

Ask HN: Is Realtime Interplanetary Communication Feasable? - michaelkscott

Do you think it'll ever be possible to have the sort of "real-time" communication we have today, across planets?
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roycyang
With our current understanding of physics, it doesn't seem possible but the
key word is _current_. Scientists recently measured particles going faster
than the speed of light. Granted it was not much faster and is still not
verified, but if that's possible, it'd stand to reason that there could be
other advancements that could do it. If you asked anyone a hundred years ago
if they thought they could have real-time communication with someone half way
around they world, they would think you were crazy.

~~~
RVijay007
Wasn't this formally disproven, that particles (neutrinos) can go faster than
light? A technical issue I think was at play, or some miscalculations that did
not take the effects of relativity into account properly.

~~~
pif
Indeed, all the experiments located under Gran Sasso are reporting measured
speeds compatible with light speed (in the vacuum). Here's the CERN press
release:
[http://press.web.cern.ch/press/pressreleases/releases2011/pr...](http://press.web.cern.ch/press/pressreleases/releases2011/pr19.11e.html)
There are also named two possible causes of the original, unexpected result.

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iends
Since it's proven we can never exceed the speed of light, and it takes ~14
minutes for light to travel to Mars...

No.

~~~
danudey
The speed-of-light limitation is a local limitation. There have been
experiments showing that it's possible to send information faster than the
speed of light, and bypassing the speed of light by e.g. moving or changing
your frame of reference is theoretically possible (e.g. wormholes, folding
space, etc.)

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't recall any experiments showing FTL transmissions - it's always turned
out to either be an illusion.

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kuasha
In our lifetime - No! Beyond that- I am not sure of the limitation of light.

Consider this- There is a lake which is 50 meters wide but 500 km long. You
want to cross the lake. You are at the middle of one side of the lake. Now to
cross you need to travel aproximately 500km if you follow the bank.

Now if your maximum speed is 6 km per hour yo need more than 80 hours.

Now you get a great idea to create a bridge on the lake- Time to cross is
reduced to a minute or so. Now what you are doing is instead of walking one
dimension following the bank you just bridged the two places using second
dimension.

I do not know if it is possible to create a bridge among two places using
another dimension or not- but it is alwaws a possibility and you can do it by
travelling less than speed of light.

~~~
danudey
The 'generally accepted' theory on how to accomplish this well is some
implementation of quantum entanglement.

A wormhole is another possibility, but connecting both ends of an Einstein-
Rosen bridge to the same universe would render it too unstable to be used for
any sort of communication, as it would collapse before light or radio signals
could make it through. One could theoretically get around this by creating two
wormholes to a separate universe, with the endpoints here separated by
distance and the endpoints in the other universe very close (so that
signals/matter/etc. travels to the other universe and back). In effect, this
would work similarly to 'hyperspace' in some sci-fi (e.g. Babylon 5's jump
gates).

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mchannon
I think they've been able to demonstrate quantum entanglement getting past the
latency problem; the light beam has to be continuous (you have to know you
want this communication for as long as it takes for the photons to make the
journey) but by sending one entangled photon and monkeying with its trapped
twin at the source, it's theoretically possible to get near-instant
communication over any distance.

Still, as important as latency is here on planet Earth to the financial
trading witch doctors in New York, Tokyo, and London, seems odd no one's been
able to monetize this idea as yet.

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dotborg2
AI, machine learning and a digital version of the universe.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I guarantee that if we develop AI good enough to simulate any given's person's
actual responses, the first most popular use-case will be people trying to
figure out how to successfully talk their significant others into a threesome.

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toolslive
Yes, but only if it's bad news. (since nothing travels as fast as bad news)

~~~
danudey
This is actually one of my favourite throwaway jokes from the Hitch Hiker's
Guide:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_Th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_The_Hitchhikers_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Hingefreel)

