Why Star Trek’s Transporter Will Never Be

As an engineer I totally love Start Trek, from Enterprise to Warp Drives to inspiring technologies such as cell phones and tablets. But certain technologies in the sci-fi-verse will never fracking be. One of them is the famed transporter of Star Trek.

Basically, there are 2 ways to teleport, one is by quantum entanglement, which is when 2 or more particles are in superposition, then they can be separated and any change in one will instantaneously happen on the other. We’ll save a discussion on this later. The other, is by converting matter to energy a la Einstein and modulating that energy to a data stream, then beaming that data down, to say, a habitable planet at which the data/energy stream is then converted back to matter where a hopeless red shirt suddenly appears.

At first glance, I always thought the two transporter ideas were theoretically possible, but after further scrutiny I realized there is no fracking way the latter could ever be achieved. Why? For us engineers , if we dig deep to the remote recesses of our ape brains, pass the depleted neurons due to binge drinking and sleep deprivation (from cramming for a test the night before) we remember that little thingy called the Shannon Limit! Oh yeah!

The Shannon Theorem essentially states there is a theoretical maximum data rate of a communication channel and quantitatively it looks like this:

data rate = B*log2(1+SNR).

What this means is that we can only beam down so much data per unit of time. There are other factors that affect data rate such as channel encoding, compression, modulation type, etc., but for simplicity we’ll ignore these for now.

So, assume we want to beam down to a habitable planet in this manner. We would be limited to the microwave, terahertz and certain atmospheric windows of far-infrared radiation of the electromagnetic spectrum because visible light and radiation above UV would be blocked if not at least severely attenuated, to use the engineering vernacular, by the atmosphere, fog, dust, smoke, clouds, etc. We can expect our transporter to work in various weather conditions.

Microwaves can pass through all of these, even buildings, so we can have the option to beam down our most revered tribbles to our grandmother’s kitchen. As a result, we are limited to frequencies below roughly 100 Terahertz or so (3 um in wavelength). Anything above would be in the near-infrared and or visible range and would be blocked by walls, etc. therefore rendering our beaming ability into buildings useless. If we include the microwave and terahertz wave bands, essentially we are limited to roughly 101 terahertz of bandwidth to beam all the info of a human body for reassembly on the planet surface. Bandwidth is the B in our equation above.

Now, how much data would it take to convert the human body into bits? Well, good question! I think we would have to know about the body on the molecular level to convert the body from matter to energy and then back again, at least to me that makes sense. From here on, I’m guesstimating but bear with me the exercise bears fruit.

Assume it would be possible to encode every molecule in a human body to its own 256 bit sequence. This sequence would tell the necessary info of the molecule such as chirality, location, composition, etc. and all the necessary info to reassemble the energy back into a human body. So, how much data are we talking about then? It comes out to be the # of molecules in your body multiplied by 256 bits. That’s a hell of a lot of data roughly, 256 * 10^25 bits or 64 yottabytes or 64 billion terabytes. The actual numbers aren’t important, what is, is that it will take a massive amount of data to convert the entire human body into a data stream for the teleporter to transport!

Now, assume our teleporter system is really powerful so we can transmit with a received SNR of 30 dB. Our equation now comes to:

Data rate = 101 * 10^12 * log2(1001) =~ 1010 terabytes per second

Due to the Shannon limit, and from the fact we want to beam through various atmospheres and into buildings our teleporter is limited to transporting ~1000 Tb per second. We now see the issue here. It would take an incredible long time to beam our 64 billion terabytes of data through a teleporter limited to somewhere around 1000 terabytes per second. Roughly around 2 years!! I don’t think the crew of Star Trek would want to wait that long! It would be far better just to take a shuttle down to the planet surface.

Now we roughed over a lot of the details but I feel the points have been strongly made even if we fudged around with the numbers. The basic points are that it will take an incredible amount of data to encode the entire human body onto a data stream. And second, we are bandwidth limited due to the physical restraints of what we are trying to accomplish. That is, beam through atmospheres and into buildings for instance. A teleporter of this type might be more practical for beaming from ship to ship in space, and not have to worry about atmospheric attenuation or beaming into a building, therefore greatly increasing the available bandwidth. And possibly reducing the teleportation time. So for now, we are dependent on some sort of quantum mechanical way of teleportation.  

