You were up early, delivered the paper, had
breakfast while reading and are ready for a nap. You also found a good BBC
article on communication and popped it on your FB page. Drop it in here also. –
Amorella
** **
19 March 2015
Will we ever… speak faster than light speed?
By Peter Ray Allison
Light
travels so fast it can make the transatlantic journey between London and New
York more than 50 times each second. With speed like that, you might wonder why
there’s any interest at all in finding faster-than-light communication. But
there is.
With the vast distances between objects in deep-space,
even messages travelling at the speed of light take an appreciable time to
arrive. The bad news is that it’s impossible to send communications any faster
without breaking established laws of physics – but the good news is that some
workarounds have been suggested, which hold the tantalising promise of allowing
for faster-than-light, or “superluminal” communication.
So far, it
has not really been necessary to develop superluminal communication to keep our
conversations flowing. The furthest humans have travelled is to the Moon,
approximately 384,400 kilometres away. For light to travel this distance, it
will take 1.3 seconds. This is similar to the delay you may experience when
calling someone on the other side of the world. Enough to lead to awkward pauses
in conversation maybe, but nothing too bothersome.
Tyranny of
distance
If we
travelled further, though – say, to Mars – then we start to have problems. Mars
is on average 225 million km away: about 12.5 minutes at light speed.
Conversations between people on Mars and on Earth would be very stilted as a
consequence. And the problems only get worse the further you travel. The Voyager
spacecraft are already beyond the edges of our solar system, at 19.5 billion kilometres
from Earth. Despite the distance, we can still receive messages from them;
however each message takes 18 hours to arrive.
To communicate with Alpha Centauri, our closest
star-system, located about 40 trillion kilometres away, it would take more than
four years for each message to be delivered. Thus, conventional conversation is
no longer feasible.
According to
Einstein’s special theory of relativity, that’s the way things will stay.
Nothing can go superluminal, reasoned Einstein, since the speed of light is a
universal constant.
If a way
around this limitation were to be discovered, it would “violate the laws of
information theory and require some rethinking of basic physics”, according to
Les Deutsch of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, who has
spent years designing deep space telecommunications systems for Nasa.
Today,
almost all conventional communication in space is conducted using radio waves,
which travel at the speed of light through the vacuum of space. Optical (Laser)
communication technology is currently being introduced, but this is still in
the development phase.
Warping
wormholes
We may not
be able to increase the speed of transmission; however we can increase the
volume of information that is transmitted per second. “One of the things we are
doing is moving the carrier frequency to higher in the spectrum, from 8GHz to
30GHz” says Deutsch. The higher the frequency of the signal, the greater
its bandwidth and the higher the volume of information you can transmit every
second. Using data compression and error correction allow us to further
decrease the size of information, increasing even further the amount of data
that can be sent per second.
Perhaps in future we might find ways to make the speed of
the messages seem quicker. “Relativity Theory allows for things like wormholes,
which you can think of as warps in spacetime, where you could have short-cuts”
says Deutsch. An easy way to think of a wormhole is to draw two dots on a sheet
of paper. You could draw a straight line between the two, which would be the
shortest distance between the points on flat paper. However if the paper
was folded, so the two dots were held close together, a pin could punch through
from one to the other. In space, wormholes are unlikely to be positioned quite
so conveniently, though: they might speed up some messages, but that
communication still would not be instantaneous.
Other routes
to superluminal communication have been considered. One involves quantum
entanglement – a strange property, which means two particles can share
properties, no matter how far apart they are.
“With
quantum entanglement, where you have two entangled particles separated from
each other, if you change one then you also change the state of the other,”
says Ed Trollope, a spacecraft operations engineer for Telespazio VEGA Deutschland. “It is tempting
to say we will have instantaneous communication by using entangled particles.”
Tangles and
tachyons
But it’s not
that simple. If you have a pair of entangled particles, one particle held on a
spacecraft cruising through the outer reaches of the solar system, and its
partner on Earth, then it’s true that a change in the state of the particle on
the spaceship would immediately cause a change in the state of its partner on
Earth. But, as Trollope explains, the person monitoring the particle on Earth
will be unable to work out what the change means without an explanatory message
from the spacecraft – and that message will be travelling no faster than the
speed of light. In other words, quantum entanglement falls short of offering a
route to superluminal communication.
