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Whitestar
Posted:
Sun Mar 07, 2004 6:50 am
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 1
Location: Florida
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Conversion of Energy into Matter
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I recently read an article on the net about the conversion of energy into matter. Michael Pidwirny, the guy who wrote it claimed that it might one day be a useful means of teleportation like in Star Trek. Here is a direct quote from him:
"In 1998 researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center successfully converted energy into matter. This feat was accomplished by using lasers and incredibly strong electromagnetic fields to change ordinary light into matter. The results of this experiment may allow for the development of variety of technological gadgets. One such development could be matter/energy transporters or food replicators that are commonly seen in some of our favorite science fiction programs."
And here is the website: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6a.html
Okay, here's my two cents worth. If the mass of a person is converted into energy in an uncontrolled way (eg, collision with a very large amount of antimatter, destroying every proton, neutron and electron in your body) then the information that is encoded on the gamma rays (usually) released will be lost.
In a controlled conversion, you could in principle convert the entire body to energy one particle at a time, and then read off the whole state and transmit it. But there are two problems with this:
1) A tremendous amount of data needs to be sent. In "The Physics of Star Trek" author Lawerence Krauss calculates the approximate amount, about 10,000 light-years to the center of the galaxy!
2) The amount of time this takes.
However, current thought in neuroscience is that the "personailty/consciousness" is not at all QM, and thus there is no need to break someone down to a subatomic level and read their Quantum State. Instead, it is simply enough to know there chemical structure - and copy it at that resolution. This means there are no "no cloning" problems, much less data to handle, and no need to destroy the original (given sufficient technology to do the scanning). This would allow you to create "clones" - you could send copies of yourself "over the radio", while you stay safe at home. (Greg Egan's Diaspora talks about this at an AI level - the AI programs clone themselves and send themselves all over the place)
Now if you turn each person into energy, you get a cloud of gamma rays expanding outwards. There is nothing that would make them spontaneously reform the person - even if you reflected them backwards, they would not neccessarily create the original particles. It is much more likely that teleportation would involve sending the information that can be gleaned from the gamma rays, and then having the information used by a base station to construct the person, more mechanically.
In my view, when your body is destroy, you die. End of story. What comes out of the teleporter is an exact copy, with all your memories etc, and no knowledge that it isn't you, but it isn't. No one would ever notice the problem, so it only affects you when it happens. Unless, if you believe in souls, there are "conservation of souls" problems to deal with - does the same soul follow the body around?
While in an information state, there is no consciousness, no heart to beat - the person is not a person shaped lump of energy, rather they are radio waves carrying info about his state.
What does everybody else thinks?
Whitestar
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Mr.Bod
Posted:
Wed May 18, 2005 10:02 pm
Joined: 02 May 2005
Posts: 2
Location: Wales
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That's really thought provoking stuff. I can't really comment scientifically, but since I'm not a big believer in souls and the like, it seems to me that there is no reason to suggest that the reconstructed/teleported person isn't the same "you" that existed originally.
While we're here, I'll ask a simple physics question. In this energy/mass conversion, does all the energy resulting from mass take the form of gamma rays? What about momentum of particles etcetera?
_________________
"If E=MCsquared where do jelly babies come from?"
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SkyBoard
Site Admin
Posted:
Sun May 22, 2005 3:45 pm
Joined: 05 Feb 2005
Posts: 24
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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I in turn have one concern: as the body of matter becomes one of energy, would not some of that matter be lost by the time the body has undergone rematerialization?
_________________
"Your God may be in the details, but mine's in the process." - Ian Malcolm
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PurplePacifier
Posted:
Thu Jul 21, 2005 8:23 pm
Joined: 21 Jul 2005
Posts: 4
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Re: Conversion of Energy into Matter
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| Whitestar wrote: |
In a controlled conversion, you could in principle convert the entire body to energy one particle at a time, and then read off the whole state and transmit it. But there are two problems with this:
1) A tremendous amount of data needs to be sent. In "The Physics of Star Trek" author Lawerence Krauss calculates the approximate amount, about 10,000 light-years to the center of the galaxy!
2) The amount of time this takes.
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A Solution
There are already algorithms to determine patterns within large amounts of data; much like how the .jpeg format of one picture uses less memory than a .bmp format of the same picture, or how .mp3 music files can be compressed versions of audio cd tracks. So the computer need not remember the information of every particle of a person, but simply find the patterns of the particles that make up that person and rebuild/rematerialize those particles according to the patterns.
One pattern that the computer may use to remember where certain particles belong is the fact that our bodies have some kind of symmetry.
A much more advanced pattern can utilize the DNA of a person. Within our DNA, there are codes to determine what we should be like, given a certain age. A computer can simply scan our DNA and other non-DNA information, transfer that information across whatever distance, then a computer at that destination can virtually estimate how "we should be like" given our DNA, and make modifications given the non-DNA information.
Using patterns to represent where certain particles should be should greatly reduce the amount of information of particles to store and greatly reduce the time to transmit and reassemble.
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starhunter
Posted:
Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:57 am
Joined: 27 Jul 2005
Posts: 6
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It's Quantum Roulette....
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The trouble is, we don't know what we're getting out of the energy - alot of exotic short-lived particles that have nothing to do with the atoms that compose our bodies. I would not want to try teleportation, it would be a great painless form of capital punishment though!
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