Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!lll-lcc!csustan!smdev From: smdev@csustan.UUCP (Scott Hazen Mueller) Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: electrons as a bound on memory size (was VLMM, crypt) Message-ID: <179@csustan.UUCP> Date: Thu, 18-Sep-86 11:44:50 EDT Article-I.D.: csustan.179 Posted: Thu Sep 18 11:44:50 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 20-Sep-86 00:53:44 EDT References: <505@gvax.cs.cornell.edu> <5745@ut-sally.UUCP> Reply-To: smdev@csustan.UUCP (Scott Hazen Mueller) Organization: City of Turlock Lines: 35 Keywords: :-) In article <> nather@ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes: >In article <>, jqj@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (J Q Johnson) writes: >> Going one step further out, why use matter to encode data at all? If you >> want bulk sequential storage, simply modulate an EM wave directed at a >> distant point ... Result: effectively infinite bulk storage at the cost >> of a finite and small number of electrons. > > ...any EM "wave" is made up of individual photons, which must appear in groups >... 2 photons (1 == off, 2 == on, 100% detection efficiency) the storage will > be far from infinite -- it will be, in fact, finite. (*gasp*). > >Ed Nather Why bother with using a presence/absence test at all? What the original poster was saying was, based on the fact that matter/energy (to the best of my know- ledge) always exhibits the property of multiple energy levels, it is possible to encode multiple bits for each energy level. A useful analogy is to observe the distinction between bits (1s and 0s) and baud (detectible state changes). One baud may encode several bits. Likewise, a photon may occupy a very large number of energy levels; probably not an infinite number. Digressing for a moment into physics, we have E=h*nu (if you can draw a Greek nu on an alpha- numeric terminal, more power to you); this shows that if we vary the energy level of our photon beam, we vary its frequency. Voila! FM - and we already know that this works... Since the universe is finite, any storage mechanism will be by definition finite, but the constraint is not something simple like the total number of electrons, but rather the total number of energy states occupied by all mass/energy in the universe. In fact, the universe already encodes *all* information on itself in itself :-> \scott -- Scott Hazen Mueller lll-crg.arpa!csustan!smdev City of Turlock work: (209) 668-5590 -or- 5628 901 South Walnut Avenue home: (209) 527-1203 Turlock, CA 95380