There are also hypothetical particles, greatly favoured by
Star Trek,
known as tachyons. The theory of special relativity does not forbid their
existence – and if they are real, they would always travel faster than the
speed of light. Again, though, they do not provide a means of superluminal
communication.
“These might
be moving faster than the speed of light, but tachyons are not supposed to
interact,” explains Trollope. This lack of interactivity means that tachyons
are unusable for the purposes of communication, since we believe it is
impossible for us to create or to detect them.
If
superluminal communication were possible, it would have powerful implications
for space missions. “Working on Rosetta [the European Space Agency’s mission that landed a
probe on a comet last year], we had a 30 to 40- minute light-time, so this does
affect the way you design and operate your mission,” says Trollope. “If
you have a satellite in Earth orbit, you can pretty much talk to it in
real-time. When you have a 30-minute delay, it means that when you see a
problem, that was 30 minutes ago. By the time you send a command, it will be 30
minutes before it happens, and it will be an hour before you see the results of
that.”
For all their tantalising promise, tachyons and quantum
entanglement are not plausible routes to superluminal communication. Wormholes
– if they exist, and if signals can pass through them – may at least give the
impression of communication at faster-than-light speed. But, as things stand,
superluminal communication stretches the limits of scientific plausibility.
From -
http://www.bbcDOTcom/future/story/20150318-will-we-ever-speak-across-galaxies
** **
0844
hours. Whenever someone writes “tachyons and quantum entanglement are not
plausible routes to superluminal communication,” I wonder, rather cynically, when
it will be plausible (but without regret if it doesn’t).
0855 hours. I am ever cheerfully cynical, Amorella.
You are sitting to the northeast side of the roadway at the central
crossroads at Rose Hill Cemetery while Carol is taking a short walk. The doctor
told her no more walking in the park because of the up/down terrain and she has
to walk on asphalt or concrete. The cemetery is not flat but not so bad as the
park. You are sitting in the shade of a tall evergreen with the windows down
and sunroof open; it is a little chilly with the southwest wind. It is supposed
to warm up to sixty-five degrees with lightly cloudy Spring skies. Lots of
American flags flutter in the landscape and you are not sure why. – Amorella
1316 hours. Memorial Day is not until the end of May. In any case there
is no problem telling which way the wind is blowing. I would assume it would be
warmer being from the southwest, but alas, it is not.
You are having a Subway picnic down at the
park and canoe livery station along the Little Miami for the first time in a
while. Carol is on chapter nine of Accused by Lisa Scottoline. –
Amorella
1420 hours. Carol just read the author’s brief background, which
intimates among other things, that her third husband will be a dog. So, she has
a sense of humor (or not). Time to work on Grandma 9. Very nice down here in
the valley – little wind and actually it is warming up.
You returned to the cemetery for another ten
minutes or so walk for Carol and you completed Grandma Nine in seven hundred
and sixty-five words. You wonder if it is complete enough but it will do for
now. You debate too much, boy. This is a near final draft and as you should
know by now a final draft is not final until it hits the publisher, and even
then changes can and usually are made. - Amorella
1522 hours. This is good. It was an easy segment – though I am not sure
whom Moira is related to. Here comes Carol trodding her way up to the car.
You stopped at Graeter’s for an afternoon
treat before heading home. Carol is out working in the flower garden. Drop in
Grandma Nine for safekeeping, then post. - Amorella
** **
Grandma’s Story 9 ©2015, rho, GMG.2 draft
Lord
Robert and Lady Margaret are sitting at the table with son Charles who is
sixteen. They have had dinner and the servants are in the kitchen preparing
dessert of summer fruits. The year is 1216.
“Remember
when you used to sit under this table,” smiles Margaret.
“Yes,
I had fun as a child; didn’t I Mother?”
“You
appeared to, but we were never sure. You would smile or even grin no matter
what anyone said when you were little.”
“Children
should be seen and not heard. Is that not correct, Father?”
“You
are still that way, son,” replies Robert.
“You
have always taught me to question everything. Isn’t that right, Mother?”
“I
think what your father means, is that you have taken the rule too literally.
You form questions when they are not needed. Sometimes what people want to hear
are answers.”
Charles
looks directly at his mother, then he turned his head to his father, “How can I
think of answers when I am busy asking questions?”
