In conversation with ..... Steaphany Waelder

[Wirefox]

Steaphany, a most interesting interview. It has left me with a lot to think about and a few questions - not personal questions - but a more a set of quandaries;

Knowledge is Power
Infinite Knowledge is Infinite Power
The Application of Knowledge is Wisdom
You can never have too much Knowledge

To what end the power? - or is power akin to knowledge in that we can never achieve it's end.? Does the power have a purpose.....the attainment of more knowledge perhaps. I have not thought about this nearly enough yet but my first musings are that power has the ability to oppress knowledge if wielded as a means of societal control. The power wielders are rarely the knowledgeable on the human scale but rather the conduit of its effect. Does this then suggest that power is ultimately uncontrollable regardless of knowledge?

I struggle with the concept of infinite knowledge since it implies unlimited or unmeasurable knowledge which seems to me an oxymoron. The quest for knowledge must be infinite but not knowledge itself. Similarly infinite power.

I think I accept that knowledge can be wisdom for the knowledegable but historically not for the wielders of its power. Power and wisdom rarely seem to be a marriage that is humanly sustainable

"you can never have to much knowledge"....I suspect that is down to the capacity of the individual and the nature of the knowledge....but it has me thinking

You do realise I will not sleep now....far too much to ponder

[Steaphany]

You do realise I will not sleep now....far too much to ponder

I'll explain where and how I came up with:

• Knowledge is Power
• Infinite Knowledge is Infinite Power
• The Application of Knowledge is Wisdom
• You can never have too much Knowledge

Primarily, my collection of phrases is in contrast to the often used Lord Action's quote of:

Power corrupts
Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Where I feel Power wielded without Knowledge, the understanding of what forces come together to enable said Power, does corrupt. I also feel that when bolstered by the possession of the fundamental knowledge of it's origin, a person can apply the Power with an understanding of the implications and ramifications associated with it, Wisdom. I also understand very well how little I know and because of this, I maintain a humble perspective that to live and grow, I must continue to learn, to never become arrogant regarding my accomplishments, experience, accumulated knowledge, and to always view others as possessing knowledge that I do not have. Even my rapport with my Horses has taught me that they have knowledge that I don't possess, yet, unlike many people who have developed the self realization of "knowing everything", my Horses possess and display an insatiable curiosity of always wanting to understand what I am doing, irregardless of their capacity of understanding. They want to learn, understand, and do so as best that they can. How often do you meet people incapable of such growth and advancement because they "know everything" or live behind self imposed walls and barriers ?

In my career and personal projects, my life time of accumulated knowledge and experience allows me to solve questions that get presented to me with the primary goal of making life better for everyone. Plus, I always build upon my achievements, connect what most would see as highly disparate concepts to achieve unique and novel solutions. The result is everyone benefits.

Oops, More to ponder...

[arith]

I don't think that those that have power posses wisdom; they are just greedy. Actually the human race could be disease free living in utopia, but for politicians killing the only person that could find a cure for cancer, or the father of that person, or drive down a class of people amongst them a leading thinker.

Look at politicians, can you see any that are actually intelligent. If you go to a school costing 28000 per year from age three and are encouraged to do well, I suspect you will do better than the average person and a lot better than those told they are worthless on an hourly basis. Power is money and making sure you keep hold of it.

I never think of such things, more concerned with photography and I never loved money, just would like enough to live on.

I still managed to get offered an entry in 'Who's who anywhere in the World' though. Must have been a mistake, but I turned it down anyway. In fact it was a mistake.

[Shadowman]

Hello Steaphany,

I always like to ask transplanted New Yorkers if they miss the winters but your area probably got a bit of the snow this year as well. Very interesting background, I agree with you on the comment about the future of photography possibly melding with video, it will be a balancing act to see which one dominates, I often see a photographic or painterly effect in motion pictures these days. I enjoy the pace of video but still love the captured moment of time shown in paintings and photographs.

[Steaphany]

I always like to ask transplanted New Yorkers if they miss the winters but your area probably got a bit of the snow this year as well.

I'm in North Central Texas, just check out the CiC Map to see exactly where ( Yes, zoom in and you'll see the pointer sitting on my house. ), and, unlike New York, this area can be crippled by just 2", 5 cm, of snow. The USDA lists North Central Texas in the same Hardiness zone as the New York Metropolitan area and Long Island. The only real difference is that North Central Texas does not hold the hard cold for as long a period as New York. Right after the blizzard that had me literally snowed in for the better part of a week, there followed days with the temperatures in the mid to upper 70's, 24°C to 27°C.

