to reach acceptably benign side-affects for the human scale, and a delivery system for said compounds that doesn’t adversely affect the patients.
And as to the question of VR space over extraterrestrial space travels, I personally don’t think that this would preclude space-travel, for one simple reason: there will always be people who prefer the “real world” to the “virtual”. As long as even 1% of the population feels that way, space-travel will be viable.
February 22nd, 2007 - 19:22
No need to spin the corpsucule. Muscular degredation would not occur when frozen in the ice matrix.
Reviving cryonics patients probably requires medical nanotechnology. In the 80s, there was talk around the Foresight community of developing pre-nanotech cryonic revival techniques, but my understanding is that this was considered way too difficult and eventually abandoned.
There will not always be people who prefer the “real world” to the “virtual”. I know it seems hard to imagine now, but our world is already virtual (written by our brain), this would just be a transition to a new type of virtuality. Already, 5 million+ people spend hours a day on WoW, and this is with such primitive technology… I don’t think that 1% of the population will prefer the real world. Perhaps something like 0.001%, but yes this could lead to space travel. But to the uploads on Earth, it would take the “space travellers” billions of years to move a mile (due to the subjective acceleration), so the would-be space colonizers would look quite silly from the mainstream perspective for many eons…
February 22nd, 2007 - 20:10
“Anxiety, loneliness and tensions with crewmates, a daily battle to maintain fitness and avoid accidents,”
Yup. After all, there would obviously be much more anxiety, tension, and conflict on a small ship in the middle of nowhere than in, say, WWII. Looking at the situations, the people on the ship are isolated from their lives on Earth, but soldiers fighting in WWII were also under constant threat of being blasted into outer space by large fleets of people and gigantic war machines wanting to kill them, in addition to the atrocious living conditions, the constant boredom and physical labor, every kind of disease under the sun and being treated like dirt under the military command system. Which is clearly not nearly as bad; after all, look at how the Army required conscription while the astronaut corps has so many volunteers that it has to turn away the vast majority of applicants.
“DNA-shredding radiation from solar flares or cosmic rays”
Doing out the math, the radiation you would expect on a two-year long trip through interplanetary space or a three-year long trip to Mars is roughly 50-80 rem, which is the dose that you could get, admittedly over a longer period of time, simply from living on a mountain or next to rock with large amounts of uranium and thorium (granite being the perennial example).
“would present months of confinement, boredom and monotony.”
Have these people never talked to a sailor? And sailors, keep in mind, are generally working or middle class laborers and technicians, as compared with space crews who would be known as heroes all over the world.
“Essentially, Internet = Good, No Internet = Bad.”
On the Moon, you could still have feasible Internet access, although the latency would be annoying. For farther trips, you could keep a repository of information on board and then update it as needed. WIkipedia, for instance, is small enough to be stored on a flash drive, yet large enough to contain more information than you could ever possibly read through.
“A 110-day experiment in isolation that was carried out in a mock space station in Moscow in 1999 showed how things can badly go wrong.”
Except that that was, as stated, an isolation experiment; any sane space crew would be in constant contact with the Earth. Even in the outer solar system, lag time would only be a few hours, and for larger trips you’d need lots of speed, which means you need lots of shielding and equipment, which means you might as well bring along a large crew.
“When you go into space, you subject yourself to hormonal and neural reengineering”
If we have the technology to do that kind of thing reliably, why can’t we just put ourselves to sleep for 90% of the voyage?
“Beyond the crazy factor, there may be a security risk in people wandering about the Solar System willy-nilly.”
There’s already a security risk in people wandering about the high sea willy-nilly, or even people wandering about land willy-nilly. But if we keep track of every trip people are making, someone has to be doing the tracking, and they’re going to wind up abusing that power. Once we get FAI or uploaded humans, that becomes much less of a risk, but for now we can’t risk ending up like 1984 (a 1984-like society is one of the threats that Nick Bostrom mentioned specifically as an existential risk).
