Faster than light
James Silverton
indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
--
James Silverton, Potomac
I'm *not* not.jim....@verizon.net
Anthony Nance
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
Yeah, there's whole slews of them. The method that most immediately
comes to mind is travel via "hyperspace", which is generally portrayed
as using "higher" (or other) dimensions. Iain Banks' Culture stories
do this; Cordwainer Smith's planoforming/"space2" is a version of
this; Asimov used it in many stories; also Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide....
Tony
James Silverton
I've not seen "hyperspace" indicated specifically as using higher
dimensions. Usually, it just appears without any particular reference to
string theory etc.
David DeLaney
... ... The ONLY reason I know of to _automatically_ associate "hyperspace"
with "string theory" is a certain book from some years ago by Michio Kaku.
In general, "hyperspace" _refers to_ higher dimensions; it can specifically
refer to a fourth spatial dimension, or more generally to a set of higher
dimensions. Most writers that use it don't bother to explain why the speed
of light would no longer be a natural law in the space formed by using all
of those dimensions. Or how the spaceship or person or cargo holder gets
picked up out of our 4-space and put into an N+1-space (or how it suddenly
finds it can access the latter without leaving our coordinate system).
This meaning (fourth spatial dimension) has been a default for about 130 years
now (see: Charles Hinton and his methods of visualizing The Fourth Dimension);
it got generalized somewhat later into "any number of higher spatial
dimensions".
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Robert Carnegie
wrote:
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
I did it next week. Never again.
(if causality will forgive my infidelity)
I think most FTL stories (Star Wars) use a "hyperspace" where you can
go faster than our universe's light, or, alternatively, an alternate
space where the analogues of locations in our space are closer
together. But they seem to be merely switching into the fast lane of
the space highway, and not using the theoretical extra physical
dimensions of string-theory-type spacetime to take a short-cut.
Typically, these additional spatial axes are considered to exist but
to be extraordinarily small. And, imagine a broom-handle, a long
pole. Imagine an ant walking from one end of the broom-handle to the
other: quite a distance. But what if, at the same time, the ant walks
transversely around the broom-handle, completing a spiral path? Then
he's only walked a little further, sadly.
But maybe that works better in space, perhaps there's something like
trade winds or a jetstream. Nonsense, of course...
Other fictional FTL transport may be instantaneous with scant
explanation, usually with a limited set of departure or arrival
coordinates and/or times, otherwise anyone could pop to anywhere. A
space wormhole is a similar popular device, a shortcut through space.
I don't know if you naturally get the special effect of the Star Trek
one, or if the beings that lived inside that wormhole put on a special
show for our benefit.
William F. Adams
wrote:
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
This was explicitly done in L'Engle's _A Wrinkle in Time_, compleat w/
example of folding space (an ant walks along a handkerchief stretched
between two hands --- the trip is much faster if the hands fold the
handkerchief in half).
William
Remus Shepherd
> Other fictional FTL transport may be instantaneous with scant
> explanation, usually with a limited set of departure or arrival
> coordinates and/or times, otherwise anyone could pop to anywhere. A
> space wormhole is a similar popular device, a shortcut through space.
> I don't know if you naturally get the special effect of the Star Trek
> one, or if the beings that lived inside that wormhole put on a special
> show for our benefit.
I don't recall wormholes being a big feature in Star Trek, aside from
one-off episodes. I don't remember creatures living in them, either.
Ships in Babylon 5 traveled through a hyperspace in which sinister creatures
lived.
Star Trek uses the 'warp drive' concept, which is that if you can't go
faster than light then you make a bubble of space around your ship in which
the speed of light is a different value. Theoretically this might work, but
it's unlikely; the universe doesn't like having its parameters edited on
the local level.
Other FTL methods include long-distance teleportation, which is often
another form of editing the universe's constants; c.f. _Moving Mars_.
... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
New Webcomic: Genocide Man http://www.genocideman.com/
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.
Walter Bushell
James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
Because the less specified about the "physics" behind the drive the
better.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Kurt Busiek
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>> Other fictional FTL transport may be instantaneous with scant
>> explanation, usually with a limited set of departure or arrival
>> coordinates and/or times, otherwise anyone could pop to anywhere. A
>> space wormhole is a similar popular device, a shortcut through space.