THE DUNE TIMELINE

I finally figured out the Dune timeline.  It's quite involved.  Arthur C. Clarke has said, to paraphrase, there is nothing like it, except Lord of the Rings.   To me, the timeline is similar to Star Wars, in the sense that you have an Old Republic and a New Republic. We have the Original Series, then we have a prequel series based on the generation previous to the original generation, which I call Gen 1.

Then we have a series that deals with what I call the Dune 'pre-history' because its mentioned in the original series but Frank never wrote novels on it, such as the Butlerian Jihad, which was a war fought by humanity against AI machines that had enslaved mankind for several centuries.  Therefore, resulting in an anti-technology movement that swept through humanity.  By the time you get to the Originals most of humanity has very little technology besides spaceships.

I'm still figuring it out, since I haven't read all the novels, but from what I understand, in the Dune universe, humans got technologically advanced to colonize the galaxy and create AI machines which eventually gain sentience and enslave mankind, eventually resulting in the Jihad.

Then there are two books, which I'm reading now, which is the sequel to the pre-prequels.  They deal with the beginnings of the Imperium.  Since technology has been banned, many schools spring up to cultivate the mind and body of humans, thus resulting in the computer like mentats and Jedi like Bene Gesserit Sisterhood.  So far, they are pretty good.  I look forward to reading the prequels.

For the other books, there is a sequel  to the Original and there are 2 books to fill the Original series. Since the Original series covers such a long time span, Brian Herbert wrote a direct sequel to Dune and Dune Messiah.  I look forward to reading those and returning to Paul Muad'dip.

Check out the website here for more details on all the Dune Series novels.

Pre-Prequel Series

The Butlerian Jihad

The Machine Crusade

The Battle of Corrin

Sequal of the Pre-Prequel Series

Sisterhood of Dune

Mentats of Dune

Gen 1 Prequel Series

House Atreides

House Harkonnen

House Corrino

Original Series

Dune

-----> Paul of Dune

Dune Messiah

-----> Winds of Dune

Children of Dune

God Emperor of Dune

Heretics of Dune

ChapterHouse Dune

Sequal Series

Hunters of Dune

Sandworms of Dune

Dune Guide

Road to Dune

Children of Dune

After reading the first two books which were excellent, I was disappointed with this one or at least with the antagonist. I think having Paul's sister possessed by the Baron Harkonnen as the antagonist was lacking and not very creative. And I don't think it was really communicated why Alia was such an abomination.

Alia, having all the memories of all the Reverend Mothers, for she was a fetus while her mother Jessica was undergoing the Reverend Mother conversion ceremony, Water of Life. She was a severe abomination to the Bene Gesserit due to her genetic memory and allowing the memories of the Baron to completely consume her. Apparently, the Reverend Mothers also having genetic memory, but never allowing any memory to consume them were in the clear.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

It should be known that the Bene Gesserit were the advisers to the Emperor and to other nobles and sought to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, the male messiah that could conceive all time including the future. Their plans thwarted with Paul becoming this long sought messiah, Muad'Dib, the Kwisatz Haderach. It was pretty cool that Paul is still roaming about the planet and still alive (sorry spoiler alert) and that their children were totally prescient geniuses.

I kind of liked the end though. Paul's son, Leto II, becomes a new species of sorts, allowing himself to be conjoined with the sand trout, a symbiotic relationship, which gives him superior speed and strength. Thus becoming the ultimate warrior and the emperor who couldn't die. He becomes emperor for 3000 years to ensure humanity is on the right path (The Golden Path) and to continue the Atreides line of rule. During this time, humanity barely makes it due to the dearth of the spice. The sandworms are nearly all dead due to the terraformation of Arrakis. And I got the gist that after his rule, he was going to mate with the worms to repopulate the species. Wow that was weird, but interesting ending.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Dune Messiah is the second novel of Frank's excellent Dune series. A superb novel! It takes place some years after Paul has conquered the Empire though his Jihad. The Bene Gesserit, Bene Xalact, the Guild and the former Emperor Shalam plot to retake the throne. The plot is mostly dialog, which would make for an excellent movie. If HBO ever did a show based on Dune it would be bad ass!

Spoiler Alert!

