Thursday, May 19, 2011
Best way to send a message is by molecule
Best way to send a message is by molecule
Sending a message electronically or transmitting it over the air waves has to be an inefficient process, subject to noise and coherence problems. You have to send it effectively multiple times.
What might be the most efficient way of sending it? I am reminded of the 'netflix founders' story about a university question about which had more bandwidth, a cable or a lorryload of dvds?
I would suggest that a carefully crafted molecule would do nicely. It could be stable, compact, error checked, encrypted, etc, and could be sent surprisingly quickly over space.
Now the building and reading are not currently fast. Replication would be fine ( if based on say dna).
Somehow I think that it might be a little impractical, even though the natural extension of the written letter. Except perhaps for alien contact, where firing molecules out into space seems rather a neat way of doing it.
And if these molecules could self replicate, so much the better.
Perhaps Fred Hoyles idea of seeding the earth from space is actually the right idea. Indeed if mankind wants to leave the planet, then this is what we should be doing again in the opposite direction.
MartinW.
Sending a message electronically or transmitting it over the air waves has to be an inefficient process, subject to noise and coherence problems. You have to send it effectively multiple times.
What might be the most efficient way of sending it? I am reminded of the 'netflix founders' story about a university question about which had more bandwidth, a cable or a lorryload of dvds?
I would suggest that a carefully crafted molecule would do nicely. It could be stable, compact, error checked, encrypted, etc, and could be sent surprisingly quickly over space.
Now the building and reading are not currently fast. Replication would be fine ( if based on say dna).
Somehow I think that it might be a little impractical, even though the natural extension of the written letter. Except perhaps for alien contact, where firing molecules out into space seems rather a neat way of doing it.
And if these molecules could self replicate, so much the better.
Perhaps Fred Hoyles idea of seeding the earth from space is actually the right idea. Indeed if mankind wants to leave the planet, then this is what we should be doing again in the opposite direction.
MartinW.