>> I don't know if you naturally get the special effect of the Star Trek
>> one, or if the beings that lived inside that wormhole put on a special
>> show for our benefit.
>
> I don't recall wormholes being a big feature in Star Trek, aside from
> one-off episodes.
And the whole DEEP SPACE NINE series, I think. The setting was right
next to a wormhole that got explored quite a bit. I didn't watch much
of the series, but I gather it was a major feature.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Remus Shepherd
Oh? I didn't know they had things living in the worhhole. DS9 was the
one Star Trek series that I didn't watch. (Although I should have skipped
a couple of the others.)
alie...@gmail.com
wrote:
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light.
Timothy Zahn's _Cascade Point_ had starships doing a weird
topological thing that mapped rotation of the ship into FTL
translation through space and (ROT13) nyybjrq bar gb ivrj nygreangr
ernyvgvrf, naq gur cbffvovyvgl bs genafyngvat gur fuvc naq pbagragf
vagb gurz. Does that count?
There's a Known Space story (not by Niven) that has the Outsiders'
"creators" trying to escape from their Universe (where time runs
faster than in ours and a Big Crunch is approaching) into ours, but
their spacetime has more dimensions than ours. A human gets partway
into their Universe and returns to ours someplace else much faster
than if he'd traveled at c. Not a basis for a practical FTL drive, but
it gets you there.
> Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
I don't see how; if it exists it's STL-causal.
Mark L. Fergerson
P. S. This is a test to see if LEETKEY's ROT-13 translation works.
Marcus L. Rowland
<not.jim....@verizon.net> writes
>I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
>every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
>further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective
>speeds greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use
>"dark energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
One of Bob Shaw's novels had FTL travel by entering another dimension
which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point A
in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z, a
few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a point
C which is ten light years away in a completely different direction.
Numerous other authors have used variations on this idea.
--
Marcus L. Rowland www.forgottenfutures.com
www.forgottenfutures.org
www.forgottenfutures.co.uk
Forgotten Futures - The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game
Diana: Warrior Princess & Elvis: The Legendary Tours
The Original Flatland Role Playing Game
Tim McDaniel
Marcus L. Rowland <forgotte...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>One of Bob Shaw's novels had FTL travel by entering another dimension
>which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point
>A in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
>Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
>which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z,
>a few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a
>point C which is ten light years away in a completely different
>direction.
The description you gave was one-to-one in the mathematical sense,
meaning that a unique point in our universe translates to a unique
point in the other universe and vice versa. That is, if you're at a
point in one universe, you wil translate to just one point in the
other: you don't have a choice of two or more, and you aren't stuck
with no translation point. One-to-one doesn't say anything about what
point X+epsilon maps to, or maybe what point X maps to at a later
time.
I'm not sure what the term would be for the mapping described.
Non-linear?
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com
Robert Carnegie
> Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
> > On 2011-07-26 09:37:40 -0700, Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> said:
> > > I don't recall wormholes being a big feature in Star Trek, aside from
> > > one-off episodes.
> > And the whole DEEP SPACE NINE series, I think. The setting was right
> > next to a wormhole that got explored quite a bit. I didn't watch much
> > of the series, but I gather it was a major feature.
>
Also a major feature, actually.
Moriarty
> Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
> > On 2011-07-26 09:37:40 -0700, Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> said:
> > > I don't recall wormholes being a big feature in Star Trek, aside from
> > > one-off episodes.
> > And the whole DEEP SPACE NINE series, I think. The setting was right
> > next to a wormhole that got explored quite a bit. I didn't watch much
> > of the series, but I gather it was a major feature.
>
> Oh? I didn't know they had things living in the worhhole.
A fairly major plotpoint feature, actually.
> DS9 was the
> one Star Trek series that I didn't watch. (Although I should have skipped
> a couple of the others.)
Pity. DS9 was the best of the lot.
-Moriarty
Moriarty
wrote:
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
I don't suppose you've got a reference to that experiment? To my
mind, I don't see how one experiment can prove any such thing about
the universe.
