[time 506] Re: preprint: Physical Limits to Communication


Stephen Paul King (stephenk1@home.com)
Sat, 31 Jul 1999 20:40:01 GMT


On 31 Jul 1999 01:00:03 -0500, Cris Moore <moore@santafe.edu> wrote:

>
>The following preprint is available:
>
>The Physical Limits of Communication, or Why Any Sufficiently Advanced
>Technology is Indistinguishable from Noise
>
>Michael Lachmann, M.E.J. Newman, and Cristopher Moore
>
>Submitted to Nature.
>
>It has been well-known since the pioneering work of Claude Shannon in the
>1940s that a message transmitted with optimal efficiency over a channel of
>limited bandwidth is indistinguishable from random noise to a receiver who
>is unfamiliar with the language in which the message is written. In this
>letter we demonstrate an equivalent result about electromagnetic
>transmissions. We show that when electromagnetic radiation is used as the
>transmission medium, the most information-efficient format for a given
>message is indistinguishable from black-body radiation to a receiver who
>is unfamiliar with that format. The characteristic temperature of the
>radiation is set by the amount of energy used to make the transmission. If
>information is not encoded in the direction of the radiation, but only its
>timing, energy or polarization, then the most efficient format has the
>form of a one-dimensional black-body spectrum which is easily
>distinguished from the three-dimensional case.
>
>This paper can be downloaded from http://www.santafe.edu/~moore
>
>Comments are welcome!
>
>As I stepped out upon the landing my heart was already down the stairs...
> --- Elvis Costello
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Cris Moore Santa Fe Institute moore@santafe.edu http://www.santafe.edu/~moore
>
>



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