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Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 4:19 pm
by Sam
hey,
ok let me start this of by saying, I have been incorrect. I thought I understood even the basics of quantum computing but in reality I don't. It took your questions to show me this. Now that I know I have been incorrect I shall spend the next couple of days looking into the theory and will try to gain a better understanding of it. I will try an post up a correct explaination of the theory after I have got to grips with it. Sorry for any confusion caused.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 3:26 pm
by Scott
I recently found out that teleportation has already been done. It has been done in a lab setting teleporting single atoms. They predict that soon they will be able to molecules and after that a virus. I can't really cite my source as it was a documentary on Discovery. Regardless, that's what a theoretical physicist said to the camera.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 7:29 pm
by Matthew
Teleportation is the reproduction of matter. Sounds expensive. If we start using teleportation for real, we might as well produce things as we need them but that just appears expensive.
I'm more interested in space-time warping. I'm talking about things like portals and faster than light warp drives.
Also, teleportation destroys the thing to be reproduced which is definitely expensive and wasteful.
Also, if you teleport a human, you would basically be murdering the human and making a clone. What happens to the consciousness? Does it get reproduced on the other side or does the person die?
We should steer far clear of teleportation.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:09 pm
by Sam
Quantum teleportation litterally takes an atom and makes it appear somewhere else, the exact same atom.
I've always had that exact same issue with human teleportation, will it really be me walking out the other end?
and wormholes are the only way I think we can get to a destination before light does, you won't travel faster than light but you will get there before it. Like taking a shortcut.
FTL travel is impossible according to Einstein's theory of special relativity but we haven't managed to break that theory yet, like we did with classical physics decades ago.
however, if we can do some wierd ass dimension shifting, it may be possible but then you will enter the realm of string theory, which is crazy. Like really really really crazy.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 9:01 pm
by Matthew
You are going faster than light but you are cheating because you are taking a shortcut. You are basically making the distance less with portals and warp drives.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 2:29 pm
by Sam
You would only seem to go faster than light and your velocity can and will never be able to go above than that of light in a vacuum.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 2:31 pm
by Scott
Tretarn wrote:You would only seem to go faster than light and your velocity can and will never be able to go above than that of light in a vacuum.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why is that?
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 4:44 pm
by Sam
Why can't you go faster than light?
Its to do with Einstiens law of special relativity. When you go faster and faster, a number of effects happen on you, normally you don't notice these because you are still going relativly slow in the grand scheme of things and therefore the effects on you are minimal, however, if you start going really fast, like 100,000 m/s (meters per second) plus then the effects become more apparent. The effects are like time dilation and length contraction i.e your experiance of time is different from the rest of the galaxy, so I would experiance a year and you would only experiance something like 30 seconds.
But a big thing is that your mass actually increases as you go faster. The more the mass the more energy is needed to move it. So as your mass gets to the infinite region you need an infinite amount of energy to move yourself, which you will never have, so you can't do it.
If by some miracle you have an endless supply of energy at your disposal then our maths falls to pieces and everything becomes 0, which would probably kill you.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 7:38 pm
by Matthew
A zero division error in the universe and it all crashes?
It's nice to know we can still cheat light by making distances shorter.
Some people reckon we might be able to change the speed of light because the speed of light comes from things that could be changed.
Time dilation is where anything which tries to move relative to an object traveling at a very fast speed, has to move slower than usual to protect the light speed limit. Because everything runs slower, they take longer to do things. Eg. A clock in a fast, orbiting GPS satellite has to be programmed to run faster than normal clocks because the GPS satellites experience time dilation by a small amount.
I remember the train example. It's a very good example. If a train was going just under the speed of light and then somebody tries to run towards the front of the train, they will move slowly relative to what your expect on a much slower train because the person can't run fast or the speed of light will be exceeded. The slow-down effect if somehow proportionate. If the train was going half the speed of light, doesn't that mean everything is half the speed inside the train?
Interesting way to travel to the future. You are't going through time any faster than anyone else, you'd just be ageing slower. To an outside person, you will seem very slow but to you everything outside is going much faster.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 9:38 pm
by Scott
Matthew wrote:Some people reckon we might be able to change the speed of light because the speed of light comes from things that could be changed.
The Professor was right!
Matthew wrote:Time dilation is where anything which tries to move relative to an object traveling at a very fast speed, has to move slower than usual to protect the light speed limit. Because everything runs slower, they take longer to do things. Eg. A clock in a fast, orbiting GPS satellite has to be programmed to run faster than normal clocks because the GPS satellites experience time dilation by a small amount.
That's actually really interesting. I never knew that
Matthew wrote:I remember the train example. It's a very good example. If a train was going just under the speed of light and then somebody tries to run towards the front of the train, they will move slowly relative to what your expect on a much slower train because the person can't run fast or the speed of light will be exceeded. The slow-down effect if somehow proportionate. If the train was going half the speed of light, doesn't that mean everything is half the speed inside the train?
Interesting way to travel to the future. You are't going through time any faster than anyone else, you'd just be ageing slower. To an outside person, you will seem very slow but to you everything outside is going much faster.
I don't really follow what the example but the latter explanation of what "time travelling" would be like is interesting.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 3:57 pm
by Scott
Speed of light has been changed actually. I forget where I found that, but it was just today.
Maybe I'm overreacting but did anyone here of the new planets found that are inhabitable! That's awesome!! I wonder though, by the time Earth is on it's last leg, will we have the technology to inhabit them?
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 4:38 pm
by Legion 2.5
Some guys on Bungie.net found a while back, numerous Halo references in the Period Table of Elements.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 2:36 pm
by Sam
Its not the first time an Earth like planet has been detected but thier detection is incredibly rare as our telescopes have only really been able to detect gas giants and even that isn't the easiest thing to do.
Still the detection of Earth like planets is really quite exciting, raises the possibility of other intelligent life being nearby as well as other life forms evolving on other planets, which would be cool, evolving with different conditions could yield some very interesting results

Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 3:09 pm
by Matthew
It's supposed to be a high-mass planet so I'd assume any life, if it exists, to be very light to prevent massive forces being applied to them.
Re: Nerd-arama
Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 5:41 pm
by Sam
right so a while ago, I tried to explain quantum computers and well failed miserably...
A week or so ago I stumbled across this:
http://www.silicon.com/management/ceo-e ... -39746192/
makes much more sense as to what I was on about, silly me.
Hope it helps.