-Moriarty
Lynn McGuire
Moriarty
> On 7/26/2011 5:25 PM, Moriarty wrote:
>
> > On Jul 26, 11:57 pm, James Silverton<not.jim.silver...@verizon.net>
> > wrote:
> >> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> >> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
>
> > I don't suppose you've got a reference to that experiment? To my
> > mind, I don't see how one experiment can prove any such thing about
> > the universe.
>
> > -Moriarty
>
> Is this it ?
Thanks, that's probably it. Hmm: "physicists say they have proven a
single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light".
I'm going to have to dig a little deeper. I'm not sure how experiment
can prove something *can't* be done.
-Moriarty
Jerry Brown
<forgotte...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>In message <j0mh3j$2nq$1...@dont-email.me>, James Silverton
><not.jim....@verizon.net> writes
>>I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>>indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
>>every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
>>further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective
>>speeds greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use
>>"dark energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
>
>One of Bob Shaw's novels
"Night Walk"
>had FTL travel by entering another dimension
>which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point A
>in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
>Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
>which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z, a
>few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a point
>C which is ten light years away in a completely different direction.
>
>Numerous other authors have used variations on this idea.
Jerry Brown
--
A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)
Lynn McGuire
My thought exactly.
Lynn
Howard Brazee
<not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
>I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
>every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
>further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
>greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
>energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
David Drake's RCN series uses this to make space travel seem like
sailing, as he moves sailing scenarios to his universe.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
David DeLaney
>which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point A
>in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
>Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
>which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z, a
>few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a point
>C which is ten light years away in a completely different direction.
>
>Numerous other authors have used variations on this idea.
Including Peter Adkison and Dave Howell, in a certain RPG that our own Ryk
Spoor worked on (if I remember right). It was Wizards of the Coast's main
product _before_ Magic...
Bernard Peek
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
As others have noted, this isn't an unusual way to explain away FTL
travel. But it's also worth noting that under current theories of
physics FTL travel is effectively impossible no matter how many extra
dimensions you have available.
I know that there was a story about the discovery of hyperspace travel
that had a lower speed limit.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Bernard Peek
As I understand it the limitation is that information cannot be
transmitted faster than light. If Einstein's theories of relativity are
correct then that's a hard limit. So far nobody has provided any hard
evidence that there might be loopholes in the laws of physics.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Marcus L. Rowland<forgotte...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> One of Bob Shaw's novels had FTL travel by entering another dimension
>> which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point A
>> in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
>> Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
>> which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z, a
>> few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a point
>> C which is ten light years away in a completely different direction.
>>
>> Numerous other authors have used variations on this idea.
>
> Including Peter Adkison and Dave Howell, in a certain RPG that our own Ryk
> Spoor worked on (if I remember right). It was Wizards of the Coast's main
> product _before_ Magic...
I believe you're thinking of the Primal Order supplement _Chessboards:
Planes in Contention_. I didn't DIRECTLY work on that one, though.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>>> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>>> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
>>
>> I don't suppose you've got a reference to that experiment? To my
>> mind, I don't see how one experiment can prove any such thing about
>> the universe.
>
>As I understand it the limitation is that information cannot be
>transmitted faster than light. If Einstein's theories of relativity are
>correct then that's a hard limit. So far nobody has provided any hard
>evidence that there might be loopholes in the laws of physics.
How about quantum entanglement? Where does it fit in here?
Bernard Peek
> On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:50:46 +0100, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com>
> wrote:
>
>>>> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>>>> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
>>>
>>> I don't suppose you've got a reference to that experiment? To my
>>> mind, I don't see how one experiment can prove any such thing about
>>> the universe.
>>
>> As I understand it the limitation is that information cannot be
>> transmitted faster than light. If Einstein's theories of relativity are
>> correct then that's a hard limit. So far nobody has provided any hard
>> evidence that there might be loopholes in the laws of physics.
>
> How about quantum entanglement? Where does it fit in here?
Quantum entanglement can't be used to transmit information. You can
collapse the wave equation by observing one particle and that will cause
the wave equation of the entangled particle to collapse too. But there's
no way to turn that into a system to transmit information.
