Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

The Speed of Light Revisited. 
In this way the maximum speed of expansion of a solar system-size intelligence (that 
is, a type II civilization) into the rest of the universe would be very close to the speed of light. We currently understand 
the maximum speed to transmit information and material objects to be the speed of light, but there are at least 
suggestions that this may not be an absolute limit. 
We have to regard the possibility of circumventing the speed of light as speculative, and my projections of the 
profound changes that our civilization will undergo in this century make no such assumption. However, the potential 
to engineer around this limit has important implications for the speed with which we will be able to colonize the rest of 
the universe with our intelligence. 
Recent experiments have measured the flight time of photons at nearly twice the speed of light, a result of 
quantum uncertainty on their position.
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However, this result is really not useful for this analysis, because it does not 
actually allow information to be communicated faster than the speed of light, and we are fundamentally interested in 
communication speed. 
Another intriguing suggestion of an action at a distance that appears to occur at speeds far greater than the speed 
of light is quantum disentanglement. Two particles created together may be "quantum entangled," meaning that while 
a given property (such as the phase of its spin) is not determined in either particle, the resolution of this ambiguity of 
the two particles will occur at the same moment. In other words, if the undetermined property is measured in one of 
the particles, it will also be determined as the exact same value at the same instant in the other particle, even if the two 
have traveled far apart. There is an appearance of some sort of communication link between the particles. 
This quantum disentanglement has been measured at many times the speed of light, meaning that resolution of the 
state of one particle appears to resolve the state of the other particle in an amount of time that is a small fraction of the 
time it would take if the information were transmitted from one particle to the other at the speed of light (in theory, the 
time lapse is zero). For example, Dr. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva sent quantum-entangled photons in 
opposite directions through optical fibers across Geneva. When the photons were seven miles apart, they each 
encountered a glass plate. Each photon had to "decide" whether to pass through or bounce off the plate (which 
previous experiments with non-quantum-entangled photons have shown to be a random choice). Yet because the two 
photons were quantum entangled, they made the same decision at the same moment. Many repetitions provided the 
identical result.
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The experiments have not absolutely ruled out the explanation of a hidden variable—that is, an unmeasurable 
state of each particle that is in phase (set to the same point in a cycle), so that when one particle is measured (for 
example, has to decide its path through or off a glass plate), the other has the same value of this internal variable. So 
the "choice" is generated by an identical setting of this hidden variable, rather than being the result of actual 
communication between the two particles. However, most quantum physicists reject this interpretation. 
Yet even if we accept the interpretation of these experiments as indicating a quantum link between the two 
particles, the apparent communication is transmitting only randomness (profound quantum randomness) at speeds far 
greater than the speed of light, not predetermined information, such as the bits in a file. This communication of 
quantum random decisions to different points in space could have value, however, in applications such as providing 

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encryption codes. Two different locations could receive the same random sequence, which could then be used by one 
location to encrypt a message and by the other to decipher it. It would not be possible for anyone else to eavesdrop on 
the encryption code without destroying the quantum entanglement and thereby being detected. There are already 
commercial encryption products incorporating this principle. This is a fortuitous application of quantum mechanics 
because of the possibility that another application of quantum mechanics—quantum computing—may put an end to 
the standard method of encryption based on factoring large numbers (which quantum computing, with a large number 
of entangled qubits, would be good at). 
Yet 
another 
faster-than-the-speed-of-light phenomenon is the speed with which galaxies can recede from each 
other as a result of the expansion of the universe. If the distance between two galaxies is greater than what is called the 
Hubble distance, then these galaxies are receding from one another at faster than the speed of light.
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This does not 
violate Einstein's special theory of relativity, because this velocity is caused by space itself expanding rather than the 
galaxies moving through space. However, it also doesn't help us transmit information at speeds faster than the speed of 
light.