Ansible

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For the science fiction newsletter, see David Langford.

An ansible is a hypothetical machine capable of superluminal communication and used as a plot device in science fiction literature.

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[edit] Origin

The word ansible was coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in her 1966 novel, Rocannon's World.[1] Le Guin states that she derived the name from "answerable," as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time, even over interstellar distances.[2][3] Her award-winning 1974 novel The Dispossessed[4] tells of the invention of the ansible within her Hainish Cycle.

[edit] Usage

The name of the device has since been borrowed by authors such as Orson Scott Card,[5] Vernor Vinge,[6] Elizabeth Moon,[7] L.A. Graf,[8] and Dan Simmons.[9] Similarly functioning devices are present in the works of numerous others, such as Frank Herbert[10] and Philip Pullman, who called it a "lodestone resonator".[11] The "subspace radio," best known today from Star Trek and named for the series' method of achieving faster-than-light travel, was the most commonly used name for such a faster-than-light (FTL) communicator in the science fiction of the 1930s to the 1950s.[citation needed] One ansible-like device which predates Le Guin's usage is the "Dirac communicator" in James Blish's 1954 short story "Beep". Isaac Asimov solved the same communication problem with the "hyper-wave relay" in The Foundation Series. Stephen R. Donaldson, in his Gap Series, introduces Symbiotic Crystalline Resonance Transmission, clearly ansible-type technology which, unfortunately, is very difficult to produce and limited to text messages.

Le Guin's ansible communicated instantaneously, and so do most other authors'. Notable exceptions are the HyperPulse Generator of the BattleTech universe and the ansible in the Vinge short story "The Blabber", which merely communicates faster than light — in a universe where that is believed impossible.

[edit] In Le Guin's work

In The Word for World is Forest, Le Guin explains that in order for communication to work with any pair of ansibles at least one "must be on a large-mass body, the other can be anywhere in the cosmos." In The Left Hand of Darkness, the ansible "doesn't involve radio waves, or any form of energy. The principle it works on, the constant of simultaneity, is analogous in some ways to gravity... One point has to be fixed, on a planet of certain mass, but the other end is portable." Le Guin's ansibles are not mated pairs as it is possible for an ansible's coordinates to be set to any known location of a receiving ansible. Moreover, the ansibles Le Guin uses in her stories apparently have a very limited bandwidth which only allows for at most a few hundred characters of text to be communicated in any transaction of a dialog session. Instead of a microphone and speaker, Le Guin's ansibles are attached to a keyboard and small display to perform text messaging.

[edit] In Card's work

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series is probably the most widely read work to use an ansible.[citation needed] ("The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator," explains Colonel Graff in Ender's Game, "but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere").[5] His description of ansible functions in Xenocide involve a fictional subatomic particle, the philote, and contradicts not only standard physical theory but the results of empirical particle accelerator experiments. In the "Enderverse", the two quarks inside a pi meson can be separated by an arbitrary distance while remaining connected by "philotic rays". This is similar in concept to quantum teleportation due to entanglement, although even that is not capable of faster-than-light communication. Also, in the real world, quark confinement prevents one from separating quarks by more than microscopic distances.

[edit] In reality

There is no known way to build an ansible. The theory of special relativity predicts that any such device would allow communication from the future to the past, which raises problems of causality. For this reason, most physicists believe that they will eventually be proven impossible. Quantum entanglement is often proposed as a mechanism for superluminal communication,[11] but our current understanding of that phenomenon is that it cannot be used for any sort of communication—superluminal or otherwise—because of the no cloning theorem in quantum mechanics. See time travel and faster-than-light for more discussion of these issues.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Quinion, Michael. Ansible. World Wide Words.
  2. ^ Goldman, Dave (Sat, 7 April 2001). Etymology of "ansible" (Usenet post). Message-ID: <dave-0704011253140001@ip154.pdx7.pacifier.com>. rec.arts.sf.written. Retrieved on 2006-12-08. “A few years ago there was some discussion here of where Ursula Le Guin got the name "ansible" for her instantaneous communication device. Well, I've just started a writing workshop from Ms. Le Guin, so I asked her.”
  3. ^ Langford, David (August 1998). "Take Another Look". PCW Today (10). Retrieved on 2006-10-24.
  4. ^ Le Guin, Ursula K. [June 1974] (August 2001). The Dispossessed, mass ppb., New York: Eos/HarperCollins, 276. ISBN 0-06-105488-7. “'They print Reumere's plans for the ansible.' 'What is the ansible?' 'It's what he's calling an instantaneous communication device.'” 
  5. ^ a b Card, Orson Scott [August 1977] (July 1994). Ender's Game, mass ppb., New York: Tor Books, 249. ISBN 0-8125-5070-6. “What matters is we built the ansible. The official name is Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere and it caught on.” 
  6. ^ Vinge, Vernor (1988-11-01). "The Blabber", Threats & Other Promises. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 254. ISBN 0-671-69790-0. “'It's an ansible.' 'Surely they don't call it that!' 'No. But that's what it is.'” 
  7. ^ Moon, Elizabeth (1995-08-01). Winning Colors, mass ppb., Riverdale, NY: Baen, 89. ISBN 0-671-87677-5. “...when I was commissioned, we didn't have FTL communications except from planetary platforms. I was on Boarhound when they mounted the first shipboard ansible, and at first it was only one-way, from the planet to us.” 
  8. ^ Graf, L.A. [Julia Ecklar] (August 1996). Time's Enemy, Star Trek Deep Space 9TM : Invasion, 3. mass pbk., New York: Pocket Books, 203. ISBN 0-671-54150-1. “'...The two Dax symbionts can communicate with each other across space, instantaneously, because they're composed of identical quantum particles. I've become a living ansible, Benjamin.'” 
  9. ^ Simmons, Dan (2003-07-01). Ilium, hbk., New York: Eos/HarperCollins, 98. ISBN 0-380-97893-8. “I can see Nightenhelser madly taking notes on his recorder ansible.” 
  10. ^ Herbert, Frank [1970] (1970-April). The Whipping Star. Worlds of If magazine. 
  11. ^ a b Pullman, Philip [2000] (2001-10-02). The Amber Spyglass, His Dark Materials, 3. mass pbk., New York: Del Rey, 156. ISBN 0-345-41337-7. “'Well, in our world there is a way of taking a common lodestone and entangling all its particles, and then splitting it in two so that both parts resonate together.'” 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

fr:Ansible it:Ansible nl:Weerwort ja:アンシブル pl:Ansibl pt:Ansible

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