If you have two entangled particles that have the same spin you can
observe one of them which will collapse the wave equation and tell you
what the spin of the other particle is. That looks like instantaneous
communication but the information is not useful. You can't set the spin
of a particle before you observe it, and so the only information that
gets transmitted is the fact that they have the same spin. And you
already knew that.
To transmit meaningful data you would need to start with two entangled
pairs. Send one particle from each pair and then collapse the wave
equation of the local particles to have either parallel or antiparallel
spins. That would enable you to send one bit of data to the remote pair.
But you can't control which way in which the two wave equations
collapse. So you can't use similarity or difference to transmit data.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Michael Stemper
Not merely non-linear, but apparently discontinuous, as well.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Reunite Gondwanaland!
alie...@gmail.com
wrote:
> In article <j0n9ts$5t...@reader1.panix.com>, t...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) writes:
> >In article <uXWRmKHtAyLOF...@00.d0.59.f5.d0.2a>, Marcus L. Rowland <forgottenfutu...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >>One of Bob Shaw's novels had FTL travel by entering another dimension
> >>which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point
> >>A in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
> >>Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
> >>which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z,
> >>a few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a
> >>point C which is ten light years away in a completely different
> >>direction.
>
> >The description you gave was one-to-one in the mathematical sense,
> >meaning that a unique point in our universe translates to a unique
> >point in the other universe and vice versa. That is, if you're at a
> >point in one universe, you wil translate to just one point in the
> >other: you don't have a choice of two or more, and you aren't stuck
> >with no translation point. One-to-one doesn't say anything about what
> >point X+epsilon maps to, or maybe what point X maps to at a later
> >time.
>
> >I'm not sure what the term would be for the mapping described.
> >Non-linear?
>
> Not merely non-linear, but apparently discontinuous, as well.
Well, there's good and bad direction-discontinuity. A universe with
traversible wormholes is multiply connected and therefore that kind of
discontinuous; we don't know for sure that our isn't. Maybe the FTL
universe is. Maybe the mapping function is. Maybe all are. That would
make for a confusing story.
Mark L. Fergerson
alie...@gmail.com
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
Also, if you had said "larger dimensions", I'd have cited _Bill, the
Galactic Hero_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill,_the_Galactic_Hero#Bloater_Drive
Mark L. Fergerson
trag
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:57:11 -0400, James Silverton
>
> >I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> >indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded. I don't read
> >every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> >further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> >greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
> >energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
>
> David Drake's RCN series uses this to make space travel seem like
> sailing, as he moves sailing scenarios to his universe.
Sponge Space! Interesting descriptions.
He uses the same trope in his three Venus books, "Igniting the
Reaches", "Through the Breach" and "Fireships".
Anthony Nance
I don't think it has to be discontinuous. It could be a type of
spiral-ing transformation, for example.
Tony
David DeLaney
Right, but I was careful not to say you did.
Dave "your examples would probably have been 62% more Awesome" DeLaney
David DeLaney
>I know that there was a story about the discovery of hyperspace travel
>that had a lower speed limit.
That's an Asimov short, but I don't recall the title.
(Or possibly an Asimov-edited short in one of his 100 Short Short Whatevers
collections?)
Dave
Jerry Brown
DeLaney) wrote:
>On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:45:24 +0100, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com> wrote:
>>I know that there was a story about the discovery of hyperspace travel
>>that had a lower speed limit.
>
>That's an Asimov short, but I don't recall the title.
No
>(Or possibly an Asimov-edited short in one of his 100 Short Short Whatevers
>collections?)
Yes, FTA by George RR Martin
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> On 7/26/11 11:56 PM, David DeLaney wrote:
>>> Marcus L. Rowland<forgotte...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>> One of Bob Shaw's novels had FTL travel by entering another dimension
>>>> which didn't map onto our universe on a one to one basis, e.g. Point A
>>>> in our universe is equivalent to point X in the other universe, but
>>>> Point Y, a few miles away in the alternate universe, maps to point B
>>>> which is several hundred parsecs away in our universe, while point Z, a
>>>> few miles further on in the other universe, might correspond to a point
>>>> C which is ten light years away in a completely different direction.