The ending has absolutely no closure and left me longing and shocked. Which I absolutely thought was brilliant! So this is my gist of it, the golum, Dunkan Idaho, was programmed to kill Paul. This was a plot but not the main one. In the attempt to resist his programming, the golum would actually become Idaho, at which point, Paul would totally be mesmerized and see it as a way to resurrect his lover and wife, Chani. Paul having prescience could see his wife die due to complications of childbirth and order a golum of his wife. Then at some future time, the wife golum, would kill Paul and probably his children as well. Thus restoring the throne back to the former emperor. All the while, Dune being transformed from a desert planet to a green thriving world, which this will cause many problems later.

As a side note, It is interesting and ironic that the whole Fremen religion of restoring Dune to a paradise would actually lead to their demise. Apparently, the planetologist Kynes saw this but still worked the Fremen folklore to unite the Fremen.

Back to the task at hand, You see this gave Paul some very serious hard choices. First off, I guess Paul could not kill the golum because I take it, the golum would actually become Duncan Idaho, Paul's most dear friend and his sister's lover. In order to retain the empire through his children though, Paul had to allow his wife to die, if he saved her from her death, which was childbirth, then the children wouldn't be born. I guess a c-section was against the Fremen religion. If he did that he would lose the empire by Fremen revolt. If he chose to resurrect her by ordering a golum be made, then she would have been programmed to assassinate him and probably his children.

So, Paul was forced to allow his lover and wife Chani to die, so that he would have an heir and a safe heir at that through time. Paul at this time, who was bereft everything, and who had lost his eyes in an assassination attempt earlier in the book, decided to honor the Fremen treatment of the blind by being led out into the desert to 'die'. One hell of an ending! One hell of a book! If you feel I have missed interpreted the ending feel free to add your input.

Exoplanets

So far, there are 5,656 potential discoveries of exoplanets, that is, planets outside of our solar system. 1,955 have been confirmed discoveries. Possibly the closest habitable planet is located 14 light years away around a star called Wolf  1061 (see wolf).  Most exoplanets are gas giants like Jupiter or Neptune, much larger than Earth, but this is biased caused by our techniques and instruments. It’s just way easier to discover bigger planets either by watching the wobble of a star due to the planetary gravity tugging or the dimming of a star by planets’ transit as it passes in front of its host star. Instruments that are currently in construction or in the planning phase such as the James Webb Telescope (JWST), Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will take planet hunting to a whole new level and replace the still functioning but basically defunct Kepler Telescope (Kepler). The combination of these state of the art instruments will no doubt find our true Earth twin and possibly the first exo habited planet!

Exoplanets so far, have been quite varied, from Earth like to super-earths, to gas giants of various sizes and distances to their host stars. Science fiction has also been vary imaginative in creating all different types of interesting planets. One of the more famous planets, Tatooine, home world to our beloved Luke Skywalker, resides in a binary star system. It’s reminiscent of an actual planet, Kepler-16b, which actually resides in a binary star system!

Another is Vulcan, the planet where the venerable Spock is from. It is believed that Vulcan is larger than Earth therefore the gravity stronger and its atmosphere thinner, resulting in Vulcans being much stronger and with greater endurance than humans. There have been several super-earth discoveries. It is interesting to note that Spock’s blood is green due to the copper which is used to transport oxygen. On Earth, certain species of lizard also have green blood and some marine species have blue blood due to the copper based hemocyanin, while others have clear blood. Humans have red blood due to the iron rich hemoglobin (see Blood).

For a planet to be habitable it must be in the ‘goldilocks zone’ around a star. This is a zone where liquid water can exist and is thought to be most potentially habitable by life as we know it. However, many planets reside outside this goldilocks zone. Could the Hoth planet of Star Wars be one of these? It appears Hoth must reside just outside of the liquid water zone of its star and might reside in the ‘snow zone’ or beyond the ‘snow line’ (snowline). This is where a planet doesn’t receive enough energy from its host star to melt water to liquid form, therefore the water remains frozen, like Hoth, a complete ice ball. Hoth could also be in a snowball condition brought on by cataclysmic global climate change. We know Earth underwent at least 3 of these events called ‘Snowball Earth’ where the entire Earth was covered in glaciers.

The first Snowball Earth took place 2.3 to 1.8 billion years ago in association with the Great Oxygenation Event, the second, 730 to 670 million years ago and the third between 640 to 580 million years ago finishing just before the Cambrian explosion, for which it may have been a trigger. (Our world was ruled by microorganism for the first 3.5 billion years!) Reduction in greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere seems to trigger these snowball events, which leads to a runaway condition since the increase in snow reflects solar radiation back into space, thus cooling the Earth even more. Its plausible that massive volcanic activity is responsible for reversing these snowball events.

