MirceaKitsune

I see. I remember people saying that entanglement can't be used to transfer information, because it only works when both ends compare the readings they got. So even if you can send information through entanglement, you separately have to send each end the information of what to expect from the other end... or something like that. Am I correct?

BTW: I heard a few months ago that scientists were able to use quantum entanglement to transport information between two crystals. Is this confirmed, and does it disprove the theory that entanglement can't be used to replace the existing internet infrastructure?

I marked it as a speculation since there's of course no way to test it yet. It's simply "an idea that might make sense" for now. By adding information, I mean that when a particle begins to exist in a new quantum state, a new version of that particle might be created. So the universe is in a sense storing more data. I'm not sure if this is a realistic and correct example... but for instance: An electron is orbiting a nucleus, and leaps between two orbits. Something happens (like a photon hitting it) and we notice it now jumps between three orbits. This could mean that an extra state was created, and the particle is exists in an additional reality. This added information could be a factor that's expanding the fabric of the universe.

Thank you, I understand better now.

I accidentally noticed this several days ago, as I was playing with a transparent plastic bottle in the bath tub. I'm not fully sure why it happens, so I thought it would be interesting enough to ask: Consider you have a thin transparent plastic bottle, like a coca-cola recipient. If it's empty and you are looking through it in the air, it does not noticeably refract any light. But if you fill it with water and look through it again, you see everything deformed through the bottle. This is probably not surprising, since water is much more dense than air... but the reverse also applies: If you submerge the bottle underwater while it's filled with air, it will distort what's behind it. Whereas if you fill the bottle with water and submerge it, you don't see anything deformed. Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise to me. Since if you're standing outside a pool of water and look at something located inside, you will see that object deformed... and if you're submerged underwater and look at something above the surface, you will again see it deformed once again. But no deformation occurs if the eye and the object are both in the air or both underwater. Still, how does it work exactly... and why does light refract only when passing through the surface between air and water? Even when it passes through two such surfaces, like the transparent bottle.

I often come across discussion about how and why the universe is expanding, and what causes the expansion to constantly accelerate. The view currently accepted by science is that dark matter and dark energy are causing this. Since I don't have proof or solid indication of another model, I of course can't speak against that. Still, I'm considering a different explanation, which feels at least plausible in my opinion. I was wondering if there are any similar views, and if anyone else looked at this possibility to a deeper extent. This is my idea: As time goes on, atoms (and ultimately objects) around the universe experience more outcomes at the quantum scale. At least under the "many worlds" interpretation, this would mean that the universe has to store more information as time goes on. For example, if an electron can exist in multiple orbits at once around a nucleus, its state in each orbit must be defined somewhere. Now if under any circumstance a particle can gain extra quantum states (like an electron popping into an extra orbit) or from each quantum state the particle can fork into a new set of quantum states (fractaling toward infinity), it means that new information is being added. This is already a bit weird, since the idea could violate the "conservation of energy" principle... but I guess that's a different discussion. What's interesting is that this new information must be stored somewhere and somehow within the fabric of reality, such as an extra dimension above time. And in case there's any truth to this, and quantum states are stored (per particle) above what we perceive as spacetime, one can speculate that the extra information adds to the fabric of reality and therefore expands it. From here it's easy to imagine that if you stretch an entity in one direction, it's likely that you affect the other directions as well... like how blowing air into a 3D bubble (regardless from which direction) will cause it to expand into all 3 directions. So maybe, just maybe, this is why space is expanding? The extra information created by quantum physical phenomena must be getting stored somewhere... and by being stored, they could increase the universe's capacity to hold information, dragging spacetime outward in the process. I went as far as considering that this is what might cause the illusion of time flowing. Maybe our perspective in time is stationary... but because time is being dragged by the expansion of the universe, we perceive this movement as animation. If this happens to be the case, a person that could live for millions of years would notice that time flows faster today that it did millions of years ago, due to the expansion having accelerated. And if the universe ever started contracting, we should experience time flowing in reverse. Does this model make sense to anyone else, and how probable does it sound? Has anyone considered something like this as an alternative to the dark matter model?