>>>>
>>>> Numerous other authors have used variations on this idea.
>>>
>>> Including Peter Adkison and Dave Howell, in a certain RPG that our own Ryk
>>> Spoor worked on (if I remember right). It was Wizards of the Coast's main
>>> product _before_ Magic...
>>
>> I believe you're thinking of the Primal Order supplement _Chessboards:
>> Planes in Contention_. I didn't DIRECTLY work on that one, though.
>
> Right, but I was careful not to say you did.
>
> Dave "your examples would probably have been 62% more Awesome" DeLaney
Alas, they never published my Primal Order supplement, Unorthodox
Strategies.
Wayne Throop
::: travel that had a lower speed limit.
:: That's an Asimov short, but I don't recall the title.
: Jerry Brown <je...@jwbrown.co.uk.RemoveThisBitToReply>
: No [...]
: FTA by George RR Martin
There were two might-be-considered-related works by Asimov.
One, in one of his science fact essays (a YAEID, I suppose) he mentions
that, given the perversity of the universe, he'd expect that from a
tachyon's perspective, it was a tardyon, and tardyons were tachyons,
so if you transmute your spacehip into tachyons you'd still not go FTL.
The other, a YASID, where somebody develops time travel, which works by
interchanging time with one of the th ree spatial dimensions, and then you
can simply walk into the past. Or future. Of course, it turns out the
correspondence is the obvious one: you have to walk 300,000 kilometers
to displace yourself by one second in time.
Walter Bushell
<04116c40-f35f-4e02...@m5g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
Moriarty <blu...@ivillage.com> wrote:
For that you need theory. According to Relativity FTL results in
causality violations, unless you are willing to accept that a cause can
precede the effect.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>For that you need theory. According to Relativity FTL results in
>causality violations, unless you are willing to accept that a cause can
>precede the effect.
How does my willingness to accept that cause can precede the effect
change whether FTL results in causality violations.
While I believe in causality, that is pretty much in the nature of a
religious belief. It is a basic tenet of how I see the world.
Sometimes science has overturned such tenets. I don't believe it
will happen here, but I don't have any evidence that it won't.
James Silverton
one to one correspondence of points in normal space to points in higher
dimensions, which are postulated as tightly coiled on themselves. One
jumps to the higher dimensions and does not need to exceed the speed of
light to move to another point and then returns. (Well, maybe!)
--
James Silverton, Potomac
I'm *not* not.jim....@verizon.net
Bernard Peek
>> http://news.discovery.com/space/time-travel-impossible-photon-110724....
>
> Thanks, that's probably it. Hmm: "physicists say they have proven a
> single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light".
>
> I'm going to have to dig a little deeper. I'm not sure how experiment
> can prove something *can't* be done.
It depends on your definition of prove. Applying strict logic it's not
possible. But science doesn't deal with certainties, for those you need
a priest. What science can say is that a particular experimental result
is compatible with our best-guess theory, which also predicts that
photons will not be able to travel FTL. This does not prove that they
can't travel FTL but it does provide supporting evidence for the theory
that predicts it to be impossible.
Our current theories predict that there is no mechanism by which
information can be transmitted faster than light, through hyperspace or
any other route.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Mark Zenier
James Silverton <not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
>I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
>further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
>greater than light. Perhaps also it might be possible to use "dark
>energy" tho' I don't have the writing ability.
There's John Stith's _Redshift Rendezvous_, an action puzzler where
a lot of the story depends on the conditions of the physics that
exist on ships that transition between normal and hyperspace.
(Not deep stuff...).
Mark Zenier mze...@eskimo.com
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)
Michael Stemper
>On Jul 27, 8:54=A0am, Lynn McGuire <l...@winsim.com> wrote:
>> On 7/26/2011 5:25 PM, Moriarty wrote:
>> > On Jul 26, 11:57 pm, James Silverton<not.jim.silver...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> >> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
>> >> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
>>
>> > I don't suppose you've got a reference to that experiment? =A0To my
>> > mind, I don't see how one experiment can prove any such thing about
>> > the universe.
