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Delivering an Earth-Shattering Discovery?

An anonymous reader asks: "Just for fun... suppose you've made an Earth-shattering discovery that, when revealed, will cause massive social upheaval. Maybe you've discovered a new energy source or weapon, or figured out how to factor large primes in seconds, or learned how to time travel back in time and affect the present. Being a nice guy, you decide to warn the world now and give everybody a few years to prepare before revealing the discovery. How can you absolutely encrypt or otherwise protect your discovery, but guarantee its revealing at a certain future date even if you and everybody you know is long gone? For example, could you bounce an electromagnetic signal describing the discovery off a celestial body several light-years away?"

1 of 583 comments (clear)

  1. Rivest on Time-Lock Cryptography by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ron Rivest (The "R" in RSA) wrote a paper on time locked crypto, which sounds like what you want. But really, what are the chances you have an earth shattering discovery to reveal if you can't even use Google?

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    taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!