From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Thu Oct 22 1998 - 23:01:27 MDT
A link from the page I gave earlier leads to:
http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/braunstein.html
which describes "classical" teleportation by scanning and re-creation.
The author makes an interesting point about the question of whether the
quantum state of particles is important in the body:
: What about the "quantum state" of those atoms? Does it matter what energy
: levels they are all in? Do the chemical reactions need to have this
: information to work once we reassemble the atoms to make a person? Well,
: my best guess is no! As is the best guess of several other scientists
: I've asked too. But that's hardly a definitive answer. I guess what
: tends to convince me that the detailed quantum state is not important
: to get right when you want to copy a person and make a new one from the
: partial information is that people routinely go to hospitals for NMR
: (nuclear magnetic resonance) and ESR (electron spin resonance) scans
: to see inside them. These procedures mix up the quantum states of at
: least some large number of atoms and nuclei of the people being scanned,
: yet it doesn't seem to disturb their appetites (that makes them still
: human in my book). Thus here again the quantum nature of our atoms and
: molecules doesn't appear to rule out the copying method for teleportation.
This appears to be evidence against Roger Penrose's theories that
quantum coherence is a necessary element of brain operation. From what
I understand, people in these machines don't feel anything happening as
their quantum states are scrambled. If long-range quantum correlations
were involved in thought and consciousness, it seems like these kinds
of scanners would cause noticeable disruption.
Hal
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