This is a thread I wanted to make for quite some time... namely since 2011 when the whole SOPA / PIPA / ACTA / CISPA madness started, as part of a massive plan to censor the internet. Like many others, I've been interested in a way to create a framework that would allow people to post what they want, without either an ISP being able to censor them nor the government being able to knock at a specific door and arrest someone for what they're hosting. Most attempts to make this dream come true have been at networking level. Mesh networking in routers is an example of it being done through hardware, while TOR is an example of an attempt through software on existing devices. But all of these methods are either slow, unreliable, or unavailable for most people. So before this breakthrough happens, and people can create an internet that doesn't require ISP's and where your traffic can't be spied on, I've been thinking about different kind of platform. I'm a below average programmer, so I can't say I have the knowledge to do it alone... or maybe someone else attempted my idea already. In either case, I wanted to post about it and hear what people think, if this would ever be a viable project: - The idea and functionality: My idea is creating a full media platform, on which you can post text / video / music / pictures / web games, which could be used as either a blog or forum or journal or art site. In appearance it would be like most websites that accept submissions: You make yourself a profile with a description and an avatar and signature, you have an user page where you post entries consisting of any media plus a title and description, and on which anyone is able to make comments and can favorite entries. You should also be able to add friend and watch other users, as well as send them private messages. Eventually it should have most features found on Youtube, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Deviantart, forums, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary so far, the internet is full of websites with these features... but now we get to the actual magic: The idea is to use a structure similar to torrents for hosting the data... or an uncontrolled web hosting organism, for lack of a better term. The server would be an open-source program which any volunteer can download and run... same as bitcoin mining, running a node for a render farm, or running folding@home in the background. No single computer stores any data within this platform... each server downloads data from other servers and duplicates it, acting like a node. When a client wants to access a certain user page or submission, it simply types in the user's name or the name or ID of the submission, and downloads the data from all nodes that have that entry in parallel. - Storage: Obviously, if this was to reach a grand scale, the platform would contain terabytes upon terabytes of data. So each volunteer would need the ability to set a disk space limit, meaning the system would only clone and relay parts of that data. What category of submissions each node would clone can either be computed based on fixed criteria, or each user running a node can configure the preferred categories it wants to support... such as whitelisted and blacklisted submission tags. Otherwise each file should be stored and networked under compression, to further minimize storage and traffic. The priority of files can normally depend on their date and popularity: The older a submission is, and / or the less it's accessed by other users, and / or the less it's +liked, the more servers defer it... until eventually all nodes in the world might delete it because that submission is of too little interest. By this policy, each node always makes a decision of the form "I will store this file for one more month, and if 10 other people don't access it from me until then I will delete it, although if more than 10 people take this file from me till then I'll keep it for three more months instead". - Security: The biggest concern is obviously security; Anyone can modify the server software or hack the entries, to replace submissions with viruses or spam. This is especially a problem when an user logs into the network, since the mesh needs to decide if that's the real user. The solution would be an approach similar to what Bitcoin does: Whenever a user or node uploads or downloads something, several random and unrelated nodes must confirm that the submission has the correct file key, file size, and everything else that can be evaluated. The file which the user (viewing) or node (cloning) receives when accessing a submission shall be the one that the majority of nodes agree to. If one or more nodes argue that the file differs, the user should additionally be warned that the submission might be scammed. Same for uploading and logging in: Your username + password + potentially a SSH key are evaluated by multiple nodes. If they all agree you are the correct user, the submission you're uploading is taken by the nodes you are in touch with, then soon spread to other nodes. Each upload should always be done on multiple nodes at once too, in order to reduce the chances that one node could fake it and let a modified file spread across the network. Needless to say, all and any networking should be done through OpenSSH and secure connections only. An additional problem is that because such a platform cannot be moderated, people can also post fake content, using titles and tags unrelated to the submission. Only way to fight this is to have a button allowing people to report fake submissions and users that tend to post them... which when clicked by a lot of users, label that person as a spammer, removing their stuff from searches and deferring it to nodes. The platform would also get used for discussable stuff... such as sharing copyright material or NSFW media not labeled as such. But to be honest, I wouldn't complain about this part... since the point is to destroy censorship after all. In my opinion all industries have to embrace openness at some point, as copyright simply can't be enforced the way some people want to over today's open internet. - Why create this: So I know this entire system might seem like a weird idea and overkill. The basic aim is to obtain a media platform which can't be controlled or censored by anyone. Any submission would be hosted by millions of computers worldwide: Anyone will be able to post what they want, without an authority being able to take it down or punish the uploader. The only way to take stuff down would be to arrest those millions of people for simply running the software, despite not even explicitly knowing what it's storing as it runs in the background... which would be too insane to happen. And since there's no specific IP address at "fault", countries under censorship like China would also be unable to do much to stop the content, unless they banned the software altogether... meaning this might also kill the Chinese firewall! There is another good this system would do: It could combine all social media sites into a single one. If the system could offer everything Youtube and Facebook and Twitter and Deviantart and others do, under one account and a single consistent and open architecture, people would no longer have to use a dozen websites for relatively similar things. In fact, one great feature if such a platform existed would be to import your stuff from all of these websites... so even your existing posts are added to this new network! I'd like to hear your opinions. Does a program like this exist, was one attempted, is one planned, or should it exist? What are the pros and cons, and how would you see it working out?

