Scientists discover how to turn light into matter after 80-year quest - Polidicks

[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44844075][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail[/url][/QUOTE] holy fuck, my dream come true!

Could confinement be possible with this reverse annihilation? I.e. After the two beams interfere and reverse annihilate, a B-field could simply separate and hold the e- & e+ separately?

[QUOTE=stuky4ever;44842706]This opens the doors to new ideas! One day they'll be able to convert us into light travel via fiber to a remote location and convert it back into matter[/QUOTE] what the fuck the article didn't imply any of this at all

[QUOTE=LoneWolf_Recon;44844914]Could confinement be possible with this reverse annihilation? I.e. After the two beams interfere and reverse annihilate, a B-field could simply separate and hold the e- & e+ separately?[/QUOTE] Maybe? The negative end of the magnet (the part that'd presumably attract the positrons) would need to have special containment procedures, like some sort of positively-charged vacuum canister that keeps all the positrons clumped in the centre, as opposed to them crashing into the walls and annihilating themselves on the orbiting electrons present in normal matter. Creating a positronic battery would be damn difficult because of the nature of atoms, and it'd probably need to stay powered at all times to keep the payload from "bursting". Either that or construct the containment box out of some kinda positively-charged exotic matter free of those pesky electrons.

-snip- Didn't see the comments on the second page.

[QUOTE=Falubii;44844361]You can already generate electricity from light. Light is an electromagnetic wave. That's what photovoltaics do.[/QUOTE] It's times like this that I'm sad I went to [URL="http://www.schooldigger.com/go/IL/schools/3451003585/school.aspx"]this[/URL] high school :( Every day something reminds me of how ignorant I am

[QUOTE=stuky4ever;44842706]This opens the doors to new ideas! One day they'll be able to convert us into light travel via fiber to a remote location and convert it back into matter[/QUOTE] If I melt you down into your base atoms and then rebuild you bit by bit, you are still dead. I've simply made an excellent copy with your parts. That isn't even throwing in the photon conversions there. Teleportation is, conceptually, always fatal. Since it is always fatal, it is largely pointless for matter. Prove the existence of wormholes and then figure out how to harness them, and you might produce a faster method of travel, but teleportation is a dead end.

[QUOTE=GunFox;44847477]If I melt you down into your base atoms and then rebuild you bit by bit, you are still dead. I've simply made an excellent copy with your parts. That isn't even throwing in the photon conversions there. Teleportation is, conceptually, always fatal. Since it is always fatal, it is largely pointless for matter. Prove the existence of wormholes and then figure out how to harness them, and you might produce a faster method of travel, but teleportation is a dead end.[/QUOTE] Oh, now you've done it. Gonna be a 10 page long thread now.

[QUOTE=GunFox;44847477]If I melt you down into your base atoms and then rebuild you bit by bit, you are still dead. I've simply made an excellent copy with your parts. That isn't even throwing in the photon conversions there. Teleportation is, conceptually, always fatal. Since it is always fatal, it is largely pointless for matter. Prove the existence of wormholes and then figure out how to harness them, and you might produce a faster method of travel, but teleportation is a dead end.[/QUOTE] If you do it while the participant is unconscious you still get a single indistinguishable stream of causally connected observer moments, their death depends on your subjective definition of self, etc.

[QUOTE=Ziks;44847787]If you do it while the participant is unconscious you still get a single indistinguishable stream of causally connected observer moments, their death depends on your subjective definition of self, etc.[/QUOTE] Annnnd you could also produce a precise copy without ever destroying the original using exactly the same tech. Furthermore your stream of consciousness is continual. You don't remember what you process while you sleep, but you do process. Just because you are unconscious, it doesn't mean I can kill you, clone you, and claim you never died, even if I use the original's corpse as the matter for the clone.