But yes, there has to be some sort of decision about who’s going to govern space. “Common heritage of all mankind” is a nice phrase, but it won’t stop pirates and criminals.
“Phased Array Optics technology would let them cloak with respect to almost every part of the electromagnetic spectrum.”
So far as I know, PAO technologies must be built for a specific wavelength, and we already have wide-band scanners.
“it would kill someone who grew up there”
Someone who was engineered to live there, maybe, but the Great Mambo Chicken experiments show that organisms from Earth can still get along under 2.5 G (and keep in mind evolution has already built a body designed for 1 G, so any adaptations to it will be easier than adaptations away from it).
“There is one foreseeable use for space in the next 10-20 years. And that is backing up human civilization with the most advanced Ark we can possibly build.”
Using NTR rockets, you might- might being the operative word- be able to do this with only tens of millions of dollars in investments, as opposed to hundreds of millions or billions. How many full-time employees does the LF have? Five? Six? And how many of those have any experience whatsoever with designing and building large-scale rockets? Realistically, we need to get a much larger support base before we can even think about building space arks.
“2) the political will to do it could emerge nearly overnight”
That requires a strong popular reaction. Suppose that tomorrow the US is nuked to smithereens. Hundreds of millions die. What is going to be the reaction of the survivors? “Let’s build a space ark to safeguard humanity?” Most likely, it’s going to be “nuke whichever bloody bastards did this to us”, followed by “where’s the food?”.
“But a big ship could have the water and supplies for thousands acting as a shield.”
It also requires so much money that any organization proposing to fund it, including the government, will immediately get sticker shock and reject it out of hand. Even with NTRs, it would still cost hundreds of billions minimum. And when we do get nanotech sophisticated enough to build everything for us, the first people to get it will be the military, who will then use it to blow up their country of choice and thereby doom us all.
“We can also consider the example of nuclear subs for long duration trips in isolation.”
Another excellent example of what I was trying to say earlier. And while people in space can make stupid decisions that get them killed, people on nuclear subs can make stupid decisions to get billions killed. Another one I just thought of- MIR crews would stay in space for months or longer at a time, mostly just sitting around and maintaining the station, and they didn’t go crazy.
February 23rd, 2007 - 09:59
Michael; Silly isn’t non-existant.
As to virtuality; While true it’s also essentially irrelevant.
And as to speeds of travel… I for one am not discounting translight travel through engineered stochastic resonance of quantum tunneling. I don’t expect to live to see it, however.
And the frogs & grasshoppers of South Africa weren’t known of back in the 80′s. (For the record I already knew that musculoskeletal degeneration doesn’t occur when one is a corpse-sicle. I was accounting for the possibility that I knew something that wasn’t so.) What I *do* find interesting however is the fact that frozen tissue still has neural activity, if at lower levels. Combined with the ubiquitous concept of the ‘data jack’, this could be a means of providing for physical immortality. As quantum entanglement has now been documented, internet access over long-distance is not necessarily problematic.
February 23rd, 2007 - 14:32
It has not yet been documented, though (and is thought to be impossible), that quantum entanglement can be used to transmit data faster than light. Sorry.
February 23rd, 2007 - 15:06
nt: That very statement is nonsensical in the face of the definition of quantum entanglement. Essentially, you are attempting to state that quantum entanglement itself does not occur.
And for the record, other methods of transmitting information “faster than the speed of light” have been used; namely ‘controlled’ quantum tunneling of photons to transmit radio-waves.
Both quantum tunneling and quantum entanglement were debated for quite some time, but both have been, now, demonstrated. What you are probably attempting to state is that it has not yet been documented that quantum entanglement can be successfully determined at great distance. And *that* is true.
But insofar as the ‘transmitting data faster than the speed of light’ bit; no, I’m sorry, but you’re just plain wrong.
