Dec
7
Oops. I’ve taken the film off a microwave pack of worms without waiting for it to cool with this Transmat lark. My good friend and correspondent Gouldy writes:
Another thing to bear in mind is the processing power needed to copy a person - you’d need to freeze them comletely to 0 kelvin so that their
molecules and atoms stop moving. You’d need to record the quantum states of each and every atom in their body. Is there a way of
calculating the amount of bit-states needed to do such a thing? How many atoms does a person possess? It would be interesting to find out … try to find out!
Hmmm. this could turn out to be a major undertaking…
13 comments so far...
Also, you’d need to give them a small funerary service *just* incase the dupe didn’t materialise at the other end …
Surely you could simply sample the frequency, phase and amplitude of oscillation of each sub-atomic particle. It’d generate a significant amount of extra data, but at least you wouldn’t have to freeze your subject.
Or better… use fractal compression. Sample the DNA, then store that data along with a list of deviations from the ideal organism generated by the given DNA. Easy.
How about fractal coding? Simply sample the DNA of the subject, then make a list of deviations from the ideal organism that would be generated by said DNA. I’m sure the dataspace would be much smaller. And you’d only have to freeze small individual parts where they differed from the ‘norm’.
Of Course, cooling down to 0 Kelvin is going to be damm near impossible in the first place, the alternative is to be able to read the position and state of every atom in the body at exactly the same time….
Stu said: ‘Surely you could simply sample the frequency, phase and amplitude of oscillation of each sub-atomic particle. It’d generate a significant amount of extra data, but at least you wouldn’t have to freeze your subject.’
I know we can’t sample sub-atomic states precisely just yet. Maybe it can never be done. Sampling a given state at any one time - without affecting or changing that state - is going to be flippin’ hard. Never mind sampling the state of *every* particle at the same time …
But then again - this is Science Fiction so a bit of fudging would be helpful ;) Still - it would be interesting to come up with the amount of hard-drive space necessary to do it - theoretically ;)
How many atoms in the human body?
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Ch03_1.html
Roughly 6.71 x 10 27. That doesn’t include quantum states for sub-atomic particles.
I don’t think you need quantum states, you just need to get the right elements close enough to one another to bond, and you don’t need 0K though you need prettybruddyfuckincold.
If the distribution of elements is known, then huffman encoding will nicely ‘zip’ the person for transmission. Should be able to get ‘em down to… oooh 6.3×10^27 bits :-)
don’t forget, the person must be destroyed to be read, so you’d better hope nobody jogs the read head.
I like stu’s idea of a DNA sample followed by compressed DIFFs. The natural reconstruction from there would be by cloning so would take a little longer.
But if you’re reconstructing neural pathways and people’s personalities you’re going to need the sub-atomic states - maybe not of every particle in the body - maybe just the brain/cortex area.
Oh Gouldy, you’re just being so picky. My transmat company will be called “Close-Enough Transmat Inc.”
haha I can see it now “Most customers transported quickly and safely with most of their original limbs, quicker than competing services”
Oh for goodness’ sake, didn’t they perfect this during Star Trek?
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