Glaciation and ice ages on Earth seem to advance and retreat every 40,000 to 100,000 years caused by the wobble or precession of the Earth’s axis and the variability in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around Sol. The most recent retreat of the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Snowball Earth events and ice ages have brought about major changes in the evolution of life, probably mass extinctions. As much as 99.9 per cent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct (see extinct). “We may find, if and when we meet humanoid extraterrestrial aliens, that we both have the same interest in the weather as a subject of small talk, before getting on to the serious conversations about interstellar propulsion systems and fostering world peace” John Murdin.

Speaking of weather, the famous planet of Arrakis in the Dune novels is entirely desert. Very unlike Earth, water is a scarce commodity if not sacred to the native Fremen. They wear special suits to keep cool and to capture perspiration and recycle bodily fluid waste. No water is ever wasted, when a Fremen dies, their body and blood is ‘recycled’ and returned to the camp’s water reserves. It’s unsure whether the planet wide desertification of Arrakis is due to some global cataclysm or its position in its solar system prevents Arrakis from blossoming. Either way, in the novel Dune, a global wide terraforming project is underway to create a green paradise from the desert, led by Liet-Kynes, the Imperial Planetologist turned revered Fremen and father in law to Paul Atreides aka Muad’dib the protagonist.

Although there is much ecology on Arrakis it seems to me that a planet lacking in much flora would ever have a breathable atmosphere, since on Earth plants produce the oxygen necessary for life. However, 25% of our oxygen is produced by cyanobacteria so maybe there are single celled organisms on Arrakis that produce their oxygen.

Since most stars in the universe (about 70%) are red dwarfs, which are cooler and smaller than our sun, photosynthesis on planets around red dwarfs would evolve to be much different. Photosynthesizing life would adapt to absorb the red light from their host stars, unlike chlorophyll A on Earth, not only able to absorb red-orange light but violet-blue as well, and reflecting green light. Planets orbiting Gliese 581 and Kepler-186f could host plants that blossom black.

Terraforming is a popular subject in science fiction. Usually associated with Mars, such as the Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars novels of Kim Stanley Robinson and the Mars colonies in the Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey, and of course, the mentioned Dune series, but with the planet of Arrakis. Even Venus was undergoing terraforming in 2312 also by Kim. And in Star Wars, the planet Coruscant is one giant city. I assume massive ecological and geological projects must of have been undertaken to keep Coruscant habitable.

Real exoplanets can be checked out at Planet Quest website (planetquest). Also check out their interactives they're really cool. We see that the universe is just as creative as science fiction authors in creating various planets. But most of us are interested in finding a true Earth analog. Kepler-452b so far is the most Earth like, having a year similar to ours, orbiting a star similar to the sun and only being 60% larger than Earth. The search continues, in the meantime our imagination and knowledge about exoplanets will continue to expand.  

2312

Kim is one of the greatest sci-fi writers of our time. I loved this book. I thought it was great. If you want a view what the world will be like in 300 years from now read this book! Kim is a master, not sure why he does not hold the mantle of hard sci-fi such as Arthur C. Clarke, anyway Kim is what I call a description maximalist. Which I'm more of a plot guy, but I find his descriptions so intriguing I literally could not put the book down. Excellent storytelling.

The only critical thing I can say is the overall plot or arc was lacking especially the ending. The ending was anticlimactic. Which now that I think about it, it may be part of Kim's genius. Because this book came out in an era where normal plot lines and character bounds were being broken, a good example would be G.R.R. Martin's SoIF series (Game of Thrones). So the fact that Kim went with a conventional, bland and happy ending is dumb or is it?

I don't want to give all the details, but it's loaded with the future, climate change, quantum computers, space travel, space colonies, spaceships, environmental restoration, androgynous humans, genetics, artificial intelligence, and of course, murder, sex and drugs!

Aliens, Who or What is Out There?

Sci-fi authors and have been inventive in creating all kinds of various aliens. From the alien in Alien with acid for blood that uses humans to gestate past the larva stage, to silicon based lifeforms in Star Trek such as the Tholians, to the giant bird like slash dinosaur creatures of Shipstar, to the Wookies of Star Wars. We can see that imagination knows no bounds, but what is the actuality that any of these aliens could in theory be real? Are they potentially realistic?

