The Transceiver Challenge - Who Can Build It First?
Humanoido
Posts: 5,770
The challenge is developing a long range transceiver that can instantly communicate across the galaxy. We have Pi Mesons that travel faster than light/electromagnetic radiation and they exist in formula but we simply cannot directly see their presence and we lack the technology to fully harness their power. So here we are with SETI and bulky radio telescopes looking for radio transmissions that could take millions of years to reach us while the rest of the aliens who are more advanced use "instant" real state of the art pi meson equipment. It's no doubt we haven't detected their presence yet. They've been under our noses all along. What a bummer!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pion
Comments
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Quantum Physics suggests the two electrons can be in two different places at the same time.
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Maybe the Aliens have a better understanding of this?
-Phil
I recently told of TV program that used quantum tunneling to send information faster than light.
After reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light , I'm not so sure the experiment I saw was valid.
It does appear tunneling electrons travel faster than light (1.7c?) but it looks like this happens over very short distances.
I also just read that pions last just fractions of a second, so if we used them to communicate they have to go dang fast not to die on the way.
I'll add $100 to the pot to be awarded to the first person who can show(prove) they are communicating faster than light (lets say 1.5c) across a space of over 500 meters.
Duane
We humans have relatively well documented / guessed idea how long we have been in existence on this rock. It took us few years before we invented transistor and got to leave our motherland into space..
Now what makes everybody always speculate that aliens are technologically ahead of us?
So far there is no evidence they even know how to communicate.
Perhaps Morse code of sort.
But let's face it – we are not alone, but it is scary to imagine that there are big man eating dinosaurs somewhere out there.
And as far as I know – speed of light is maximum posted speed in universe, unless you are a Superman.
The cool thing about this is the gradient levels of physics. We went from Newtonian Mechanics at small observable speeds on the Earth, like Newtons falling apple, to that of Space Time Relativity, like Einstein's time travel above .1 light speed at the next level. It is now generally understood, Hawking et al., there is a level beyond light speed.
There are numerous ways to travel faster than light. Many are cited in the sources below.
* There's distorted regions of space time that enable faster than light velocities.
* You can go faster than light if you make light slow down. Light slows down to c/n where n is the refractive index of the medium, 1.0003 for air, 1.4 for water. Particles can travel through air or water at faster than the speed of light in the medium. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html
* When vacuum energy is lowered, light itself has been predicted to go faster than the standard value 'c'. This is known as the Scharnhorst effect. Such a vacuum can be produced by bringing two perfectly smooth metal plates together at near atomic diameter spacing. It is called a Casimir vacuum. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Faster-than-light
* The physicists G
The concept I've always found most promising is this. MASSIVE (not as in big, but the physical definition, ie., posessing the property of having mass) objects/particles may not exceed the speed of light, but the FABRIC of space-time around them- containing no mass, can be flexed, distorted and squeezed with no limit to its speed. Hence, the level of understanding in this early 21st century is that, rather than send mass in a direction at a speed, you contract and expand space before and behind the object to "travel". Effectively, the object moves little distance, but once that distance has been travelled, the space is then expanded "behind" the object, and the object is now a great distance from its "starting" point. These metrics were first delineated by the Mexican mathematician Miguel Alcubierre, and have since been significantly improved upon, but the mathematics does indicate this principle is sound.
The problems arise only with our current levels of understanding of what "mass" really is! As odd as it may sound, we don't really know what gives matter the property of having mass. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is currently trying to unravel that mystery. This research is critical to our FTL possibilities because we know now that gravity isn't a "force" in itself, but an effect produced by mass distorting or warping our local spacetime fabric structure. When we understand what mass really is, what imparts the magical property to matter of being able to warp spacetime, we may be able then to manipulate the fabric of spacetime at will. Currently, the metrics only suggest small amounts of antimatter, or, in some newer metrics being suggested, dark matter or dark energy, may also be active players in the looming FTL discoveries.
Getting back to the transmitter for a bit, one of the most interesting things I've heard on this is the possibility of enveloping a standard electromagnetic wave within a region of this "distorted spacetime" and you would effectively send the EM signal at superluminal velocities when you compressed and expanded the bubble to create a directional shift.
And then there's tachyons, whose speed increases as it's energy decreases. It has a miminum velocity of C (speed of light) - and theoretically, it's ground state, with zero energy, would see it travelling with infinite velocity - in other words, there may be only one tachyon - and it exists everywhere in the universe simultaneously. If you could somehow modulate that little sucker, it would be the ultimate broadcast!
As proved repeatedly on Lost in Space, incredible things happen when you "reverse the polarity" on most anything.
This is why we experiment. Just because one can come up with an equation doesn't mean it applies to the real world unless it can be tested.
When I took "Modern Physics" (which was about stuff a hundred years old), I began to have the impression that all of matter is just little equations.
What's an electron? How big is it? We know how massive it is but don't know about its length or volume. If one squares the equation representing the electron you get a probability distribution for its position but the equation itself does not describe anything that we can relate to directly. It's not the path an electron takes. The electron can't be travelling in any kind of circle or ellipse around the atom because then it would be accelerating and imedieately collapse with a small bust of radiated energy.
All we can do is come up with equations and test them so see how closely they correspond to the "real world".
I've heard and read theories about simulated worlds(Matrix etc.). I'm not sure what the difference would be.
