3 ms·

Wouldn’t the no cloning theorem make an exact replica impossible?

• adrian_b 5y ago
  The "no cloning theorem" refers to replicating the same quantum state. It does not apply to making a replica of a body that is composed by the same kinds of atoms linked in the same way between themselves, which can be considered as identical with the original for any practical purposes. In a very rudimentary form, such technology exists today, it is possible to remove one atom at a time from a certain position of a body and identify it with a mass spectrometer and it is possible to grow a structure a few atoms at a time. It is likely that the precision of such techniques could be improved well enough to be able to replicate some extremely small microscopic objects. The most difficult limitation to overcome is the speed of the process. To be able to make some human-sized object atom-by-atom and molecule-by-molecule in a reasonable time would require a many orders-of-magnitude higher speed than possible with the current technologies.