🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3346E7BC.435B@eunet.no>, Henrik E. Nilsen <hen@eunet.no> wrote:
>The Spy wrote:

>> The hard part is getting the atoms and molecules to go together at the
>> right places on the other end. How would this be done?

Phase differences?  The distances covered may be too great for us to
manipulate in any kind of detail.  But consider interference of light, as
in an interferometer.  They always use interferometers in
Michaelson-Morley experiments because of the great precision that's
possible.  They use them in other detailed measurements.  Shine one beam
of light straight through, the other gets reflected, bounced off something
you want to measure, and bounces back into the screen.  This creates
interference fringes depending on if the two beams of light arrive with
the same phase (constructive interference - bright band) or out of phase
(destructive interference - dark band).  I think there's a quarter
wavelength between bands, and you can probably get closer than that by
looking at the positions of the bands.  So light with wavelength 800nm can
give you at least 200nm precision.  But only measuring changes in position
of the object, since we can't measure the absolute distance to that much
precision.

Phase-array radar works by the same princple.  With a 2-dimensional array
of microwave emitters, but controlling the phase of each emitter you can
control the interference patterns to send a single strong beam out in any
direction you like.  The component waves don't "remember" where they came
from, but they "remember" their relationship to each other.

I wouldn't know how to apply that to transporter technology.  But it seems
the general principles of phase relationships would be much more promising
than doing detailed manipulation from 500km above the Earth.
-- 
"Whoever got anywhere by being normal?" -- Charles the Brain Child