Seriously thoughtful When science fiction meets science fact

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Thanks Ralph - appreciate it!

I've found the book, but not my notes yet. (I hope I wrote down the 2003 paper search information in my physics notes, which are packed away currently as well.) The relevant pages are 385-386. I would scan them but I don't know if that much would fall under fair use...

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

So, what sci-fi technologies do you thing are impossible or possible?

Here are some of my thoughts.

Impossible
Transporters - basically to work it would have to kill you.

FTL Travel - while I think we will learn ways to travel faster I think light speed or even above is a fantasy.

Sentient Computers - yes computers will get much more powerful and programming will improve. But, skynet or M5 just can't happen. I am very happy a recent Numbers episode kept this reality firmly in place.

Possible
Space Colonies - I think this will happen... probably not in my life time. But, we are talking about withing our system. Perhaps on the moon or mars. Perhaps even a space station type structure.

Alien life - while I think it is highly possible that there are "alien" life forms. I don't think we will ever meet them. The vastness of space and the distances between start systems with the lack of "warp speed" pretty much seals this.

Voice Computer Interfaces - while I don't think we will see a positorinc brain or skynet (see above) I do think PCs will have the power and programming to do some hueristic work. It will be able to perform tasks that you need it to. It will be able to adjust to your patterns. As a matter of fact, I recently heard a story about a company working on a GPS that did some of this. It monitored your patterns and help route you around traffic. It could know if you were bringing Billy to school today or just going strait to work. We alread see the beginning of "agents". For example, rather than just having to skim over hundreds of RSS articles your "news agent" will learn what stories you like or might be interested. It will summarize it. It will also be able to find events that tie in with your likes and dislikes. Of course this is a much more sophisticated task than we have now with "targeted" advertising.

Space Elevator - yes, with enough Time and Money you [google] can do anything.

BOb

Impossible:
- A gorgeous girl going out with a loser (like Julia Roberts in the SciFi movie "Notting Hill" or the taxi driver in "Strange Days")
- Engineers having sex (and not between each other), like in the Star Trek series.
- A giant gorilla falling in love with a small hairless blond girl (King Kong); A giant male gorilla and no female ones...
- A computer loading and running alien software with no compatibility issues nor compilation errors (Star Trek, again...)
- Good and useful user interfaces for computers (almost every SF movie)
- Have the technology to clone dinosaurs (or Adolf Hitler) and do not use it for cattle...

Possible:
- FTL: It's actually the speed at which the hand of the diver behind me at the red light travels toward the horn when it turns to green.
- Immortality: greedy authors will have it as soon as the copyright duration will be set at author's life.

[Sparrow]

Physicists - what do they know?

For years ordinary people have been going up to them and asking what happened before the big bang; only to be sneered at derisively for asking a 'meaningless question'.

Then, a couple of years ago, I turn on the telly to learn that physicists have come up with an intriguing question, one that could shake the funadamental principles governing the universe, a question that only recently they've had the courage to ask - what happened before the big bang?

Finally, they're catching up with the rest of us!

[Jack Tingle]

Originally Posted by slayda

Nanotechnology is beginning to happen. Will it ever get to the point of self replication?

I'll believe in strong nanotechnology when we can make 10 cm wide, blind*, mechanical crabs of extrordinary complexity that can take bolts of fabric and rolls of duralumin strip and cooperatively build a zeppelin. They have to do it by touch*, without any outside communication or control other than their built-in instructions.

Then they can try making another crab. Until we can solve the manufacture problem on a macro scale, don't even bother at nano scale. Tackle the self-replication problem last.

Nothing says it's impossible, but I don't think it's very likely.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

* At nanoscale, everything is blind, and the only possible communication methods are touch or chemical signals. At that scale, they're about the same thing anyway.

[Fledchen]

Self-replication may bring on the Grey Goo problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo

[RCR]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I remember some years ago either reading a short story, or seeing a short film - I forget which it was - about the "ethics" of transporter technology, the whole point of which was that it inevitably involves the "death" of the person being "transported", and the ethical implications of that.

Could it be ... Paul Brok -"Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology"

In the book is a short story called "To Be Two or Not to Be". On Earth, a traveller is being teleported to Mars. The machine plots the co-ordinates of every atom in your body and transmits that information to the receiver on Mars where local atoms are used to construct a duplicate you. At the moment of teleportation, the Earth body is annihilated so that there is no duplication of yourself. In the story, the machine fouls up and the traveller on Earth is not annihilated. So he still exists and now has a duplicate on Mars.

The machine operator and the traveller discuss the material, psychological and philisophical problems duplicates cause. A committee must now rule on the ethics of destroying or not destroying the Earth traveller, (or the Mars version of the traveller).

I don't think the mechanics of teleportation was Brok's real interest. I think the story was his way of illustrating a psychologist's dilemma in deciding which of a number of personalities within one patient should be considered the authentic one and which personalities should be destroyed.

[Bilbo1967]

For those interested in this and looking for a book in a similar vein, I can recommend 'A Teaspoon and an Open Mind' by Michael White.

It's basically a scientific review of the technologies on display in Doctor Who (UK time-travelling series for any of you who have not seen it) with a serious discussion of whether or not they would be possible now/in the future with our current knowledge.

I bought this in Epub format from the Waterstones shop in the UK for a reasonable price and enjoyed it.

Below is the link to the pbook at Amazon (co.uk)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaspoon-Ope...0687665&sr=1-1

I note some bad reviews there - but, hey, each to their own!