I think of it as North Central Texas has just enough cold and severe Winter weather to remind everyone not to move any further North.

[Steaphany]

Look at politicians, can you see any that are actually intelligent.

Steve,

I was not referring to politicians when I was talking about knowledge and power, besides, politicians don't need either knowledge or intelligence since they are a Parasitic Ruling Class of God Complex Narcissistic Megalomaniacs. ( The link will take you to a video that explains how. Since this is a political topic, and potentially an emotional issue for some, I did not want to embed the video here. )

The knowledge that I have been referring to is the knowledge that you, I, and every living being gains from experience, i.e. learning. When combined with innate talent and developed skills, this knowledge allows you and everyone else to achieve goals, which I view as an expression of possessing Power. As you gain more experience, more knowledge, you will therefore be able to achieve ever greater goals and do more or better with what you choose to do, there by possessing greater power. At it's most basic form, this is precisely what CiC does. New and established photographers share knowledge and increase their capabilities in the process.

Look close, apart from being a token representing value that enables daily life, at no time did I ever mention money.

[Colin Southern]

I don't think that those that have power posses wisdom; they are just greedy.

Bill & Melinda Gates have power -- and they now dedicate their lives to distributing their and Warren Buffetts wealth in making the world a better place for those in 3rd world countries.

Seems pretty wise to me.

[Wirefox]

Primarily, my collection of phrases is in contrast to the often used Lord Action's quote of:

Yes, a master of generalisation and the statement of popular truths

Where I feel Power wielded without Knowledge, the understanding of what forces come together to enable said Power, does corrupt. I also feel that when bolstered by the possession of the fundamental knowledge of it's origin, a person can apply the Power with an understanding of the implications and ramifications associated with it, Wisdom. I also understand very well how little I know and because of this, I maintain a humble perspective that to live and grow, I must continue to learn, to never become arrogant regarding my accomplishments, experience, accumulated knowledge, and to always view others as possessing knowledge that I do not have. Even my rapport with my Horses has taught me that they have knowledge that I don't possess, yet, unlike many people who have developed the self realization of "knowing everything", my Horses possess and display an insatiable curiosity of always wanting to understand what I am doing, irregardless of their capacity of understanding. They want to learn, understand, and do so as best that they can.

There is certainly much wisdom in those observations.

How often do you meet people incapable of such growth and advancement because they "know everything" or live behind self imposed walls and barriers ?

I quite often meet my self in this respect But, I am finding with maturity (or at least age) it is easier to question my prejudices. The walls and barriers are surmountable and and limitations of knowledge are more apparent. In fact I find it more satisfying to formulate the question than strive for the perfect answer....I suspect that is down to laziness though

Bill & Melinda Gates have power -- and they now dedicate their lives to distributing their and Warren Buffetts wealth in making the world a better place for those in 3rd world countries.

Seems pretty wise to me.

Cheers,

I am afraid I am the sceptic to the end Colin. Capitalist philanthropy rarely involves a sacrifice that cannot quantified as providing a healthy net return to the perpetrator. I do not just refer to money here but more probably the continuance of power.

[arith]

Hi Colin,well how do they spend 25 billion dollars before they die; the interest on it is more than they could ever spend even if they bought top of the range camera equipment.

It is possible to buy a peerage and to buy love, or is that a Beatles song.

[Steaphany]

But what do you think of the "Transporter" -- do you think that could ever be a reality, with reqards to the laws of physics?

Put concisely, No !

But, I feel it would be better for me to explain why in terms that non physicists can understand and if I do a sufficiently good job, you will conclude to yourself that the transporter, as presented in Star Trek, contradicts very well explored and proven laws pf physics.

First off, where did the idea of the transporter come from ?

Production budget costs of producing the TV series! Yup, they wanted to land the ships, but the miniatures and special effects would have cost more than their budget, so they needed to come up with a cheat. The Wikipedia page on the Star Trek Transported explains:

According to The Making of Star Trek, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's original plan did not include transporters, instead calling for characters to land the starship itself. However, this would have required unfeasible and unaffordable sets and model filming, as well as episode running time spent while landing, taking off, etc. The shuttlecraft was the next idea, but when filming began, the full-sized shooting model was not ready. Transporters were devised as a less expensive alternative, achieved by a simple fade-out/fade-in of the subject. Transporters first appear in the original pilot episode "The Cage". The transporter special effect, before being done using computer animation, was created by turning a slow-motion camera upside down and photographing some backlit shiny grains of aluminium powder that were dropped between the camera and a black background.