February 23rd, 2007 - 20:36
Excuse me, Ian? How do you understand quantum entanglement such that it can be used to transmit information? Even if we found a way to store several thousand GB of entangled particles (that might suffice for internet access bandwidth for a few years), what is the mechanism by which one of those particles can be used to get information between point A and point B? (I don’t even care if it’s faster than light or not.)
When you collapse the particle on one end, all you know is that the particle on the other end has the opposite spin (or charge, or something). But that doesn’t give you any information about *anything else* on the other end.
February 24th, 2007 - 18:24
“As quantum entanglement has now been documented, internet access over long-distance is not necessarily problematic.”
QE cannot be used to transmit information faster than lightspeed. Cannot. Period.
“And for the record, other methods of transmitting information “faster than the speed of light†have been used; namely ‘controlled’ quantum tunneling of photons to transmit radio-waves.”
Yer what? Quantum tunneling refers to when a particle shifts from quantum state A to quantum state C without bothering to go through quantum state B in between. What this has to do with FTL is beyond me. FTL is still impossible, according to every source I’ve ever heard.
“but both have been, now, demonstrated.”
Yes, they have; they just can’t be used for FTS.
“But insofar as the ‘transmitting data faster than the speed of light’ bit; no, I’m sorry, but you’re just plain wrong.”
Okay, then, here are some sources, if you still refuse to believe us:
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=612
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1507278&lastnode_id=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
http://www.calitreview.com/Interviews/clegg_8029.htm
http://fergusmurray.members.beeb.net/Causality.html
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=762100
http://www.mtnmath.com/whatrh/node73.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070215084619AAFmWpj
And many, many others. This is a commonly known fact of quantum physics and has been for some time.
February 27th, 2007 - 13:13
Been a while since I’ve been back here:
Tom, pdf: what both of you say is true, but also essentially irrelevant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefunction_collapse
“One of the paradoxes of quantum theory is that wave function seems to be more than just information (otherwise interference effects are hard to explain) and often less than real, since the collapse seems to take place faster-than-light and triggered by observers.”
I know wikipedia isn’t the most accurate source, but this IS ‘laytalk’ anyhow.
While the spin state of entangled photons is indeed determined well beforehand, the nature of wave-functions implies that the effect can preceed the cause; that is, the collapse of the function by observation can determine the spin-position of the photon *BEFORE* it is observed. So while no information is in fact transmitted faster than the speed of light — this property can “simulate” that effect.
As to quantum tunneling being used to transmit radio information ‘faster than light’ — look up stochastic resonance, quantum-scale discontinuity of space, and then answer your own question. On the massive scale it *appears* to travel FTL. That it does not in fact do so is irrelevant to the two parties communicating over the greater distance than their information is traveling to reach one another.
February 27th, 2007 - 14:08
“the collapse of the function by observation can determine the spin-position of the photon *BEFORE* it is observed.”
I don’t know enough QM to know how accurate a description this is, but this really needs to be explained in math to make any sense, I think.
“this property can “simulate†that effect.”
Yes, it can, but it is still utterly useless for communicating between Earth and a spaceship.
“look up stochastic resonance”
I looked it up; I don’t see what it has to do with FTL communication. Please explain.
“quantum-scale discontinuity of space”
The very term “space”, as we think of it, doesn’t seem to make very much sense under QM in the first place. Please explain further.
“communicating over the greater distance than their information is traveling to reach one another.”
Why bother to use QM to transmit information at lightspeed? What’s wrong with radio waves?
February 28th, 2007 - 09:02
Tom: I couldn’t explain it in mathematical terms myself. The wikipedia link I gave does a good stab at it, and it could probably give a sounding board to find better connections.
