devil's advocate: replacator ?

Sir Bronking

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we have discussion's about the cavorite, extraterrestrial life.

how about this, to save world famine in the future will it be possible to have replicator's as they do in star trek, because after all everything thing is made up of the same basic elements, so would it be possible to replacate food?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

over to you
 

T_G

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bronking said:
we have discussion's about the cavorite, extraterrestrial life.

how about this, to save world famine in the future will it be possible to have replicator's as they do in star trek, because after all everything thing is made up of the same basic elements, so would it be possible to replacate food?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

over to you

I'll have mine with some hot chillie sauce 'O'-red
 

spiney

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Basically, no!

Sci Fi only, has no possible basis in reality.

Far less likely even than space warps, FTL travel, etc.

(Cavorite is physically impossible, but we've already been there ..... ).

(Why somebody has added that "stub" to Wiki, I've no idea. It's not a serious topic!).
 

Sir Bronking

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spiney, we know that all thing's are made up of molecules,proton's,electron's atom's etc etc and that today if we wanted to make a water soup we'd just add 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxagen and viola water, so if you take this stages further why can't (in the future) we make different soup's if we know the ingrediant's
 

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The replicator predates Star Trek by a good decade, as it was one of Robbie the Robots main functions in The Forbidden Planet (1956), and the idea of turning stuff into gold has been around for centuries.
The modification of nuclear particles is the method by which all atoms heavier than iron are produced in the (known) universe.

Roddenberry has I believe, given credit where its due as the storyline of the film as being inspriration for the food dispenser system in the original series.

Raw materials modified at molecular level and combined to provide a finished product ? Not too far fetched IMO. I would give it 20 years for the first ones to appear in the construction industry.
 

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Bronking, say whatever you want, of course, but it's just not possible ......

Yes, "replication" is a commonly encoutered sci fi idea, but some ideas have far more basis in fact than others!

Organic molecules - which make up life - are the most complex structures we know about (much more so than micro-electronics!). That's not even considering stereoisomers (the left-handed right-handed stuff)! So, the idea of replicating even a single celled organism - never mind anything more complicated - has no basis in fact.

Even "teleporting" a single quantum state - as mis-reported in the popular press! - can't be done, because any measuring actually changes that state (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle)! This restriction is a fundamental physical law, there's no way round it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoisomerism .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle .
 

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I don't know where the 'living organism' bit came from, the rules governing the replicator were that life could not be created inside one.

Organic material is simply a set of molecules in a certain arrangement, which has a nucleus that has genes ( its own replicating process) within.

Foodstuff can be far simpler, the carbohydrate molecules in glucose for example, which can already be 'replicated' by a number of processes.

Now back to the Cavorite (if that could be replicated , it would save a lot of energy, and time cooking the raw materials in the greenhouse).:D
 

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Sorry, but this discussion is sci fi only, not anything possible so not factual!
 

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spiney said:
Sorry, but this discussion is sci fi only, not anything possible so not factual!

So why mention Cavorite then ?:-rofl2
 

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Cavorite is an example of something that's completely impossible, but some people can't seem to understand why! So, relevant.
 

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spiney said:
Bronking, say whatever you want, of course, but it's just not possible ......

devil's advocate remember

Originally, a Devil's Advocate (from the Latin Advocatus Diaboli) was a Roman Catholic church official who had been appointed to argue the case against a proposed canonisation or beatification of a candidate for sainthood. (The supporter was, until 1983, called Advocatus Dei - 'God's Advocate'.) The Devil's Advocate's formal title is Promoter of the Faith (Promotor Fidei), which isn't quite as sinister.

Q. How is it used outside the church?
A. Properly used, it is someone who makes things seems worse that they actually are - but only for the sake of argument and not because he or she is cynical by nature.

Q. Why would they do that?
A. To liven up a dull and uninteresting conversation, perhaps, a Devil's Advocate might choose to disagree with everyone when they talk about something they all like.

Q. If you say you can't see what all the fuss is about when everyone raves about Russell Crowe, for example?
A. That's right. You may be a fan, but it makes things more entertaining when you have a proper debate about his looks/acting ability/affairs, rather than just agreeing that he's gorgeous.

Q. Can you play Devil's Advocate and say something is better than it really is?
A. More and more these days, a Devil's Advocate is just someone who argues the opposite way, whether that means talking something up or down

but i am with CH on this:)
 

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spiney said:
Sorry, but this discussion is sci fi only, not anything possible so not factual!

sci fi today, sci fact tomorrow:)
 

spiney

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As I understand it, this particular section is for discussion of science facts, including far-out ideas, which might be sci fi now, but could possibly "become" factual. However, that doesn't include the self contradictory or physically impossible.

In whatever "version" you wish to consider it (Newton, Einstein, even quantum versions), gravity is a conservative field, and Caovrite is just impossible! "Shielding" something from gravity would need massive energy input, at least equivalent to the change in potential involved, probably a lot greater! It's "conceivable" that one day we might invent a means to do this - possibly based on physical principles as yet unknown - and requiring much less energy expenditure than rockets. But at present, the "space elevator" is the only such idea around.