>>
>> Is this it ?
>> http://news.discovery.com/space/time-travel-impossible-photon-110724.html
>
>Thanks, that's probably it. Hmm: "physicists say they have proven a
>single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light".
What a bizarre statement, on multiple levels:
"Light can't travel faster than light."
"One can't, but maybe two photons together could."
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
A bit of creeper would help
Wayne Throop
: I'm not up on modern relativistic theory but what's wrong with having
: a one to one correspondence of points in normal space to points in
: higher dimensions, which are postulated as tightly coiled on
: themselves. One jumps to the higher dimensions and does not need to
: exceed the speed of light to move to another point and then returns.
: (Well, maybe!)
The problem with all such schemes is that relativity's model isn't one of
space, but of space*time*. The issue is the relativity of simultaneity,
and the fact that it's ambiguous to talk about "space" in an of itself;
space is merely a slice through spacetime, and which slice you take
depends on the eye of the beholder. And therefore, your map has to
depend on the eye of some beholder, which makes one beholding
eye special, which contradicts relativity.
Well... or you get time travel. It's a tad oversimple, but it's a good
summary if you keep in mind that it *is* a tad oversimple: relativity,
causality, superluminality; choose at most two. Or, put another way, if
you don't mind that somebody got time travel in your FTL, or conversely
you got FTL in somebody's time travel, then relativity is fine with it.
(Spacetime is like a reese's peanut butter cup; who knew?)
Despite being pretty much the first thing in Einstein's "electrodynamics
of moving bodies" paper, the thing that all the rest depends upon,
probably the single least-publicized aspect of relativity is the
relativity of simultaneity, and neglecting it is almost always what
leads to relativity so-called-paradoxes.
Robert Bannister
Stephen Hawking sort of proved the impossibility of FTL to me using
mathematics in A Brief History of Time. However, he used a kind of maths
that I do not understand at all, so for the moment, I feel free to
disbelieve in secret.
--
Robert Bannister
Quadibloc
wrote:
> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> every SF book that appears but I wonder if anyone has used transfer to
> further dimensions (how many are there now?) to achieve effective speeds
> greater than light.
The extra dimensions curled up into a tiny Calabi-Yau manifold in
string theory or supergravity are unlikely to lead to somewhere where
the speed of light is different.
However, long before either theory became known, faster-than-light
travel often relied on going into "hyperspace" or "subspace".
Often the term "hyperspace", the one most commonly used in science-
fiction, was used very loosely. But in my opinion its "official"
science-fiction meaning is a fourth-dimensional space in which our
normal three-dimensional space is embedded as a surface. So travelling
through hyperspace faster than light involved travelling through a
four-dimensional realm, in which it just happened that the Universe
was conveniently folded so that one's departure point and one's
destination fortuitously happened to be miles away from each other
instead of light-years.
Technically, "subspace" might be thought of as meaning a mathematical
abstraction, in which points are sampled at regular intervals from the
Universe, creating a smaller one. But here I think the looser meaning
should be used, and it should be seen as "another dimension" in which
the laws of physics are different.
And here we come to the sci-fi meaning of "dimension". What it usually
means is not a dimension itself, but a three-dimensional plane reached
by moving through another dimension from our own three-dimensional
universe. So it's basically like a parallel world, except that instead
of merely having an alternate history, it is very different, often
even with different laws of physics.
In that sense, having one's space ship move to an alternate dimension
where the speed of light is infinite, travel to the point
corresponding to its destination, and then move back to our Universe,
is pretty much the most common way FTL travel is explained in ordinary
"soft" SF.
John Savard
Walter Bushell
<194d169e-13f9-48ae...@z17g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> In that sense, having one's space ship move to an alternate dimension
> where the speed of light is infinite, travel to the point
> corresponding to its destination, and then move back to our Universe,
> is pretty much the most common way FTL travel is explained in ordinary
> "soft" SF.
And, of course, the less specific the author is about the mechanism the
better.
