🚀 go-pugleaf

Michael Clive Price sent me a rather informative piece of email on the topic,
related to the article on wormholes he had published in Extropy magazine.  To
date that's the only reply I've received, although I've researched some of the
references listed at the end of his Extropy article.  If it's OK with you,
Michael, I could share your letter with the rest of the list; I found it quite
interesting and I think others might also.

I've only had the chance to read 1.5 of the articles referenced so far.  I
also found some references to wormhole articles in New Scientist and an
article on baby universes in Scientific American.  (I've not had the chance
to peruse any of these yet.)  I could email the references to anyone interes-
ted.  Most of the articles in Price's reference list seem to come from
Physics Reviews D.  They're rather difficult to understand, mainly because
the authors assume prior knowledge wrt the subject matter & variables used
in equations.  These definitely aren't fluff articles.

I wonder if the heat death could be avoided by the creation of new matter.
Eventually in Dyson's scheme, even the essential particles will decay away.
(I think it's been estimated that _protons_ have a half-life of around 10^34
years?)  However, if a way could be found to create new matter, we could go
on indefinitely because we could simply replace decayed particles with new
ones.  My best candidate would be Hawking radiation.  This is a process of
black hole evaporation whereby a virtual particle pair is created at the
(matter) event horizon of a black hole; one just inside, one just outside.
Before they have the chance to recombine, one is sucked in while the other
goes free.  If we could somehow snatch those freed particles....  Of course,
we'd need to find something a bit longer-lasting than a black hole as a
source.  I wonder if the Casimir effect could be of use.  Since the Casimir
effect produces a region of relatively lower energy, does anyone know if
there would be an increased level of virtual particle creation around that
region?  Or are the two completely unrelated?

On the topic of minimizing energy usage, Roger Penrose & others have suggested
that quantum computations could be performed in parallel using wave functions.
(This was first suggested by a David Deutsch.)  I wonder how far one could go
in transferring a conscious identity from biological media to nanotechnologi-
cal to quantum computational.  An entire entity constructed of just a few
atoms.  Hmmm....
--
Andrew Trapp				dreamer@uiuc.edu

Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.