Quantum archaeology

Quantum archaeology (QA) is a theoretical technique that could be used to reconstruct past events, objects and people through carefully studying events, objects and people in the present and then backtracking using highly advanced computer modeling methods. Quantum archaeology is premised upon the fact that each event, no matter how small, will set in motion an expanding chain of future events that will stretch into eternity. The information necessary for reconstructing any past event therefore is never lost.
The process behind quantum archaeology can be explained with the following analogy: Imagine that two people—Person A and Person B--are standing around a billiards table. Before anything happens, Person B turns his back to the table so that he can't see what is going on. Person A then racks 15 billiard balls into a triangle arrangment on the table and uses his cue to hit the cue ball into the triangle of billiard balls, which causes all 15 billiard balls and the cue ball to scatter in different directions, bouncing off of the walls of the table and off of each other. About five seconds after the break, Person B turns around and sees the table for the first time, which by this point looks like a mess of balls moving in all different directions and at different speeds all over the table. The untrained eye sees only chaos from which no useful information can be extracted, but if Person B carefully notes the exact position and velocity of each ball, and if he has other information about variables affecting their movement (i.e. - the frictional coefficient of the table's surface, the amount of air resistance, the elasticity of the table's walls), then he could work backwards from the present and mentally reconstruct the movements of each ball back to the first event—Person A hitting the cue ball with his cue. Person B could even reconstruct details like what the precise arrangement of the cue balls was in the original triangle, at what angle the cue ball first collided with the triangle, and how hard Person A hit the cue ball.
By the same token, the world at present is filled with innumerable clues about what the past was like, and in fact, every subatomic particle in existence contains some information about the past. However, mankind lacks the technology to record the position, velocity and state of every subatomic particle on Earth and also lacks the computing power to model that much information and do reverse extrapolations into the past. However, some futurists and technology enthusiasts believe that future advances in computers and nanotechnology will enable humans to practice quantum archaeology.
==Human "Resurrection"==
If one ascribes to a mechanistic view of the human mind—which holds that all personality traits, memories and thoughts arise from physical changes to and features of the brain—then quantum archaeology offers the means to reconstruct people who died in the past. If quantum archaeology allowed one to know about everything a dead person experienced, did and said during their lives, then much could be adduced about their psychology and personality and correlated with probable brain features. Moreover, other QA methods might actually reveal direct evidence of what the deceased's brain structure was. Using all of this information, some believe that the quantum archaeologists of the future could use cloning and some type of mind-programming technology to recreate people who lived in the past, including important historical figures. While such a process could theoretically create a close copy of the original person, some who believe that human consciousness is defined by patterns of matter and thought go farther and believe that the copy would in fact BE the original person because both would share the same pattern. Hence, some believe that quantum archaeology could be used to resurrect dead people. Some go so far as to champion the hypothetical technology for someday resurrecting every one of the billions of human beings who have ever died. Quantum archaeology thus carries humanitarian connotations for some supporters.
Criticisms
There is no consensus over how much information about the present would be needed to reliably reconstruct the past. Estimates differ by many orders of magnitude. Quantum archaeology might require more computational power than humans could feasibly build.
It is unclear whether people in the distant future would be willing to devote the necessary resources for quantum archaeology. Building massive computers for learning about the minutiae of Earth's history might not be worth it to them. Similarly, it's unclear whether people in the future would want to use their resources for recreating dead humans.
If quantum archaeology could be used to recreate dead people from the past, which point in their lives would be chosen for the moment of recreation? People change and evolve over the courses of their lives, and any one person could in fact be said to have been several different people over the course of their lifetimes (infant, disobedient adolescent, young adult, middle-aged person with children, elderly person with mental impairment, etc.). Therefore, bringing "one" person back using QA in fact involves choosing between several different people.
There are also ethical considerations about artificially creating human beings and then "programming" them with certain memories, predilections and personality traits, especially when the memories, predilections or traits would need to be negative to capture the nature of the original person. For instance, is it ethical to knowingly create a depressed alcoholic or a person tormented by bad memories that they never actually lived through?

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