There's no way round this limitation (outside sci fi and fantasy!). The net total entropy of the universe must always increase (2nd law of thermodynamics). Matter cannot "spontaneously" become more organised (despite statistical mechanics, so called zero point energy, etc)! If that were possible, as I've pointed out before, then nothing could ever exist!

There's no use in trying to discuss the subject with with anyone who doesn't understand these facts. Sorry.

See: www.phact.org/e/z/noperpet.txt .

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics .

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy .

also: http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/lectures/node59.html .

..... and so on ......

I'm not "against" anything, time and ftl travel etc might be possible, but nothing self-contradictory can possibly be. Because it's just nonsense.
 

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hmmm ........

In The Gods Themselves, Asimov posited "free energy" by "pumping" it from an other universe, and consequently the laws of nature change locally, with The Sun comming close to exploding ......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves .

In the later Foundation novels, he has spaceships powered by "gravitational energy" - the closest to Cavorite it's possible to get - but this still slowly changes the laws of physics!

www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=26 (note the comments!).

(Quite Interesting is: www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=579 ).

Just cos something's impossible, that's never stopped people trying .....

www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm (fun!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion (more theoretical).
 

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dear spiney,

First of all one of the pleasures of being part of this forum is reading your post's, even if i don't alway's agree with you your source of enlightenment is alway's very intelligable.

i read with interest tom napier http://www.phact.org/e/z/noperpet.txt
who seemed imho to have decided that we are now at the stage in physics etc where no new laws will ever be written and therfor no new "invention's" in travel, energy, etc will ever happen, (well that was the impression i got)

well i'm afraid i disagree with that, boundaries will and are alway's pushed leading to break-through's in the modern world. So who know what of the future!
not too long ago people thought the sun revolved around the earth.
not too long ago people would have laughed at the idea of space flight
not too long ago nobody knew of radio waves
you could go on and on

i remember scotty saying you cannot change the laws of physic's. but which edition was he on about.. tom napiers, i don't think so:D

ps can we leave carvorite for abit, only it seem's to get you hot under the collar

your's sincerely
bronking:)
 

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As was made clear, Bronking, i don't agree with much of what T Napier said, eg ftl travel might be possible. But, you seem to have completely missed the point.

Self-contradiction isn't "not allowed" because I say so, but because it's gibberish.

That's why perpetual motion (inc. Cavorite, sorry, mentioned it again!) is impossible. Not because "God forbids it", but a because an internal contradiction is set up within the maths, so the outcome just is gibberish.

For example - for one observer at a single spacetime "point" - a single external object can't be moving in 2 different directions simultaneously (what does that mean, what would you actually see? If you see 2 things, then that's 2 objects!). The physics/maths no longer "works", because it's become complete drivel.

The things you metntioned are NOT counter-examples to this. Yes, everybody 700 years ago though the earth revolved around the sun, for what seemed good reasons! However, the other way round isn't logically impossible! And, the people who believed this were also fully aware that the earth was once thought flat (!), and also knew about Aristarchus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos .

Once there were sufficient reasons for believing that the earth went round the sun, then most people did!

Radio waves were predicted by Maxwell - of course - using maths/science depending entirely on logical consistency, no self-contradictions allowed!

Space travel has been speculated on for hundreds of years, and known to be feasible since Tsiolkovski:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky .
 

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spiney said:
As I understand it, this particular section is for discussion of science facts, including far-out ideas, which might be sci fi now, but could possibly "become" factual.

And there are far more references to Cavorite in this part of the forum than there are in the Sci-Fi section.:-rofl2

From Futurama:
"You can't prove it won't happen!" :D
 

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Yes, CH, Bronking, cavorite "appeared" here because somebody (?) thought it was possible! I've repeatedly pointed out that is isn't - and explained why and given relevant links in exhaustive detail - but this is just ignored. If you can't be bothered to find out for yourself what a conservative field is, and why thermodynamics is entirely relevant, then you will not understand and I can explain nothing!

A self-contradiction is impossible. Not because "forbidden", but because it doesn't mean anything! So there's no possibility of being able to "point to" a self contradictory object in the universe (since it can't exist, there's nothing to point at!), or discuss such a thing (because the concept has no meaning, no actual content!).

This is also true where scientific theories themselves involve a self contradiction, eg Cavorite, perpetual motion, "perfect" replication, etc. However, it may not apply if something is not self-contradictory, and particualr things could become possible via yet unknown technologies.

(Ignore that stuff about ftl being impossible; unfortuately physicists are usually very poor amateur philosphers!).

From the time of aristotle, it's been known that the law of the "excluded middle" always holds, the alternative being self-contradiction. The only exception to this was Wittgenstein, who later on claimed that contradictions in maths didn't matter, (after he'd abandoned logic altogether), but he was just plain wrong.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excluded_middle .

You can say "I've just invented the round square", but of course nobody will ever believe you, because it's impossible!
 
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