Re: OT: Relativity (Was: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir)

Caleb said:
>
> This same type of paradox could also be acheived via 'normal' FTL
> travel, without the help of wormholes. Scientists are seriously
> studying wormholes, though, to see if there is any theoretical way to
> allow FTL travel without causing a time paradox (which most
> scientists feel are forbidden by physics).
Time paradoxes are not only not forbidden in QED, the time-travelling
objects themselves are observed as a matter of course. (Unfortunately, we
observe everything as though it were travelling forward through time, but
that doesn't change the underlying physics.)

Relativity physicists simply haven't caught up with the repeal of the Law
of Causality. Once they do, most of them should be able to see more
clearly that the equations are talking about observations of one system
made by another system, and that properties involving mass, energy, space
and time have no referent when applied to only one system "absolutely".

Interestingly, one of the few ontologically unbefuddled interpretations of
quantum mechanics says the same thing for the most fundamental level of
physical reality: quantum states are properties of two systems in
interaction, not of one system by itself, for which such states simply do
not exist. If you wanted to describe the quantum state of the universe,
you'd have to divide the universe into two parts to do so.


> In fact, so far as I can tell, once you admit FTL, time-travel becomes
> almost trivially easy.
The equations only talk about an object being *observed* to travel
backwards through time with respect to the observer's frame of reference.
Unfortunately, that's not the same thing as actually travelling backwards
through time, for which there is still no method (at least not for
macroscopic objects) even if you *can* accelerate yourself past the speed
of light.


-- Mark

Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX