Re: Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356(fwd)

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 7:56 PM -0800 1/27/98, Steve Schear wrote:

>I wonder how far off use of this technique for interplanetary rovers might
>be (10 years, 20 years)?  Remote (Earth) rover manipulation is tedious at
>best due to several minutes (or an hour or more to the outer planets) of
>propagation delay.  Autonomous rovers need enough smarts built-in to handle
>unexpected situations, a non-trivial problem.  An alternative is to
>establish a link using entangled photons. If a simple approach to saving
>these entangled states during signal transit, in both directions, were
>found instantaneous communication and simplified remote control would be a
>reality.

Nothing in quantum teleportation has been shown to propagate signals faster
than light. (If you don't believe me, look into it. Start by reading the
FTL discussions about Bell's Theorem.)

I personally doubt that any flat spacetime topology (e.g., wormholes
excepted) will admit any FTL signals. A lot of things would dramatically
change if FTL communication existed...not the practical "communication"
issues, which are human social minutiae, but issues about synchronization
of reference frames and causality violations.

>
>Of course one needn't stop there.  If entangled states could be stored for
>several years, instantaneous communication with neighbooring stars is a
>real possibility.  Coupled with advances in mind-machine science it might
>someday be possible to explore, first-hand, our local portion of the galaxy
>without leaving earth, or upload/download one's consciouness to vessels in
>remote locations.

Who's your supplier?

--Tim May


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