Duane
Just don't shoot tachyons at one location of space in three different time frames!!!
And never cross the streams!
Re pions traveling faster than light. I saw a show not long ago on discovery, what the experimeter did was make the pion last longer not speed it up. I think this is what you were referring to.
The details are way above me so I cannot explain further maybe some else here can enlighten us.
Ray
It pretty much looks like the very concept of either traveling FTL or transmitting a stream of information FTL are both things that pretty much don't make sense mathematically in the universe where we live -- kind of like building a cube the square root of negative one on a side.
OTOH I don't think any of that math forbids an object (potentially containing a bunch of information) from ceasing to exist at one point and reappearing at another some arbitrary distance away, regardless of the distance involved. This is in fact exactly what happens in tunnel diodes; electrons are crowded up very close to a very thin insulating barrier, and because the quantum description of an electron is a probability field they are crowded so close that there is a distinct probability that some of the electrons will actually be on the other side of the barrier -- and so they are, completing the circuit! The proof that electrons are indeed crossing the barrier without actually traveling across the intervening space is that the voltage/current curve perfectly resembles what the QM math predicts. And in that scenario, the electron doesn't travel very far, barely the width of an atom, but it does so instantaneously. Faster than light.
All we need to do is work on the range...
I've heard this described as a spinning top, where you press on one side and everywhere else the effect is felt/observed. Only with QM you set up two points (I don't know how) One point is the center axis of rotation, while the other point on edge contains the 'information' ... in otherwords the end that you modulate. Again I don't know how this is done. By some strange effect in QM a third point is produced that would effectively be on the opposite end of the 'top' that would mimick the information sent on the opposite side.
I just watched a show on the Discovery channel, with Mythbusters, and it was along this topic. They moved along in one straight direction at 50 mph in a car and then shot out a soccer size ball at 50 mph in the opposite direction. As expected, the two motions canceled out, and in the high speed video frames one could see the ball simply drop straight down. One can conclude the motions would also be additive in the same direction.
But is Relativity different? Hypothetically consider a car traveling at light speed C in the forward direction. (This could be an issue because we believe particles travel at less than the speed of light, or jump to greater than the speed of light) The headlights work normally at C and send out beams of light also in the forward direction. Einstein brings terms to that of the reference system. Consider both the car and headlight are in your reference system. So for the light you have the effective car speed at which you travel which is your reference system + headlights operating normally at light speed, also in your reference system, presumably for really good vision. Knowing this, what can you say about the tail lights?
Around the time when the series began, they portrayed several new technologies, including a talking desktop computer, hand held communications devices and anti-matter. Of course all are now real - with microcomputers, cell phones and... the US government put out contract requests for anti-matter containment.
So let's say, more realistically, that you and your partners are convoying to Spring Break at 99% of C with respect to the state trooper you pass. When you turn on your lights they look normal to the other car, because you're not going 99% of c with respect to each other. That's why the theory is called "relativity"; there is no such thing as absolute speed. Within your frame of reference the other car is still, and the lights you shine emit light that travels at c.
Now, here's where it gets weird: The fundamental assumption of Special Relativity is that the speed of light is a constant, so this means the light you emit also travels at c for the state trooper. Since light is a wave, what this does is it crams all the waves together as you approach him, reducing the apparent wavelength and blue-shifting the color. Once you pass him it drags the waves apart, increasing the wavelength and red-shifting the color.
Of course this falls apart if you are traveling "at" c, which is why this is generally reckoned to be impossible. Here's the other problem: Your motor exerts a certain amount of thrust to accelerate you. As you go faster with respect to the trooper, you appear to get more massive to him, and when you punch the accelerator you don't get as much of a speed increase as you would if you were lighter. Within your frame of reference you feel normal, but to the trooper you pass you appear to be getting less and less speed increase for the gas you're burning as you get closer and closer to c. Eventually this blows up into a bunch of infinities and a big fat singularity should you actually happen to reach c, which is why that is generally reckoned to be impossible.
Now as it happens those infinities go away and the math starts to work again if you assume you're already going faster than c, and if particles existed that lived on the other side of c like that they would be what are called tachyons. Unfortunately, there are several ways we could expect to detect them and despite some serious tries we have zero evidence that tachyons exist. Furthermore, other math models such as the one in the OP suggest even bigger problems with FTL communication.
The thing that is odd is that in quantum models the Universe seems quite willing to break the very rules it is so consistent about enforcing on the system it implements. In several quantum experiments there is "spooky action at a distance" which the QM math is very consistent about, but if you were implementing the Universe as a simulation the only way you could model the behavior numerically would be to send information across your model faster than light. Nobody has a really good explanation for how that works except to say "that's what the math says should happen and it happens."
-Tor
["lightspeed" isn't even a good term, it's just that photons happens to be among those "massless" particles and thus have to travel at that particular speed, so it ended up being called "lightspeed". Gravity travels with that speed too, so if that had been found first we would probably call it "gravityspeed" or something.]
-Tor
Maybe God said, Let there be Time.
Our universe is bounded by time, not dimension. Remove time and you have NOTHING; no abstractions like distance or velocity or the three dimensions.
The (now) immortal Bob Wills had it right, "Time changes everything." (Wills predated Hawking by many years.)
I have thought about this for a bit . . . over half a century. I am not a mathematician, but I played one on campus for a while.
Forgive me if I've strayed from the topic.
--Bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morrison