Actually, as to communicating between Earth and a spaceship (to use the running allegory :) ), taking advantage of the “wavefunction collapse phenomenon” (my wording) through quantum entangled particles, permits what amounts to communication between two parties. This occurs simply; take two entangled particles, observed at a continuous sampling rate. Assuming some mechanism is used to preserve the entanglement, anytime one party acts to affect said particle, the paired object will also appear to be affected. Now, this cannot violate the constants of the universe, but according to the wave-function interpretation, there’s a “loophole” that covers this.
Stochastic resonance in and of itself has nothing to do with FTL communication. It is an important property to be aware of to understand how information can be relayed at what to human eyes would be FTL speeds.
The basic point is this; quantum tunneling as you have already recognized occurs when a particle relocates from quantum point A to quantum point E, *without having traversed* points B, C, or D. This is a property that has been demonstrated in a laboratory environment.
*Theoretically*, combining that property with mechanisms to control stochastic resonance, can cause a great number of particles to reliably “tunnel” from point A to point E. If the particle in question is a photon (say, as part of a radio wave), then the information carried by the accumulated particles/wave would appear to be moving at 5x *C*.
In short, C is a constant — but on a quantum scale distance is a variable. Since all the universe consists of the quantum scale, if this could be *predicted* then it is in fact possible to traverse at what to human eyes appears to be faster than C.
So, to summarize: There are essentially 2 main ways to communicate at “FTL” rates.
1) Arrange for all parties to already have the information with them, and observe it at fixed intervals. (Quantum entanglement + Wavefunction collapse).
2) Arrange for the information to take a shorter trip than the distance between the two parties. (Quantum tunneling + stochastic resonance.)
And as to your final question, Tom — radio waves are the *medium* by which information is relayed. I’ve pretty much been assuming that radio would be the method used. In fact, the quantum tunneling trick already HAS been used to successfully (in a laboratory environment) transmit the music of Mozart at an apparent rate of 1.5C.
All in all the quantum universe is friggin’ screwy. In many ways causality doesn’t even apply. Ever heard of vacuum pressure, quantum static, or the evaporation rate of quantum singularities?
That last hypothetically allows for a very interesting (to me anyhow) form of high-energy power generation. Essentially, you form a black hole *JUST* large enough to maintain an event horizon. So long as it is fed (and affixed in place by electromagnet bottling), it will continuously convert all mass introduced to it into energy. I bring it up because of the topic that started this thread. :)
March 1st, 2007 - 13:17
“take two entangled particles, observed at a continuous sampling rate.”
It doesn’t work that way. As soon as you observe an entangled particle, it collapses into a definite 1/0 state.
“at what to human eyes would be FTL speeds.”
“To human eyes?” So, er, if you’re out near *****, the Earth sends a signal at 6:00, and you receive the signal at 18:00, are the clocks all going to assume some sort of quantum superposition so that the humans see them reading 7:00?
“quantum tunneling as you have already recognized occurs when a particle relocates from quantum point A to quantum point E, *without having traversed* points B, C, or D. This is a property that has been demonstrated in a laboratory environment.”
Again, it doesn’t work that way. I don’t know quantum math very well, but “points” as we conventionally understand them don’t exist on the quantum level. The math of QM is in terms of waves and wave functions. And quantum tunneling does not happen instantaneously.
“can cause a great number of particles to reliably “tunnel†from point A to point E.”
Again, it doesn’t work that way. Quantum tunneling, like everything else in QM, is a random phenomenon- the only way to get it to happen reliably is to make it a very small barrier, so the probability is high. And even if you do that, so what? You’ve gotten the particle to move a whole 10^-14 meters. Not very useful for communication.
“then the information carried by the accumulated particles/wave would appear to be moving at 5x *C*.”
Who cares if it “appears” to be moving? If you sit down at your terminal, and the display reads “downloading”, and zero bits are coming in over the network line, it isn’t very helpful.
“That last hypothetically allows for a very interesting (to me anyhow) form of high-energy power generation.’
It also would require a major rewrite of particle physics, as it violates conservation of baryon number.
“successfully (in a laboratory environment) transmit the music of Mozart at an apparent rate of 1.5C.”
