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Originally Posted by Professor Tanhauser!
I've also heard of the "descriptor drive" that postulates that every particle in the universe can be described mathematically, and that if it were possible to manipulate those descriptors you could instantly change a ship's position in the universe. The processing power required along makes the mind boggle, but are there any sites discussing the issue?
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I'd skip this idea. You need something to hold all that information. If you used every particle in the universe to describe itself you would have enough storage to hold all that information. Conveniently enough, every particle in the universe describes itself quite well. The down side is collection those descriptions when you have nothing left to collect it with.
On the other hand, if you could use energy to store other energy you could decouple yourself from where to store the information and perhaps something like this might even be thinkable. Hmm... maybe even that wouldn't be necessary. If you could completely describe a particle and transmit the information as photons traveling across the universe then you have found a way to "store" them. Now all you have to do is run around and describe each particle, instantaneously, and have all the information transmitted to the same location. If you were able to transmit the information in such a way that all the information arrived at one point forming some kind of three dimensional form then you might grab it and have the state of the universe. Of course all of this would have to take place instantaneously... so I'd really think about going at it from a different angle.
This just made me think of a fun game for interstellar scientists. Each of them sits on their own planet with some kind of laser beam or particle beam and they all have a target somewhere in the universe they have to hit simultaneously. A future instant in time is set and each of them have to transmit at precisely the correct instant to allow their beam to travel to that point to hit at the correct time. Any race failing to hit the target is doomed to be sneered at and suffer the derision of all other races until the end of time.
Interstellar Scientific Olympics might be a fun topic.