Ok, no science or technical extrapolation there, they just needed a quick and dirty way to get characters between ships and planets.

Since I explained earlier that the procession of scientific advancement is a process of refinement, not replacement, just how good are the current theories ?

Well the pinnacle right now is Standard Model of Particle Physics and it is sufficiently refined that it explains everything that you can experience in your life. It's failings include the origin of Mass and Inertia, but these have been hypothesized and experiments are underway to prove or disprove these hypotheses, Gravity, Dark Energy, and Dark Matter.

The Dark of Dark Energy and Dark Matter does not imply anything physics breaking, as some recent scifi's have alluded to, but instead to specific properties. In the case of Dark Matter, it means that what ever that Matter is, it does NOT interact with photons.

Want an example of Dark Matter that is fairly well explored ?

Neutrinos Yup, these guys are so dark that the only way to detect a few of them is to construct huge detectors under mountains and wait for the few interactions that do occur. They come from events that take place in the nucleus of atoms, the Sun, and every other Star, emits a constant shower that bathes the Earth and every atomic reactor glows in Neutrino emissions, a radiation that can not be shielded and that you can not hide from. Yes your body has atomic Neutrino radiation passing through it right now as you read this and there is nothing you can do to hide. But, since Neutrinos don't interact with photons, light, and hardly interact with anything else, this is harmless and fine.

The Cosmology Dark Matter is the result of measuring how fast galaxies rotate. The speed is too fast so there has to be something there providing enough gravity to hold everything together. What that particle is is the present mystery and theorists have determined that it would have to be a lot heavier than Neutrinos.

The Cosmology Dark Energy is also a mystery, hence the use of the word Dark, but this came from the realization, from viewing ever more distant galaxies, that the Universe is getting bigger and something is making this expansion accelerate.

So, we know the Standard Model is sufficiently accurate to handle everything apart from gravity and a few cosmological scale phenomena. Lets get back to the Star Trek Transporter before we spin off on another tangent.

There is phenomena and quantum physics properties that appear paradoxical to our perception of the world. One being the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that you can't know with certainty a particle's position and velocity. In later Star Trek series, the show's authors concocted an add on to the transporter to provide a sense of scientific accuracy, the Heisenberg compensator to cope with this ambiguity, but it still falls short of the laws a physics.

Parallel with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the Wave–particle duality which is commonly described as "all matter exhibits both wave and particle properties", but this just makes things confusing. A more accurate description is that all particles move as waves, but when observed they exhibit properties of being particles. The wave itself can never be observed and only hinted at when the path that the particle propagated though requires wave properties.

I'm not into sports but it will make a good metaphor - base ball. We have a bunch of people out on the field, the pitcher throws the ball and the instant that it leaves his hand, it vanishes. When held, this quantum base ball was a ball, but now that it's been thrown, it is a wave. All of the players hold out their mitts, including the pitcher, and after a period of time the ball is caught in someone's mitt. The wave has spread across the field. but due to probability found the most likely mitt and materialized back into a complete quantum base ball.

Here are examples of Gaussian probability curves of the quantum base ball:

A property to note that that a Gaussian curve will never reach 0 on the Y axis, it will get very close but it will never get there. That means even the rare case of the pitcher's own mitt could catch the very ball that was thrown.

Lets look at these curves. The Blue curve has a high peak and falls off quickly. This means that you have a far better idea where the quantum base ball is than you would with the Red or Yellow curves. All three peak at the same location on the X axis, which says the player whose mitt as at that location would have the highest probably of catching the quantum base ball, but since the probability does not reach 1.0, there is always a chance that it could end up else where.

Lets mix in a little more Wave–particle duality. The faster the pitcher throws the quantum base ball, the more spread out becomes the probability curve. That means the Blue curve is a slow ball, Red is faster, and Yellow should knock a player down.

If a player at location 0 on the X axis puts out their mitt and wow, there appears the catched quantum base ball, How fast was it going ? Well, the wave collapsed into the quantum base ball and all phenomena associated with the balls wave function and velocity are gone. When you know where the quantum base ball is, you know nothing of it's velocity, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Now, lets get the velocity of the quantum base ball. To do this, you need to measure the probability function through out the whole playing field. If you measure at regular increments of distance, you'll find that you can never get "all" the possibilities to add up to 1.0, so you need to put in more and more sensors. Ok, lets say you were able to get the probability of the whole wave function to 0.999999. Well, now you have a really good idea of the velocity of the quantum base ball, but where is it ? When you know the velocity, energy, of the quantum base ball, you then have no idea where it's located, again, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

See, this is fun and easy.