I found the reference you left out:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw75.html
This is published in a science fiction magazine, NOT a journal, official press release, or anything intended for actual professional communication. He also leaves out the math. At the quantum level, you CANNOT refer to a “signal” or “transmission” in the same sense we normally do with no math; you’ll just end up getting hopelessly confused. Things work very differently in QM, as shown by your above example.
Anyway, this is apparently still in dispute, and I can’t find follow-up work which would confirm this. Not to mention that if true, you could easily perform an experiment that would allow you to do interesting things like leave before you arrive.
March 2nd, 2007 - 08:48
Re: Violation of the baryon number; that’s a misnomer. *HAVE* you read Hawking’s quantum singularity ‘evaporation’ hypothesis?
Re: Quantum entanglement & collapsed states via observation; that’s both technically true and technically irrelevant. The best that can be said is that there is far more than is currently understood here. Whether or not entanglement is ended at the point of observation is unknown; it is *BELIEVED* to be so, currently. There’s nothing saying that it can’t be forced by some as-yet unknown property of the universe.
I’ll remind you that there is a dimensional axis of our universe that is measured in microns from one “end” to the other “end”.
In short, I doubt either of us are really qualified for this conversation. :) I will ask this, though; if quantum entanglement is necessarily obviated by observation, then why would it be so useful in q-bit computation techniques, as is currently clamored about?
As far as the wave/particle dichotomy & discrete/continuum space-time, I maintain that the particle description does in fact demonstrate the traverse of space without traveling through all points in space. The wave/field description does *NOT* obviate this.
March 2nd, 2007 - 12:49
No FTL communication, sorry. Ask a real physicist. All apparent c+ information transfers are illusions. Your reference is from ANALOG MAGAZINE. Analog Magazine for fucksakes. It seems like you want to believe in FTL communication in spite of a lack of evidence, but believe me, we can have plenty of fun in the future without it.
That last hypothetically allows for a very interesting (to me anyhow) form of high-energy power generation. Essentially, you form a black hole *JUST* large enough to maintain an event horizon. So long as it is fed (and affixed in place by electromagnet bottling), it will continuously convert all mass introduced to it into energy.
Clever, but small black holes barf out Hawking radiation fast enough to fry anything in the vicinity. Good luck bottling it.
You can convert almost all the mass into energy by throwing it into the infalling matter. The matter rubs against itself at ~c speeds, splattering electromagnetic juices everywhere.
Whether or not entanglement is ended at the point of observation is unknown; it is *BELIEVED* to be so, currently.
Observers don’t collapse the wave function. The anthropocentric Copenhagen Interpretation is being thrown in the garbage by most physicists, where it belongs.
http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm
March 2nd, 2007 - 15:13
Anthropocentrism is a fun word.
From your article:
” Many-Worlds predicts that the Everett-worlds do not interact with each other because of the presumed linearity of the wave equation. However worlds do interfere with each other, and this enables the theory to be tested.”
Wave-function collapse or many-world quantum theory, the effect remains the same. Again, while it may only be a “phantom” effect, the result in terms of usefulness would remain the same.
Of course, you could always try becoming a Chaote and finding out what happens when you let a semi hit you after believing *REALLY* hard that it won’t hurt you.
If you don’t want to listen, though, nothing will make you. :) (I suppose that applies to myself as well.)
March 5th, 2007 - 13:03
The problem with cryosuspension is not ice crystals but toxicity caused by the cell’s own internal contents being concentrated by osmotic pressures.
March 5th, 2007 - 13:35
Oh and Michael, you’re right that making people less-conflict prone goes hand-in-hand with making them asexual, but not for the reasons you think. Killing off the testosterone is easy enough, but it tends to make men useless (depressed and lethargic).
Now here’s the second problem: it ain’t really the violence or the violent gender you gotta worry about. T does make men more violent than women, but only because it changes how conflicts are resolved, not because it makes them more conflict-prone. If you want to hear about conflict, ask a friend who works in an all-female or mostly-female office.