James Silverton
> In article
> <194d169e-13f9-48ae...@z17g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
> Quadibloc<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> In that sense, having one's space ship move to an alternate dimension
>> where the speed of light is infinite, travel to the point
>> corresponding to its destination, and then move back to our Universe,
>> is pretty much the most common way FTL travel is explained in ordinary
>> "soft" SF.
>
> And, of course, the less specific the author is about the mechanism the
> better.
>
prove (to my satisfaction, anyway) impossible or which don't involve
magic :-) I won't claim that I can handle relativistic mathematics very
well but I can make sufficient of a start not to like popular verbal
explanations.
David Johnston
wrote:
> In article <04116c40-f35f-4e02-8ea2-a65202ca2...@m5g2000prh.googlegroups.com>, Moriarty <blue...@ivillage.com> writes:
>
> >On Jul 27, 8:54=A0am, Lynn McGuire <l...@winsim.com> wrote:
> >> On 7/26/2011 5:25 PM, Moriarty wrote:
> >> > On Jul 26, 11:57 pm, James Silverton<not.jim.silver...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> >> I note that there have been many news reports recently of an experiment
> >> >> indicating that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
>
> >> > I don't suppose you've got a reference to that experiment? =A0To my
> >> > mind, I don't see how one experiment can prove any such thing about
> >> > the universe.
>
> >> Is this it ?
>
> >Thanks, that's probably it. Hmm: "physicists say they have proven a
> >single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light".
>
> What a bizarre statement, on multiple levels:
>
> "Light can't travel faster than light."
> "One can't, but maybe two photons together could."
>
It's all about team work people!
Larry Headlund
path to a single millimeter.
Wayne Throop
: Or even simpler: consider the mapping of every point on a light year
: path to a single millimeter.
Let me repeat: all such schemes, which start "each point in space
is mapped..." or some variant thereof, are basically ways of saying
"assume relativity is wrong". Because there's no way to pick "space"
out of "spacetime" if relativity is true. I mean, sure, it's got
space*like*, but it hasn't really got *space*, as such.
Which is fine, mind you. "Relativity is wrong" is a perfectly cromulent
SFnal assumption. If you were hoping such a mapping would preserve
relativity by preserving "no FTL in normal space"... well... it doesn't.
Just so you know.
Howard Brazee
<not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
>True enough, but I have a sneaky liking for mechanisms that I cannot
>prove (to my satisfaction, anyway) impossible or which don't involve
>magic :-) I won't claim that I can handle relativistic mathematics very
>well but I can make sufficient of a start not to like popular verbal
>explanations.
I think my favorite is Vernor Vinge's universe where the speed of
light changes as we get further away from the center of the galaxy.
Wayne Throop
: I think my favorite is Vernor Vinge's universe where the speed of
: light changes as we get further away from the center of the galaxy.
Which one was that? I kind of like his Zones of Thought setting, where the
speed of light was constant, but computation became faster the further
away from the center, which eventually makes ultrawave and FTL spaceships
possible, since working around the lightspeed limitation could be done
with sufficient computation.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
I think we remember how this worked differently. Frederik Pohl likes
his universe and he doesn't like *anything* with FTL.
Andrew Plotkin
> On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:52:56 GMT, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
> wrote:
>
> >: Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net>
> >: I think my favorite is Vernor Vinge's universe where the speed of
> >: light changes as we get further away from the center of the galaxy.
> >
> >Which one was that? I kind of like his Zones of Thought setting, where the
> >speed of light was constant, but computation became faster the further
> >away from the center, which eventually makes ultrawave and FTL spaceships
> >possible, since working around the lightspeed limitation could be done
> >with sufficient computation.
>
> I think we remember how this worked differently. Frederik Pohl likes
> his universe and he doesn't like *anything* with FTL.
I can't speak for Fred Pohl[*], but I remember what Wayne remembers.
The maximum speed of a starship increased (not linearly) as you moved
outwards through the zones, but the speed of light is constant.
(* Except to say that Pohl is a human being, by all accounts, and
therefore not perfectly consistent in his pleasures.)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Wayne Throop
::: light changes as we get further away from the center of the galaxy.