So you can never know everything about every particle. Add to that the requirement that each proton and neutron requires 3 quarks, and for each proton you'll need an electron. To construct a person, you'll be needing a lot of particles.

Lets complicate the transported further. Supposedly, a person is taken apart and converted to energy, sent to the destination, and put back together. Well, what the hell is energy ? In quantum physics energy is combined mass and velocity. You can extract the velocity component by drawing off this component of the energy, but you can't do the same with mass. Besides, as the velocity energy gets removed, the temperature of what remains falls. Even the energy release of atomic and Hydrogen bombs is feeble compared to the mass involved, yet the source of the explosion energy is actually the from reorganizing atomic nuclei to lower energy configurations.

Now it gets worse. In the Universe as it is now, quarks can't exist on their own and there is no evidence that a quark can be broken down further. So, if you could rip apart a Proton into it's constituent quarks, you'll have to add energy, lots of it - ( something that would make CERN's large hadron collider look small ) which changes the state of the matter. Then once you have isolated a quark, it could be freed to drift into the Universe according it it's wave function or kept as a particle, but then there is no way to put it where it needs to go, let lone reconstruct every particle of every atom that constructs a person.

Ok, your Dr McCoy worries about having his atoms scattered across the Universe. Lets turn him into energy by focusing a blast of energy of sufficient intensity to melt protons and neutrons into a quark-glueon plasma, *** BANG*** all the while noting the initial state of every particle and hope that you can get enough information to put things back. Then extract the resulting gain in liberated energy ***BOOM*** and what is left plummets to a few micro-kelvins in temperature.

I suspect that this would have the appearance comparable to a planet busting atomic explosion.

At the destination, you'd need to somehow deliver the raw material, electrons, quarks, glueons, and control the cloud as you condense it into something looking close to the Dr McCoy that you started with. Remember, that some information had to be lost when you took your measurements, so hopefully it wouldn't matter if there is a missing proton here or there.

Oh, and don't forget that what you do get must not only comprise the right assemblages of organic molecules, they have to be in a biologically viable state after the extreme energy exposures of ripping him apart and then putting a new incarnation together, It's Alive ?

[Colin Southern]

Put concisely, No !

But, I feel it would be better for me to explain why in terms that non physicists can understand and if I do a sufficiently good job, you will conclude to yourself that the transporter, as presented in Star Trek, contradicts very well explored and proven laws pf physics.

First off, where did the idea of the transporter come from ?

Production budget costs of producing the TV series! Yup, they wanted to land the ships, but the miniatures and special effects would have cost more than their budget, so they needed to come up with a cheat. The Wikipedia page on the Star Trek Transported explains:



Ok, no science or technical extrapolation there, they just needed a quick and dirty way to get characters between ships and planets.

Since I explained earlier that the procession of scientific advancement is a process of refinement, not replacement, just how good are the current theories ?

Well the pinnacle right now is Standard Model of Particle Physics and it is sufficiently refined that it explains everything that you can experience in your life. It's failings include the origin of Mass and Inertia, but these have been hypothesized and experiments are underway to prove or disprove these hypotheses, Gravity, Dark Energy, and Dark Matter.

The Dark of Dark Energy and Dark Matter does not imply anything physics breaking, as some recent scifi's have alluded to, but instead to specific properties. In the case of Dark Matter, it means that what ever that Matter is, it does NOT interact with photons.

Want an example of Dark Matter that is fairly well explored ?

Neutrinos Yup, these guys are so dark that the only way to detect a few of them is to construct huge detectors under mountains and wait for the few interactions that do occur. They come from events that take place in the nucleus of atoms, the Sun, and every other Star, emits a constant shower that bathes the Earth and every atomic reactor glows in Neutrino emissions, a radiation that can not be shielded and that you can not hide from. Yes your body has atomic Neutrino radiation passing through it right now as you read this and there is nothing you can do to hide. But, since Neutrinos don't interact with photons, light, and hardly interact with anything else, this is harmless and fine.

The Cosmology Dark Matter is the result of measuring how fast galaxies rotate. The speed is too fast so there has to be something there providing enough gravity to hold everything together. What that particle is is the present mystery and theorists have determined that it would have to be a lot heavier than Neutrinos.