The easy answer to reducing conflict is plain old Prozac. Kills off sex drive as well.
March 5th, 2007 - 21:00
The problem with cryosuspension is not ice crystals but toxicity caused by the cell’s own internal contents being concentrated by osmotic pressures.
Hm, I don’t know much about this. Surely they can be re-diffused, yes? Further information on this topic would be welcome. (Google’s not bringing much up.)
The easy answer to reducing conflict is plain old Prozac. Kills off sex drive as well.
Heh, I see. Whatever works!
March 6th, 2007 - 10:31
The basic idea is that there’s a lot more crap to depress the freezing point inside the cells than outside, so the phase transitions don’t happen at the same temperature. As the exterior solidifies, osmotic pressure sucks water out of the cell and concentrates the contents. Vitrification prevents ice crystals, but this kind of damage remains a problem. Ask your friend Wowk about it, or see yarchive.net/med/cryonics.html.
Yes, they can be re-diffused, but that doesn’t fix whatever damage was done in the meantime. It’s like hard-boiling an egg and then sticking it in the freezer. Once those proteins are denatured, you can’t reverse process by reversing the temperature change. Only thing you can really do is give that damage as little time as possible to occur. That’s why they flash-freeze ice cream and flash-heat milk to pasteurize it.
For a big chunk of solid meat, both cooling and re-warming take time. There’s not much you can to speed that up without big temperature gradients which cause damage of their own.
March 6th, 2007 - 12:07
Are you the Konrad who lives in Florida, the one in the UK, or the one from Germany?
March 7th, 2007 - 14:13
Florida; Didn’t know there were others with that name commenting on this blog. Isn’t the email I supply when posting visible to you?
March 7th, 2007 - 14:17
Oh, it is, I didn’t know that it wasn’t okay to ask in a thread.
March 8th, 2007 - 08:56
It’s okay with me, just wondering.
May 15th, 2007 - 08:36
“Your reference is from ANALOG MAGAZINE. Analog Magazine for fucksakes. ”
Well, to be fair, Analog DOES also publish some non-fiction articles on science, hence the title “Analog Science Fiction & Fact”. And out of the science articles that I’ve seen that present “new” things, Google for the Science Behind the Story (or whatever they called it) for “The Fruitcake Genome”, you’ll find if I recall correctly that you can download the programs in question and run the same experiment (translating the genetic code for the fruit fly genome – or any other of certain kinds of patterns, such as text or stock tickers – into music) yourself. Not that the experiment is necessarily all that useful, but it is a fun notion (‘course the guy who did it figures it can be used to notice patterns that aren’t as easy to see without conversion, but I’m pretty sure he was mostly joking when he extended this to wondering if he could use it to edit prose fiction by figuring out what the patterns of bad writing sound like when converted to music. Though some of his examples of bad prose writing DID seem to be capable of being analyzed by almost pure – albeit probably more sophisticated – pattern analysis, given that the ones I recall at least were “redundancy” and “over-using adverbs” and the like).
Not saying they’re Nature or any other peer-reviewed journal, because they’re not, but they DO publish non-fiction science articles, and even their fiction (stiff though it may usually be) is noted for being pretty much exclusively hard SF, which means it’s at least reasonably well-researched from the science end. So, yeah, not a good direct source for something like that but do play nice, Micheal. :P They’re not all that bad a ‘zine when it comes to science, just usually a bad choice for a direct source for something.
March 1st, 2008 - 18:33
The background temperature of space is around 3-4 degrees above absolute zero. There is no such thing as “stealth in space”. The space al-qaeda can do their strike once, after that, everybody knows where they are. Since they are in the minority, they would lose the delta-v and laser game.
Atomic Rockets is a good site to look at realistic spacebattles. I would venture to guess that they would be quite rare.