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Or: Why life is just information Oct 16, 2005 There lies a rather large problem in interstellar travel, in that the distance between stars is so great, that travel between them would take years even traveling at the speed of light - which current science believes to be the maximum speed at which matter can move. To deal with this troubling situation, science fiction has resorted to other solutions - stating that other means of travel will be invented that will let space ships in fact travel faster than the speed of light. Sometimes these involve just some sort of "warp drive", other times it involves tunneling through a 4th dimension of space and landing within another part of the universe. My vision of the distant future differs quite drastically from that created by classic science fiction. It begins by the somewhat 'archaic' method of sending civilization from one planet to another by the traditional method of a space vessel. I envision this vessel taking many years to get from one hospitable planet to another - perhaps even spanning multiple human generations. To accomplish this, the vessel will need to be self sufficient and recycling energy and matter with very small amounts of waste. Energy would probably be a bit more expendable as some additional energy may be able to be gathered during the trip from distant stars or perhaps from absorbing impact from space objects, and in addition I could foresee being able to store massive amounts of spare energy (currently nuclear energy is extremely efficient in many ways, with very little needed to be consumed to create much energy). Conservation of matter would probably be more important though, as nutrients would need to be recycled, as well as water, oxygen, etc. Once the craft gets to its final destination is where the fun begins. Once it arrives, I envision it 'opening up shop' and setting up communication with the other inhabited planets. Whereas sending vessels from one place to another would take long periods of time, sending information from one to the other would be instant via a central communication system. The communication system would work as follows. Back on the inhabited planet where the vessel departed from, two communication devices would have been created. Within one device would be one of two entangled quantum particles, and within the other device is the second entangled quantum particle that is "entangled" to the first. (http://whyfiles.org/shorties/133quantum_leap/) There is much to be read about how entangled quantum particles work, but in essence they are two objects that even when separated by great distances, will mirror one another. So if one is in a positive state, the other will be in a negative state. If the positive state particle is reversed to a negative state, its entangled partner will instantly flip to a positive state. This is essentially a single bit of information - and when flipped many times (or when many particles are flipped) information can be passed in binary form just as it is today by computers. So, connecting the pieces, we take a bunch of entangled quantum particles and stick them in one Reading/Flipping box, and put their twin particles in a second Reading/Flipping box, and you have the equivalent of two computers which can communicate with one another instantly over great distances, potentially infinite distances. This is pretty mind blowing, but has already been demonstrated with some success to actually work. To make things even stranger, here is where I get into my more bizarre thought process. I believe humans to simply be a mass of molecules arranged in a very particular order (or a bit sloppily at times) to form these things we call bodies. There also seems to be a bit of electrical current that somehow plays a part in what we are. However, I believe that this is all there is to humans - no other unexplainable essences, souls, etc. Many would argue with this theory, but this is the basis off of which I will proceed from here on out in this narration. So, seeing how we are simply an arrangement of molecules, and potentially some electrical currents, I foresee many years down the road the possibility of capturing all of that information. Essentially, have a process where by at any instant, we can capture the current layout, molecule by molecule, of any person (or object). In addition to capturing the person's DNA that would describe one aspect of them (their inherited traits), the process would also capture current state which is shaped by everything that has happened to the person until this point. This would include the amount of muscle they have built up, the scars that have formed, and everything that is in their brain at that point. Having captured the blueprint that is me at any precise moment in time, we then transfer that information from the original planet, to the newly colonized planet. Again, since I am made up of simple molecules, and since we now have my blueprint on this new planet in which I have never been to before, we can now essentially just build me from the ground up - much like building nanostructures (http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm...). Since memories, knowledge, and all that lies within my brain is just formed from molecular structures and electrical currents that can be captured and recreated, my new self will be identical to my old self in every way. This does bring about an interesting question of what do with the original copy - perhaps society would mandate that the original copy must be destroyed, or perhaps it would be kept and it would be a way to instantly populate a new planet while keeping the population of the old planet. This is just a detail that can be worked out in many long hearings on the interplanetary congress floor. Comments: RB) I'm not convinced that the totality of humans are electrically bonded molecules, particularly since humans are pretty limited in determining solution to the most simple phenomenon. You've made the leap solely sighting a religious (SOUL) component to the human structure and discounting it. I'm suggesting a component that has yet to be detected because either a) humans have not discovered it, or b) humans do not have the capacity to discover it. I.E. A bird may never have the capacity to know what it is to be a bird since their brain cannot transcend itself. SB) Yup, I know where you are coming from on this one, the whole "The only things that the human brain may never be able to understand is the human brain". So yes, you could be right, but there doesn't really seem to be any way of proving that there is "something else" until we actually test my hypothesis and try it out :-) Wanna be first in line? SB) You may not even need to send that first batch of Humans, you can instead just send an unmanned craft and have it automate the process on the other end once it arrives - ie, just turn on, and start cranking out humans. SB) Good point. SW) i'm totally onboard for basic teleportation by recomposition on a molecule-by-molecule basis and i think that view would be shared by most other people with an extensive scientific background, particularly in both neuroscience and cognitive science where we can see the pieces falling together for the first time. it is actually pretty easy to imagine that "that's all there is" -- it's just hard to comprehend all the mind-boggling complexity contained in that statement is all SB) Rockin' Send Comments |
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