I saw a nice documentary about modern materials yesterday. One of them brought up an interesting concept... which as far as I know is yet to exist, but would be fantastic if it did: Materials that can regenerate. The idea was that via smart materials, objects (such as buildings) could use a system to heal themselves, similar to how biological organisms heal wounds. If you cut your arm, the cut eventually closes and heals without leaving a permanent sign (in most cases). So the idea would be that if someone crashes into a bridge and cracks its side, the material detects the crack and dispatches tiny structures which leak the same material in place to glue the crack. Such tiny structures can be bacteria designed in the lab for this purpose, or even nanobots... or who knows, something even simpler. Is this idea realistically possible, and has it been attempted so far?

3D printing is an awesome modern technology, currently most used to create small figures or miniature designs. Since it can only construct relatively simple structures, it's understandable why you can't 3D print cars or electronics or anything complex. Still there is one thing I can imagine 3D printing doing today, granted a large enough printer was to become available: Creating buildings. This might be possible because first of all, buildings are made out of few materials... typically just steel plus cement (reinforced concrete), both of which can be molded in place. And second, they are very simple designs... just a few wall patterns repeated across floors, with holes for doors and windows. There is however the issue of size: The printer would need to be larger than the building itself, so the building can be constructed inside it... neither easy to create nor transport to every construction site. Although a workaround is to have a sanely sized printer head, and simply create a cube of mechanical pipes which transport it to the location where it's printing... the same way a paper printer moves the cartridges to the area where it's printing. Either way I can imagine this working out; You'd simply add a 3D model of your building into the computer, put molten iron in one compartment, cement in another compartment. The "cartridge" then moves back - forth / up - down / left - right area by area. In each spot, it first leaks molten iron in the correct pattern to create the proper skeleton. Once that cools and solidifies, it fills the correct section around it with cement. If the printer does this intelligently, it could fully create even large modern buildings! Only the walls that is... people still have to manually add the doors and windows and electrical wires and what not. As for the advantages, the first two are pretty obvious: No more construction workers laboring on the field, covered in cement and carrying heavy stuff around... just a few people feeding large amounts of metal and cement to a device. Buildings would also be designed directly on a computer, and the end result is fully predictable and exactly what you model... rather than making drawings and having human workers try to represent them. So has this been attempted so far, and when could it become practical? How do you think it will change the world, and how affordable could houses become or how will they look like in the future?

I didn't know about that term, thanks. But well, holograms are illusions more or less. From what I know, a hologram is simply an image that can be projected mid-air, not as light bouncing off a surface the way we're used to it. So it must involve a way of invisibly changing the trajectory of light rays so you see them coming out of empty space.

Aha... yes. I heard the word before, but for some reason thought it's referring to "bullet time" effects in movies. Reading the Wikipedia article, that seems to be the right term indeed.

I guess it would depend on the method used? A real physicist and computer engineer would know... I'm not one myself. I was primarily speaking out an idea... don't even know which known particles could kick photons. And that's related since I imagine holography implies changing the direction of a light particle in mid air, or making one appear in mid air. Without using an invisible reflecting object, I don't see another logical solution.

