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Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 21:19:27 -0700 X-Sender: tcmay@mail.got.net Subject: Re: key bit lengths

A late April Fool's joke, methinks? Arguing that in "several billion years" the "temperature" of the universe will have anything to do with computation....well, your physics is all wrong.

The approximate figure, kT, for the minimum energy in a conventional bit flip, can be reduced by simple cooling. Not a problem. And what the so-called "average temperature" of the Universe may be in, say, 10 billion years, will not affect computation. Fusion will still occur, stars will still burn, sunshine will still produce heat. And so on.

True, but there will be considerably fewer of them doing it. Jim Choate