The Cosmology Dark Energy is also a mystery, hence the use of the word Dark, but this came from the realization, from viewing ever more distant galaxies, that the Universe is getting bigger and something is making this expansion accelerate.

So, we know the Standard Model is sufficiently accurate to handle everything apart from gravity and a few cosmological scale phenomena. Lets get back to the Star Trek Transporter before we spin off on another tangent.

There is phenomena and quantum physics properties that appear paradoxical to our perception of the world. One being the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that you can't know with certainty a particle's position and velocity. In later Star Trek series, the show's authors concocted an add on to the transporter to provide a sense of scientific accuracy, the Heisenberg compensator to cope with this ambiguity, but it still falls short of the laws a physics.

Parallel with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the Wave–particle duality which is commonly described as "all matter exhibits both wave and particle properties", but this just makes things confusing. A more accurate description is that all particles move as waves, but when observed they exhibit properties of being particles. The wave itself can never be observed and only hinted at when the path that the particle propagated though requires wave properties.

I'm not into sports but it will make a good metaphor - base ball. We have a bunch of people out on the field, the pitcher throws the ball and the instant that it leaves his hand, it vanishes. When held, this quantum base ball was a ball, but now that it's been thrown, it is a wave. All of the players hold out their mitts, including the pitcher, and after a period of time the ball is caught in someone's mitt. The wave has spread across the field. but due to probability found the most likely mitt and materialized back into a complete quantum base ball.

Here are examples of Gaussian probability curves of the quantum base ball:

A property to note that that a Gaussian curve will never reach 0 on the Y axis, it will get very close but it will never get there. That means even the rare case of the pitcher's own mitt could catch the very ball that was thrown.

Lets look at these curves. The Blue curve has a high peak and falls off quickly. This means that you have a far better idea where the quantum base ball is than you would with the Red or Yellow curves. All three peak at the same location on the X axis, which says the player whose mitt as at that location would have the highest probably of catching the quantum base ball, but since the probability does not reach 1.0, there is always a chance that it could end up else where.

Lets mix in a little more Wave–particle duality. The faster the pitcher throws the quantum base ball, the more spread out becomes the probability curve. That means the Blue curve is a slow ball, Red is faster, and Yellow should knock a player down.

If a player at location 0 on the X axis puts out their mitt and wow, there appears the catched quantum base ball, How fast was it going ? Well, the wave collapsed into the quantum base ball and all phenomena associated with the balls wave function and velocity are gone. When you know where the quantum base ball is, you know nothing of it's velocity, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Now, lets get the velocity of the quantum base ball. To do this, you need to measure the probability function through out the whole playing field. If you measure at regular increments of distance, you'll find that you can never get "all" the possibilities to add up to 1.0, so you need to put in more and more sensors. Ok, lets say you were able to get the probability of the whole wave function to 0.999999. Well, now you have a really good idea of the velocity of the quantum base ball, but where is it ? When you know the velocity, energy, of the quantum base ball, you then have no idea where it's located, again, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

See, this is fun and easy.

So you can never know everything about every particle. Add to that the requirement that each proton and neutron requires 3 quarks, and for each proton you'll need an electron. To construct a person, you'll be needing a lot of particles.

Lets complicate the transported further. Supposedly, a person is taken apart and converted to energy, sent to the destination, and put back together. Well, what the hell is energy ? In quantum physics energy is combined mass and velocity. You can extract the velocity component by drawing off this component of the energy, but you can't do the same with mass. Besides, as the velocity energy gets removed, the temperature of what remains falls. Even the energy release of atomic and Hydrogen bombs is feeble compared to the mass involved, yet the source of the explosion energy is actually the from reorganizing atomic nuclei to lower energy configurations.

Now it gets worse. In the Universe as it is now, quarks can't exist on their own and there is no evidence that a quark can be broken down further. So, if you could rip apart a Proton into it's constituent quarks, you'll have to add energy, lots of it - ( something that would make CERN's large hadron collider look small ) which changes the state of the matter. Then once you have isolated a quark, it could be freed to drift into the Universe according it it's wave function or kept as a particle, but then there is no way to put it where it needs to go, let lone reconstruct every particle of every atom that constructs a person.

Ok, your Dr McCoy worries about having his atoms scattered across the Universe. Lets turn him into energy by focusing a blast of energy of sufficient intensity to melt protons and neutrons into a quark-glueon plasma, *** BANG*** all the while noting the initial state of every particle and hope that you can get enough information to put things back. Then extract the resulting gain in liberated energy ***BOOM*** and what is left plummets to a few micro-kelvins in temperature.