Every high-tech fan is probably fascinated by the idea of holograms. Whether it's to have their TV or computer monitor projected in mid air, or to see floating transparent images replacing the old rusty billboards in their city. Unfortunately however, I've yet to see any holograms in real life... even videos of a functional one being tested in a NASA lab. The best I've seen are transparent screens and smartphones, or persistence-of-vision clocks (a fast spinning blade with LED's on it). Still, this shouldn't be too far from becoming possible, and I'd like to know what could be realistically expected and when. From a scientific perspective, it's not hard to see why they're so difficult to do. Light typically has to reflect into the eye from something solid, in order for you to see something there... so making light reflect in mid air is an unique and difficult task. At the same time however, given what we know about particles, it wouldn't be impossible either. The trick is finding a way to knock particles of light in a different direction mid-air, so when they reach the eye they cause the impression that the point where they were knocked at is actually where they originated from. This could be achieved if we could create a special particle that can't be seen or touched, and that's "rigged" to explode into photons after a very precise amount of time. A screen could then be a "sprinkler" that sprays such particles upward, each particle timed to detonate into photons based on the vertical line of the screen it represents. Radioactive decay somewhat comes to mind, although I think an entirely different process would be involved here... such as a changing the particle's composition and creating energy in the process. Since the color of each pixel must also be respected, the frequency of the light emitted by each reaction must also be predetermined and controlled. Therefore this sounds like a very distant possibility. So a different but more plausible alternative would be to create a field of particles which can collide with photons and knock them in the desired direction. In this case, you could use a standard projector like those that exist today, and just point them upward. Parallel to it and aligned to person's face however, must lie another device which throws particles that shoot photons with enough force to knock them in the desired direction... in this case toward the person's eyes. Obviously those special particles should be invisible, and not cause cancer when they reach the person's body. Alternately, those special particles could instead be launched forth into a square pattern, in order to create an invisible and untouchable surface that can bend light, which the projector could then shine on directly. If all of the above methods are still too difficult to do, we might have to stick with transparent glass screens, which can be pretty cool if done properly. One way is to beam the light of each pixel from one edge or corner of the glass toward its center. The glass would contain unnoticeable impurities meant to reflect each pixel, and each ray of light would be built with extreme precision so that it hits its intended impurity to reflect it. The easiest design could be making the thickness of the glass pyramidal, so the front face is flat but the back warps into a point. A tiny projector that creates the rays for each pixel is installed on said junction, and each pixel is reflected in the right direction and at the right depth so it's refracted by the glass where it needs to be as it exits its volume. Any images or videos of what exists in this domain so far? When can we expect to see hologram screens becoming a reality, and what would be the steps this technology will go through?

Time travel is a fascinating idea for many people... but until technology allows custom movement of a 3D object across the axis of time, it's not a possible task as we imagine it. I have however been wondering about a more likely way of doing time travel. Which wouldn't send you back to the past, but could instantly take you to the future... at least in your own perception. My curiosity is if it might ever be possible to completely shut down a human body, while keeping each and every organ ready to restore functionality to. The aim would be to stop the person from needing food / water / air, keep organs from wearing out and the body from aging, and most importantly make sure the person perceives no time flow during the procedure... of course after they are awake. To describe the idea as a simplified example: The person would simply walk into a cabin, feel themselves fall into some sort of sleep, then wake up after what feels like 5 minutes... but is actually 5 years later. In reality of course, the person's body is kept in the device for 5 years, during which the apparatus constantly does the procedures it needs to in order to keep the body in the required state. Of course this would be a very complex and dangerous procedure, were the means for it even discovered... so it's not something I'd just go out and encourage doing. There are however reasons why the possibility still appeals to me. One is that, to put it bluntly, many people (myself included) are highly disgruntled with the state of the world and society at this day, and enjoy thinking that the future might be a better place. If there was a safe and plausible way to do this, I would like to go to sleep as usual and feel like I slept for one night, but actually wake up 10 years later the next morning. Another reason why this would be fantastic is that people could go to planets that are light years away via space shuttle. Which of course would be a one way trip, and have debatable chances of survival... but brave people could still opt for it. You'd simply need a space shuttle which is able to somehow power itself for a few hundred years. When the person traveling is boarded, its body is shut down using this technology. The shuttle could then travel through space for hundreds of years, until eventually it reaches the surface of the target planet. At that stage, the shuttle would need to automatically land, as well as automatically "unfreeze" the body and awaken the person. From the astronaut's perspective, he simply goes to sleep inside a space shuttle parked in NASA's hangar, then an hour later wakes up on an alien planet hundreds of light years away... in case everything is a success that is. So could this theoretically be possible? And are there any chances of it happening within our lifetime, as well as "being kept frozen for 10 years" becoming an affordable solution?

Like I said in various places, I believe that quantum mechanics could be fully explained mathematically. Including their probability, and how likely a particle is to leap / tunnel. For this however, various mechanics and thresholds need to be understood... such as what causes a particle to change its quantum state. Since that's very difficult to detect, we're left looking at the quantum world as something miraculous and inexplicable. My version remains that a higher dimension (greater than the 4th / time) stores multiple states per particle, and plays the "role" of a time stack containing multiple time lines. Low mass particles somehow wobble between those states in relationship to observers, and since that happens above time itself we see the change take place instantly. Of course there are other possibilities too... but my only certainty is that there's a fixed system that could be fully understood someday.