Lord
Robert touches his wife’s right hand, “What do you think of the Magna Carta,
son?”
Charles
turns slightly to the right to face his mother, but glances down at the table,
“I understand it is taken mostly from King Henry Beauclerc’s words taken from
what he decreed the day he became king.”
“I
agree. Those were Beauclerc’s words,” comments Father.
“I
don’t think the Barons should have forced him to sign,” adds Charles. “The
Bishops should have done that. I heard there were twenty-five Barons, and
thirteen Bishops. Thirteen is an odd number of Bishops don’t you think?”
“There
was a sub-deacon of the Papal Household also present so that makes fourteen,”
replies, Margaret.
“Who
told you the numbers?” asks Robert.
“Walter,
Bishop of Worcester,” replied Charles nonchalantly.
“When
did you see the Bishop?” asks Margaret.
“At
church.”
“When
were you at church?”
“Yesterday.”
Lord
Robert asks, “Do you want to be a priest?”
“The
Church has too much power. It is corrupt.”
“What
about King John?” inquires Mother.
“He gave in to the Barons. He is not a good king,”
“He gave in to the Barons. He is not a good king,”
“What
are you going to do with your feelings?” asks Lord Robert comfortably.
“Nothing,”
smiles Charles, “I’ll wait for Prince Henry to grow up. If he is a good king, I
will support him. If he is not, I shall be clever enough to avoid the royals
altogether.”
“How
will you do that?” muses Margaret.
“I
will do as you two do, and hide beneath the Bishops,” replies Charles with
renewed adolescent confidence.
.
Mark, 25, is the son of Lord John, 54, and Lady
Nelleke, 50. Mark walking through the autumned woods on the Lake estate in 1216
is talking with his soon to be mistress and future wife, fifteen year old Moira.
“King
John ravaged the Barons’ wives. He is not a good man,” said Moira with a
shifting flirtatious smile half formed on her lips. “Like you are, m’lord.” She
squeezes his hard thick right hand with her left. she unconsciously runs her
forefinger between his index and middle finger, pushing them apart slightly as
they walk.
“I
am not so good as you might think,” confesses Mark.
Moira
stops and as they stand among a grove of oak, she says most considerately, “Your affection for me is beyond
redress, m’lord.”
“We
have done we need be ashamed of.”
“I
have, m’lord.”
“What
have you done?” he implored in good-humoredly heightening the duo drama.
Coyly
she said, “I once dreamt of us together in the grass surrounded by trees such
as these.”
“You
tease me profusely,” replied Mark, “with your gnawing at my fingers in your supplest
touch.”
She
holds the back of her right hand. “You may kiss such a sweet hand as my own, my
dear lord, Mark Thomas.”
He
chuckles, bends and kisses her hand, “You never call me Mark Thomas.”
As
she moves her index finger down his, “It is longer than Mark.” She suddenly, as
if on a stage, draws herself close to his chest and whispers in his ear. Her
upper thighs unexpectedly move slightly apart on their own. She murmurs, “I
think I might enjoy calling you Mark Thomas.”
Mark
quickly follows his own natural inclination without so much as a necessary
thought.
Two would be lovers standing
in tall grass
May raise their standards in
love’s trespass;
Love and trust come in words,
or eyes alone,
The words themselves not
always foreknown;
The human eye knows what the
brain does not
Two pair of eyes can quickly
tie the ancestral knot.
...
** **
Carol is asking if you want chili for
supper. Post. - Amorella
Late afternoon. Pouch Nine has 4493 words as
is. Very little will work in the reduced segment of less than eight hundred
words. However, there are key constructs that will be necessary from my
perspective. I will therefore edit for you. Now is as good a time as any. –
Amorella
1750 hours. Let’s begin.
1801
hours. I have cut the words down to 645. This was done in eleven minutes and
I did not debate anything. Basically as I read the words in a Word copy mode
yellow. The concept of “No reason to keep,” took over and I deleted paragraph
after paragraph. I came up with some 800 words and started over, again deleting
in the same way, “No reason to keep,” and ended up with 645 words. The
operation was almost the opposite of reading – read, delete when no purpose to
keep. This was the simple, straight-forward objective. The operation was
completed in a reading automaticity mental mode. It is like shifting gears
in a VW GTI – no thought needed.
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