Re: In search of the perfect Disassembler

Beth wrote: 
T.M. Sommers wrote:

Normal matter cannot exceed the speed of light.  If tachyons
exist, broken speed limits will be the least of our worries.


Actually, re-read your physics textbooks and you will note a _very crucial_
"semantic" in the way it's phrased...

I suggest you re-read yours. Taylor and Wheeler is a good place to start. Come back after you have mastered it.

Nothing may accelerate up to and exceed the speed of light...this is
because it requires more and more energy to accelerate further until, at
the speed of light itself, you require "infinite energy"...which is an
impossible condition to ever satisfy...hence, you cannot _accelerate passed
the speed of light_...

Thank you for the elementary physics lecture. I see that with you to guide me through the mysteries of modern physics there was no point in taking all those graduate physics courses. (That is an example of irony, a form of sarcastic remark in which the real meaning is the opposite of the surface meaning.)

[ Note that most sci-fi shows have "picked up on this"

Science fiction is not physics, and trying to learn physics from science fiction is just plain silly.

Anyway, the "revelation" about Einstein's work - from an "overall" and
"scientific" point of view - is actually more to do with him starting the
whole "grand unified theory" stuff

Sorry, but Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism before Einstein was born.

You'll note that once all the physicists agreed that light was a constant,
they measure it and, oh dear, it appears it's not as "constant" as first
imagined...and it's changed over time


Citation, please.

No, sorry, T.M.'s "on the money" here, I'm afraid...because he did say
"normal matter" in his reply (which just means that which is "sub-light" to
begin with)...

Normal matter--that is, matter with real mass--is also the only matter ever observed.

As for tachyons, I don't see there's an actual problem with them
existing

Then please explain the physical meaning of imaginary mass, and where the infinite energy radiated by a charged tachyon comes from, and ...

...just that us "forward motion in time" people are going to have
immense headaches trying to work out what the hell is going on...things are
confusing enough when everything can only go _forward_ in time...if they
can start going backwards in time and "paradoxes" spring up
everywhere...then, well, your granny isn't safe...billard balls start
flying around in all directions...and, basically, screw all that...it's
much too complicated...I mean, the plot of "Back to the Future" was tricky
enough to follow and that completely ignored "chaos theory" (as all those
"time travel" things do...if you went back in time, then you would not need
to do a single thing whatsoever to "violate causality"...your very
existence has already done that...you know, the air has been displaced (so,
if someone was going to later breath that air, you've altered the future!

You are making the unwarranted assumption that the past can be changed, even granted that it can be visited. What happened in the past already happened. If you decide next week to visit me last Christmas, I could show you the snaps today, because you were already there (Don't worry: you weren't really there). It doesn't matter about all that air you breathe in your visit to the past, because you already did it.

If you can visit the past, then not only does the past already exist, but the future already exists, too, otherwise there is no place for the time traveller to come from.

The ability to change the past, as envisioned in typical science fiction, implies an extra time dimension. The past was something, and not it is something else. 'Was' and 'now' imply time, but obviously it can't be the same time as we know, since that would make no sense at all. So there must be another time dimension. There is obviously no evidence that such an extra dimension exists.

--
Thomas M. Sommers -- tms@xxxxxx -- AB2SB

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Guy from university physics ... Eureka! A picture!
    ... However, if the way matter affects ether is similar to the way air affects sound, the earth and its' atmosphere would be a less than optimal test bed. ... Indeed, if you take the horn from a train and place it in a long train, you would loose the effect, the skin of the train deflects/slows/distorts/whatever the air which causes the effect. ... Now, if someone where to reconstruct the Michelson–Morley experiment from the nose of a space shuttle, to mirrors traveling at the same speed and in the same trajectory of the shuttle, perhaps a quite different conclusion would be reached. ...
    (rec.radio.amateur.antenna)
  • Re: Dare to dream
    ... Randi Rhodes has absolutely never called for the death of Bush. ... FBI you can bet your buns I'd have a couple of dark suits at my door pronto. ... So if she ever had done that on air, she'd be out of a job in 2 seconds. ... My girlfriend always laughs during sex - no matter what she's reading. ...
    (alt.smokers.cigars)
  • Re: The train and the light inside.
    ... matter, or argue why time cannot be a property of matter. ... Thus, while all objects exist in the time dimension, their time ... That is also an invention of humans. ... You are still using human inventions as physical properties? ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: So, I got my OW Cert
    ... How does that matter if it allows them to conserve their breathing gas ... Air consumption and oxygen consumption don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. ...
    (rec.scuba)
  • Re: process physics (was Re: Aether is the empty space in which the Universe sits)
    ... >> published experimental data conflicting with this hypothesis. ... Earth, water, and air are terrestrial states of matter ... the universe as a living creature?" ...
    (sci.physics)