by Lupk » Fri May 30, 2014 8:55 pm
maskedscavenger wrote:Suppose we can map each fairy to a single child uniquely, and when a child says the word, one of these fairies dies, say randomly.
And suppose we have knowledge of this mapping.
Then we could send a message of k bits by sending k children in space, and the kids assigned to a 1 kill one of their fairies.
And the 0-kids say nothing.
Then we could observe the k sets of fairies on earth and the i-th bit of the message is 1 when a fairy of the i-th set dies.
Otherwise it's zero.
Would that violate Einstein ?
The system's fine, what violates relativity is the fact that the death of the fairy occurs
instantly after the child speaks his lack of ingenuity. This system could be used as you described to send information
instantly to some place many light-years away, effectively transmitting information faster than the speed of light, which according to (special) relativity is impossible. The OP, however, posited that the instant reaction of the fairies might be a consequence of quantum entanglement, which isn't subject to speed-of-light limitations.
On an unrelated note, has anyone else noticed that lately Zach seems hellbent on ruining every children fantasy ever?
[quote="maskedscavenger"]Suppose we can map each fairy to a single child uniquely, and when a child says the word, one of these fairies dies, say randomly.
And suppose we have knowledge of this mapping.
Then we could send a message of k bits by sending k children in space, and the kids assigned to a 1 kill one of their fairies.
And the 0-kids say nothing.
Then we could observe the k sets of fairies on earth and the i-th bit of the message is 1 when a fairy of the i-th set dies.
Otherwise it's zero.
Would that violate Einstein ?[/quote]
The system's fine, what violates relativity is the fact that the death of the fairy occurs [i]instantly[/i] after the child speaks his lack of ingenuity. This system could be used as you described to send information [i]instantly[/i] to some place many light-years away, effectively transmitting information faster than the speed of light, which according to (special) relativity is impossible. The OP, however, posited that the instant reaction of the fairies might be a consequence of quantum entanglement, which isn't subject to speed-of-light limitations.
On an unrelated note, has anyone else noticed that lately Zach seems hellbent on ruining every children fantasy ever?