We now know that space is full of the key ingredients of life as we know it. First is water, think comets and Europa. Europa is a frozen water world moon of Jupiter and its speculated that Ganymede contains more water than the entire Earth! (see underground ocean on ganymede).  It’s also theorized that comets and asteroids delivered Earth’s water over the course of millions of years (see oceans arrived early on earth). Second is sugar. Sugar has been discovered out in space as well as other prebiotic molecular species such as amino acids (see prebiotic molecules and building blocks of life).

It’s no wonder our bodies are ~70% water, our DNA contains sugar, deoxyribose, and proteins are chains of amino acids; and proteins are produced by the genes embedded in out DNA. In fact, there have been meteorites found that contained off world amino acids, such as the Murchison meteorite and several others since then. Roughly 500 amino acids are thought to exit and Earthly biology uses 20 of them, 9 have to be ingested since they are not produced by our bodies.

Certainly DNA has been a successful molecule for storing and spreading information, it has dominated life on Earth, but is there another way for biology to spread information and ultimately for life to thrive? I am reminded of a Voyager episode where the crew discover a species known as 8472. It turns out species 8472’s DNA has a triple helix instead of the Earthly double helix of our own DNA. Is a triple helix DNA molecule possible? We know that DNA came from RNA, but where did RNA come from? When and where did it begin? These questions are outside the realm of Evolution and are concerned in the study of Abiogenesis (see Genesis by Robert Hazen).

It appears life exists in every niche on Earth, even in the most extreme environments. These Extremophiles are thought to be the first life on Earth, the Archaea if you will, and the reasoning goes if they can exist in such extreme places on earth then certainly they can be found in the various extreme conditions that space provides. Especially if space is pervasive in prebiotic molecules. Let us conduct a thought experiment using the proverbial Drake Equation to guesstimate the chances of intelligent life in our galaxy. It is as follows:

# of stars: 100 to 400 billion, so we’ll go with a conservative number at 200 billion

% of stars with planets: 0.6 to 0.9, it appears that star formation goes hand in hand with planet formation, but we’ll go with the conservative estimate at 0.6

% of planets in the habitable zone: around 1/100 according to the latest surveys

% of habitable planets with life: 0.5 is a good number because either a planet has life or doesn’t, but again we’ll go conservative here and guess at 1/100, we enter uncharted area here

% with intelligent life: totally unknown here so go conservative at 1/1000

200e9 * 0.6 * 1/100 * 1/100 * 1/1000 = 12,000

Wow that’s potentially 12 thousands planets in our galaxy with intelligent life on them!! We can adjust the values to develop a range with N being the number of planets with intelligent life. It comes out to be:

1e6 >= N >= 3000

So, we can have anywhere from 1 million to only 3 thousand, personally I think the 12 thousand is a pretty good number. So far, we only know of one planet with (supposedly) intelligent life on it.  Here on Earth we have several smart animals that can demonstrate a relatively higher intelligence. Namely, certain bird species such as magpies, crows and ravens, elephants, whales, dolphins, and certain species of dog. The smartest animals of course are our cousins, the great apes specifically chimpanzees and bonobos (we share ~95% of our DNA with them).

Star Trek has been criticized for having aliens humanoid and too human like, but I’m convinced that if intelligent life exists outside of our solar system, it would be humanoid in form (see aliens-will-look-a-lot-like-us). This argument was put forth by several scientists, one of them [University of Cambridge paleontologist] Simon Conway Morris even argued aliens would be as specific as being bipedal primates! Also, [Harvard University biologist] Ed Wilson argues for humanoid form. However, a number of scientists disagree such as, Josh Timonen of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. See will-e-t-look-like-us for the ongoing discussion. Also, is-there-any-plausible-reason

In general, I think the common thread that makes an animal smart is having a big brain, stereo vision, bilateral (but not necessarily bipedal), and dexterous appendages such as hands, etc. for tool use. These, I feel are the necessary characteristics for intelligent life, hence the humanoid form.  If these conclusions aren’t so far off base then maybe the aliens portrayed in sci-fi namely Star Trek and Star Wars give us a slight glimpse of what’s really out there!