We are at the realm of weird science. I seem to remember that this thread was
originally about how author, Rudy Rucker, came up with the concept of
clonning an electromagnetic version of a personality and then sending the
A.I. proggie off onto the cosmos. The book is Saucer Wisdom. My only caveat
was that there was danger from interference by other em sources, also
gravity, also gas clouds. Kids don't try this at home. Neutrino's, because
they penetrate nearly everthing, seem to be a great candidate for such and
endevour. My hope is by the time such interstellar journeys are seriously
considered we will be well into the krasnikov-wormhole era.
In a message dated 9/21/00 10:55:45 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
sentience@pobox.com writes:
<< Okay: Shout REALLY LOUD...
"Most people think Star Trek has solved the problem of faster-than-light
travel. I am much more fascinated by Star Trek's solution to the
sound-in-a-vacuum problem."
--Karen Lingel
On a more serious note, are we really sure that neutrinos can't be used for
communication? Suppose you had some way to aim the neutrino beam almost
perfectly, correcting for gravitational influences, so that you can pour a
beam into a 1mm-diameter cup orbiting another star. Suppose that you also
fire off a million neutrinos in a perfect two-dimensional grid, each neutrino
an infinitesimal bit to the side of the previous one, so that at least one
neutrino in the pattern is guaranteed to hit any atomic nucleus inside the
pattern's radius. Fire the beam at a crystal where the atomic spacing is
less
than the pattern diameter, and at least one neutrino is guaranteed to hit.
The result could be an interstellar radio that shines effortlessly through
any
amount of dust.
I have no idea whether this makes any sense from a physicist's perspective,
but my guess is "NO". The basic assumption seems to be that a really
perfectly aimed neutrino can be deliberately made to be absorbed by an atom,
and I don't know whether the penetrating quality of neutrinos derives from
the
improbability of a perfect hit, or the improbability of absorption in any hit
(glancing or otherwise).
Is a detector made of neutronium more likely to get hit? Could you reverse
the patterned-neutrino theory and use patterned neutronium to guarantee a
hit? Or is that just not the way quantum neutridynamics work?
Neutrino-neutronium radio... ought to be a pun here...
This makes a nice little dialogue for a post-Singularity novel:
"You communicate with Andromeda? How?"
"Oh, we send out a sequence of neutrinos; a neutrino strikes
a chlorine atom and turns it into argon, that's a 'one'..."
"But can't a neutrino pass through ten light-years of lead
without being absorbed?"
"We aim them really carefully."
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>>
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