t05rrs%mpx1@LANL.GOV (Dick Silbar) (03/09/88)
Regarding George McKee's "picotechnology and positronic brains" article
in AIList V6 #47, my initial reaction was "You must be kidding, Mr.
McKee!". However, lest the non-physicist be misled:
1) positronium ain't "small" but is the size of a hydrogen atom
(which is essentially what it is).
2) positronium decays rapidly, in less than a microsecond, be it
ortho or para, ceramic matrix or not. This fact was already well known
at the time positronic brains came into the literature.
3) a Cooper pair, as occurs in superconductors, is even much larger
than positronium, since it is bound by exchange of phonons rather than
photons.
What I don't know is whether Mr. McKee intended us to take his remarks
about biology seriously.
Dick