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Old June 21st, 2002, 06:35 AM
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Quikngruvn Quikngruvn is offline
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Default Re: Real life star trek in the making

Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made off.

Theoretically, I would think the quantum 'code' of something could be saved in this fashion... assuming there were a storage medium large enough to hold the image. Figure you'd need quintillions of bits just to record the spin of each particle, before even getting into each's position and orientation. (I may be off a couple orders of magnitude, but still!) But were it to become a practical reality... it'd be nothing short of revolutionary.

Incidientally, the spin of quantum particles is also the basis for theories about faster-than-light communication. Suppose you have a particle with positive spin, and its anti-particle is light-years away with its negative spin. If you change your particle's spin to negative, the anti-particle's spin will immediately change to positive, at any distance-- the magic of the law of Conservation of Momentum (quantum mechanical style). How the two particles manage to communicate instantly while so far apart... now that's the trick!

Quikngruvn
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