I suspect that this would have the appearance comparable to a planet busting atomic explosion.

At the destination, you'd need to somehow deliver the raw material, electrons, quarks, glueons, and control the cloud as you condense it into something looking close to the Dr McCoy that you started with. Remember, that some information had to be lost when you took your measurements, so hopefully it wouldn't matter if there is a missing proton here or there.

Oh, and don't forget that what you do get must not only comprise the right assemblages of organic molecules, they have to be in a biologically viable state after the extreme energy exposures of ripping him apart and then putting a new incarnation together, It's Alive ?

Thanks Steaphany,

Quite simple when you put it like that

So in other words, it's a bit like trying to reconstruct the cow when all you have is the hamburger pattie?

[Colin Southern]

I am afraid I am the sceptic to the end Colin. Capitalist philanthropy rarely involves a sacrifice that cannot quantified as providing a healthy net return to the perpetrator. I do not just refer to money here but more probably the continuance of power.

Well Steve you could be right, or you could be wrong.

Personally, I think that once you've been the richest man in the world you probably take material things for granted, and start to worry more about the things you can't control (like getting old); perhaps Bills wicked masterplan is to be remembered as "the man who changed the world. Twice."?

[Colin Southern]

Hi Colin,well how do they spend 25 billion dollars before they die

I would suggest "very easily" when it comes to things like world hunger and disease. Spending it wisely would be a lot harder though.

[Steaphany]

So in other words, it's a bit like trying to reconstruct the cow when all you have is the hamburger pattie?

Using your Cow metaphor, it would need a bit more complexity, since the DNA of raw hamburger pattie could be intact.

Think of it more as:

You're content, just finishing that nicely cooked gourmet burger, only to realize that you should have kept a gram or two of genetic material to replace the Cow and all you have left in front of you are a few meat juice dabs soaked into the napkin that the waitress just removed from the table.

Now, bring that Cow back !

Reconstructing from subatomic particles is worse since you have no DNA manual on reconstruction from that scale and there is no way to individually identify each particle from all the rest.

There have even been episodes of Star Trek where they install a DNA reader into the Transporter to undo mistakes or one episode where some disease and cure contribute to the crew mutating into their precursor species, but this fails according to known biology and proven evolution.

Do you realize that your DNA changes, on it's own, over time ?

That you have multiple types of DNA ( The cell nuclear DNA is different from the DNA contained within the mitochondria ) ?

That sex in the human species is not limited to XX and XY, but there are people with Turner's Syndrome / XO, Klinefelter's syndrome / XXY, Triple X syndrome, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of chromosomal variations that can occur.

That there are people who are mosaic or chimeric where the nuclear DNA differs from cell to cell through out the body and in some cases includes variations in sex ?

Now see how the plausibility of those episodes erodes away.

( Don't get me started on why the Star Trek half human / half alien species can't work )

And, can you see how a scifi has to be very carefully planned out for me to not see the gaping holes ruining the story ? ( I wonder if I know too much )

[Colin Southern]

Using your Cow metaphor, it would need a bit more complexity, since the DNA of raw hamburger pattie could be intact.

I know, but I was already seriously out of my depth!

[Steaphany]

I know, but I was already seriously out of my depth!

Sorry

[MiniChris]

You guys have way too much time on your hands...go fly a kite, or something much easier than the quantum physics of baseballs and DNA of cow patty's (well, hamburgers, anyway).

[Steaphany]

The baseball metaphor was just a vehicle to explain the quantum physics concepts and burger DNA was Colin's contribution.

As for investing time in less techi pursuits, that's why I have Horses, Kangaroos, and Parrots. Reading Colin's responses, I suspect that he didn't realize the scope of what was necessary to explain why a scifi concept couldn't be realized and I saw it as an honest question well worth addressing.

Sorry for boring everyone.

[Colin Southern]

Sorry for boring everyone.

Not at all, although my brain is still hurting a little -- it's been a while since I've had to think about sub-atomic particles.

It was a serious question too by the way -- I recall hearing of someone working on "something" along those lines a while - I think (and this was years ago) it was more "proof of concept" stuff - certainly wasn't anything that I'm aware that actually got anywhere. Facinating topic all the same though.

[MiniChris]

I wasn't bored...but it was certainly more food for thought than I've had in my noggin for quite some time...it reminded me of the bathtub scene in Animal House when Pinto was contemplating the possibility of an entire universe in one cell on his hand...of course, he'd been smoking the devil weed, but...hey, who knows...