[QUOTE=GunFox;44847874]Annnnd you could also produce a precise copy without ever destroying the original using exactly the same tech.[/QUOTE] Sure, so you would have a branch from one stream of consciousness into two. [QUOTE]Furthermore your stream of consciousness is continual. You don't remember what you process while you sleep, but you do process.[/QUOTE] Surely my stream of consciousness is broken by sleep? My subconscious is still going, sure, but during deep sleep my consciousness does not exist in an active state. [QUOTE]Just because you are unconscious, it doesn't mean I can kill you, clone you, and claim you never died, even if I use the original's corpse as the matter for the clone.[/QUOTE] We'd have moral hangups because it depends on the victim's personal definition of a consistent stream of consciousness as to whether they believe they actually died or not, but if you did it to me while I was in deep sleep while leaving no evidence I wouldn't care. [editline]19th May 2014[/editline] Also let's make sure we ration our arguments if we want to make it to 10 pages of this discussion.

[QUOTE=Ziks;44847900]Sure, so you would have a branch from one stream of consciousness into two. Surely my stream of consciousness is broken by sleep? My subconscious is still going, sure, but during deep sleep my consciousness does not exist in an active state. We'd have moral hangups because it depends on the victim's personal definition of a consistent stream of consciousness as to whether they believe they actually died or not, but if you did it to me while I was in deep sleep while leaving no evidence I wouldn't care. [editline]19th May 2014[/editline] Also let's make sure we ration our arguments if we want to make it to 10 pages of this discussion.[/QUOTE] from [URL="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nothing"]everything I know about particle physics and brain science[/URL], I get the feeling that in order to preserve a consciousness through replication you would have to accurately define the current location and destination of particles that don't even necessarily have those attributes in any measurable way, thus making it impossible to do.

[QUOTE=frozensoda;44847949]from [URL="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nothing"]everything I know about particle physics and brain science[/URL], I get the feeling that in order to preserve a consciousness through replication you would have to accurately define the current location and destination of particles that don't even necessarily have those attributes in any measurable way, thus making it impossible to do.[/QUOTE] The deal here is that "consciousness" isn't objectively defined, and neither is the criteria for consciousness being subjectively preserved beyond the system I am about to describe. The universe just doesn't care and does not have the capacity to care, it's too busy mindlessly shunting around quarks and leptons and bosons and so on. All that we are aware of is a set of observer moments (which I'll define as being the set of things you are currently perceiving). Observer moments contain references to prior observer moments as memories, which we use to intuitively link together observer moments into what feels like a coherent stream of consciousness. However, that link is entirely subjective. So observer moments are just disembodied pieces of information abstracted from the current state of internal structures within our minds, and we're used to thinking of a stream of those moments in a causal chain (with later moments referencing prior ones) constructed within a person's brain as being that individual's consciousness. However, this again is subjective with no true objective definition of what systems constitute a single person. What I'm essentially claiming is that what matters is the set of observer moments generated, without any consideration for the exact system from which they are constructed. As long as the moments are causally connected by referencing prior moments (even if those prior moments were generated in a different brain) I subjectively define that to be a coherent stream of consciousness. Unless you can find an objective definition of consciousness I can't be incorrect, and I choose this particular subjective definition because it encapsulates everything that we can experience.

[QUOTE=frozensoda;44847430]It's times like this that I'm sad I went to [URL="http://www.schooldigger.com/go/IL/schools/3451003585/school.aspx"]this[/URL] high school :( Every day something reminds me of how ignorant I am[/QUOTE] That sucks, but I mostly learn shit on the internet anyway.

I always pictured everything about us that's stored in our brains as a form of data, represented by unique unto the person firing of neurons and synapses and that the only way teleportation would be feasible to a living organism, such as humans, we would have to understand more thoroughly on how the brain stores this data and replicate it. Only then would we be able to make some kind of "buffer" that could move (see windows function "cut") our mind/soul/self to a temporary location while the body is deconstructed and reconstructed in another location. After which all mind/soul/self data is reuploaded. In this way, the person doesn't "die" just the body if you look at it in that way. I would imagine that each persons brain is wired to fire in a specific way and that would have to be simulated on the fly as well during each transport and could limit transport to one person at a time. Which also coincidentally makes teleportation infeasible.

The thing is, you will probably never be able to confirm this, since neither you and your original test subject (if you succeeded) or his clone (if you failed) would know.