Can We Ever Colonize Space?

[FrankDK]

> I'm pretty sure a particle moving somewhere far away is information.

No, that's not correct.  Information is the result of something being out of order, being different from random.  When two particles are entangled, it only means that when one of them has one quantum state, the other particle has the opposite quantum state.  There is no information that can be transmitted due to this phenomenon.

> You just need to use that motion to represent something meaningful.

If you can't control the motion, then you can't make it represent anything, useful or otherwise.  For example, assume two entangled particles, one on Mars, the other on Earth.  The quantum states of the two particles are measured at the same times.  The experimenters before hand agree on a map from the measurement to a binary space.  One gets 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1, and the other gets 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0.  You can't represent any information with this.  You had no control over how the 1s and 0s came up.  They would just be random series' of 1s and 0s.

However, knowing that one end always gets the complement of what the other gets (i.e., zeros and ones switched), you could use this to produce an unbreakable code.  Each day, at a specified time and specified time intervals, the two parties measure the quantum states and map the outcomes to ones and zeros.  By previous agreement, one inverts the digital series.  They now have two identical but totally random sequences of ones and zeros to which no one else in the universe has access.  They can encrypt messages using this as the key, and no one can break the code.  The ciphered text would be sent by conventional means.

But you still can't use the entanglement to send information faster than the speed of light.

Frank

[GurrenLagann]

Quantum entanglement cannot be used to send any usable information, so it won't work for that. And I could've sworn that studies had continuously show it to be basically instantaneous, not measurable. Eh, if it is, cool. :)

[AllPurposeAtheist]

As to colonizing space... The colonial powers gave that stuff up some time ago and unless there is some indiginous (sp) population 'out there' we don't know about who are we going to enslave to mine the gold, silver or whatever they find?
Ooops.. I forgot foodstamp recipients..  nevermind.

[Youssuf Ramadan]

I think we could, but I don't think we will.  For a start, who's paying?  It will need a massive paradigm shift before someone will be willing to stump up sufficient cash for something with no comeback in their lifetime.   And it won't be cheap.  Who knows, it may take a disaster to force the issue....  :shock:

[_Xenu_]

I think we could, but I don't think we will.  For a start, who's paying?  It will need a massive paradigm shift before someone will be willing to stump up sufficient cash for something with no comeback in their lifetime.   And it won't be cheap.  Who knows, it may take a disaster to force the issue....  :shock:

If you can put people in stasis and travel and sub-light speeds, I think this starts to become much less cost prohibitive. Hopefully within a few billion dollars once the technology is mature, easily within the reach of many governments. Remember, once you know how to do something like this, energy is the greatest problem by far.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Stasis? Sub light speeds?
Gentlemen, we have the technology and now we just need a gazillion dollars..
It's not happening kids...trust me on this..at least not in our lifetimes unless..AREA 51 :shock:

[GurrenLagann]

I don't think we currently have developed enough stasis technology for that to work. Unless someone has a link to something showing we do? Gimme?

[_Xenu_]

I don't think we currently have developed enough stasis technology for that to work. Unless someone has a link to something showing we do? Gimme?

No.

[Zatoichi]

[spoil:jm26fm7f]

Yes. I belive Carl Sagan's "glorious dawn" indeed awaits us.


However, I have a couple of bones to pick with some of your asserted issues. Namely, the effect of the Moon's gravity on our bodies very negligible. IIRC, Neil Tyson said it amounts to something like a trillion times weaker the force exterted on your head by your pillow. Unless you mean it's the tidal forces that affect female reproductive systems? If so, I've no knowledge on that tidbit. :P

I don't think 500 years would be enough to to diverge an entirely knew species. If we have found a way to circumvent FTL travel (say, by contracting and expanding space itself), we'll have already reached a technological point to where environments themselves are of practically NO concern in regards to our survival. And that notwithstanding, 500 years might not be enough time for those humans to have become genetically different enough to prevent reproduction with them... ;D

[/spoil:jm26fm7f]

I was referring to reproduction with the Moon thing. I think what Tyson was addressing was Astrology.

And as far as our diverging in 500 years, I probably should have worded it better... yes, too short for species change but the question is, after that many years, would those people still relate to people on Earth? Would they decide, "Hey, we're the ones who've been out here for 500 years making the sacrifices and doing all the work. Why are we still taking orders from 'Earth Men?' You know... that kind of thing.

[Zatoichi]

I think we could, but I don't think we will.  For a start, who's paying?  It will need a massive paradigm shift before someone will be willing to stump up sufficient cash for something with no comeback in their lifetime.   And it won't be cheap.  Who knows, it may take a disaster to force the issue....  :shock:

I think if we could get to the vast resources int he asteroid belt, there would be plenty of material wealth to finance anything we would ever want to do.

[Zatoichi]

Wow guys!

Been away for a few days and wasn't expecting this topic to generate so much good stuff!

You've guys have answered most of my concerns quite well. I suppose the biorhythm stuff maybe isn't such a big deal.

But we still have to find those needles in the haystack. But since we have a few billion years before our Sun burns out, I suppose that's plenty of time to get lucky.

If this is ever to be done I think it will have to start with a massive unmanned probe campaign... we'll have to send out literally millions of them to survey for habitable worlds. It might be tough maintaining interest in such a program after the first thousand years and several million probes turn up nada.

Someone mentioned "Ringworld" ... so something like a Dyson Sphere. I suppose in that case, we don't really need a suitable planet, only a suitable star.

Interesting stuff you guys. Thanks for your thoughts on this.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I don't think we currently have developed enough stasis technology for that to work. Unless someone has a link to something showing we do? Gimme?

Here you go with 'link or it hasn't happened yet' again.. ;)

I think before we get there the cattle we feed animal parts will have evolved into gigantic hooved carnivores with massive forward pointing horns and the typical cowboy will need apache attack helicopters and abrahms tanks just to herd them. :shock:

[antediluvian]

Even if we can, let's not.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Even if we can, let's not.

How about I make you a tin foil hat music box? :P

[Colanth]

As for the food problem, there have recently been groundbreaking advances in 3D printing technology that allows people to print meat using stem cells. This technology is in its infancy, so I have no doubt that synthetic food will become a viable food source in the future.

That would be like a desk jet printer creating ink.  3D printing doesn't create meat, it prints meat cells into the form we want them.  We have to have the meat to begin with.

We could just grow gigantic vats of algae - not everyone would like the resulting product, but when you have a choice of starving or eating something less palatable than prime rib, most people opt to not starve.