Re: OT: Nuclear Waste (Was Re-Marketing Ada)

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Alexandre E. Kopilovitch wrote:

> Yes, that far as you concerned. But you are an Engineer, not a scientist.
> You are accustomed to some formal criteria for scientific results. And you
> have little chance to notice that those familiar criteria gradually become
> insufficient nowadays. This happens because an approach to a science as to
> a kind of industry leads to fast adaptation to any formal criteria. And more
> that adaptation advances, the less those criteria reflect.

Okay, if you say so.  But I think of myself as a software engineer, as 
well as someone who has done experimental physics.

> But what those result *mean*? Are the *words* appropriate? Do those words
> carry proper, familiar associations in this case? To which degree?

I can't say for you, which is why I recommend the math.  Followning the 
formal math in quantum mechanics is tough, but it tells you things.  For 
example in the Nimtz experiment, it said that the time for a signal to 
cross the forbidden region was a constant (about 83 picoseconds) and 
independent of the length of the gap.  But the amount of the signal that 
is not reflected is a negative exponential in the length of the 
forbidden gap.  So in the Nimtz experiment the maximum gap he tested was 
about 30 cm. for a speed of 6+ times the speed of light in a vaccum.

There is a different "better" way to achieve similar speeds, but the 
experiment is harder to do.  The speed of light between two conducting 
plates changes as the plates move closer together.  Unfortunately it 
goes up in the direction perpendicular to the plates, and down parallel 
to the surfaces.  But if you are careful you can create a stack of thin 
plates, drill a hole through it, thread a glass fiber through and 
measure the speed of light.  Works fine, except that the speed of light 
in the fiber is about 0.75 c, so it takes a lot of speedup to even get 
back to c.  What is really needed is a way to construct the stack of 
plates with a hole containing a vaccum, and design the stack of plates 
so that it doesn't absorb most of the beam you send through.  But again, 
we are talking engineering, not far out physics.  The change in the 
local value of c is real, and measurable--the trick is to take useful 
advantage of it.

> Although I have heard something about that, I neither have an intention to
> look there nor recommend it to anybody. Better wait at least 10-15 years.
> Not being prepared enough, not being a quite strong physisist, one have no
> chance to evaluate such a result properly. Don't take hot results if you
> aren't a professional in that area, just wait until these results cease to
> be hot.
> 
> What does it mean - teleportation of a single photon? How can one identify
> a single photon? (And it is just the first question).

You really need to study QM a lot to be able to answer those questions. 
  But not only can you identify a single photon you can create a pair of 
"entangled" photons, such that you can only measure one of two 
properties for the pair.  If you measure the polarization of one photon 
that is entangled, in one plane, the entangled photon will have the 
opposite polarization in that plane.  Try to measure the two 
polarizations at right angles, and you won't succeed.  This is standard QM.

What happens in the teleportation experiment is that the entangled state 
is teleported.  After the teleportation of one of the members of a pair, 
the NEW photon is entangled with the other member of the pair.  The 
original photon is no longer entangled with anything.  So quantum 
teleportation makes one photon or other particle (at a distance) into  a 
copy of another.  When the ability to do this advances sufficiently it 
willl be able to make a "perfect" copy of an object some arbitrary 
distance from the original.  But it will take apparatus and a pretty 
complex mechanism on the transmitting and recieving ends.  For getting 
around on earth?  Forget it.  But eventually teleportation may become 
practical from say, Earth to the Moon, or to Mars, or Titan.

> What a beautiful perspective: we'll teleport our weapons on enemy sites, and
> then issue the Anti-Teleportation Strategic Initiative. And oh, there will
> be problems for immigration agencies - all those illegal immigrants will
> simply teleport themselves into USA and Europe. And spies - all intelligence
> agencies will be very happy. Terrorists will be happy also, though.

Again, not how it works.  There has to be a pretty complex device at 
both the sending and recieving points.  And if you try to copy the 
object (or the information) being transported, it won't work.  Not 
something that we can build tomorrow, but at least the physics are 
becoming understood.

Similarly, the Alcubierre warp drive when first proposed, was completely 
impractical.  Now there are lots of papers published on the subject and 
the amount of negative energy required is becoming quite modest.  See: 
http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9905084 and 
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0207/0207109.pdf  That doesn't 
mean the human race can start building warp drive spaceships next week. 
  But the Alcubierre geometry is now getting to be close to reasonable. 
  (Now all we need is a way to make a few kilograms of negative mass.)

-- 
                                           Robert I. Eachus

100% Ada, no bugs--the only way to create software.