:: Which one was that? I kind of like his Zones of Thought setting,
:: where the speed of light was constant, but computation became faster
:: the further away from the center, which eventually makes ultrawave
:: and FTL spaceships possible
: Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net>
: I think we remember how this worked differently. Frederik Pohl likes
: his universe and he doesn't like *anything* with FTL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
Vinge won the Hugo Award (tying for Best Novel with Doomsday Book by
Connie Willis) with his 1992 novel, A Fire Upon the Deep.[3] In it,
he envisions a galaxy that is divided up into 'zones of thought', in
which the further one moves away from the center of the galaxy, the
higher the level of technology one can achieve. Nearest the center
is 'The Unthinking Depths', where even human-level intelligence is
impossible. Earth is in 'The Slow Zone', in which faster-than-light
(FTL) travel cannot be achieved. Most of the book, however, takes
place in a zone called 'The Beyond', where the computations
necessary for FTL travel are possible, but transcendence beyond the
Singularity to superhuman intelligence is not. In the last zone,
'The Transcend', there are apparently no limitations at all.
Vinge doesn't really do Weber-style infodumps, but there's plenty of
evidence in the text that this is the case, eg, the description of
Qeng Ho
It was as extravagant a civilization as can ever exist in the
Slowness.... And of course, until Pham Nuwen was revived, no one
in the Beyond had ever heard of it. Qeng Ho was like a million
other doomed civilizations, buried thousands of light-years in the
Slowness. Only by luck would they ever penetrate into the Beyond,
where faster-than-light travel was possible.
--- A Fire Upon the Deep
There are lots of other clues scattered about, mostly that the limitation
that prevents the ultradrive from working in the Slow was computation.
But also that ultrawave and radio work side-by-side, and ultrawave
is faster. And in the prologue, it's mentioned that the older systems
the Blight had to work through were limited to lightspeed, which pretty
much implies that the Blight's systems were FTL, not merely LIF (light
is faster).
The Blabber iirc is explicit that the low bandwith comm widget
in the story is an FTL device, not LIF.
I can also recall an essay by Vinge where he's explicit about it; that
what changes as you move out through the zones is computational capacity,
and all the rest follows from that. Unfortunately, my google-fu hasn't
turned up a copy of this essay; anybody else either have the reference
to hand, or superior google-fu?
All in all, I think it's pretty definitive.
David Mitchell
> On Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:52:56 GMT, thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
> wrote:
>
> I think we remember how this worked differently. Frederik Pohl likes
> his universe and he doesn't like *anything* with FTL.
Apart from Heechee space ships, of course.
--
=======================================================================
= David --- If you use Microsoft products, you will, inevitably, get
= Mitchell --- viruses, so please don't add me to your address book.
=======================================================================
Robert Carnegie
If this is the book I just started reading a couple of weeks ago, and
then soon lost, I believe I remember that the fleeing ship jumps into,
or through, what may as well be called hyperspace.
In relativity there is a cosmic speed limit which governs, for
instance, the rate of transmission of information. Making that
locally variable is probably nonsense, and making the speed of photons
universally constant if the speed of information varies is probably
more nonsense, particularly if this obliges light to travel faster
than information in some places, but elsewhere it would make light
just another phenomenon with its own speed, and no {eason it couldn't
be beaten. But then, telepathic dragons that you can fly on are
ridiculous too, and we still all liked Anne McCaffrey's
_Dragonflight_, although that might be because of the plentiful sex
scenes.
Joseph Nebus
>In relativity there is a cosmic speed limit which governs, for
>instance, the rate of transmission of information. Making that
>locally variable is probably nonsense, and making the speed of photons
>universally constant if the speed of information varies is probably
>more nonsense, particularly if this obliges light to travel faster
>than information in some places, but elsewhere it would make light
>just another phenomenon with its own speed, and no {eason it couldn't
>be beaten. But then, telepathic dragons that you can fly on are
>ridiculous too, and we still all liked Anne McCaffrey's
>_Dragonflight_, although that might be because of the plentiful sex
>scenes.
Hm. Tales of info-sex. Could be interesting. Could be that
Rudy Rucker/Greg Egan crossover we've been waiting for. Could be why
once a computer gets a really stupid idea like picking your name wrong
you can't get it out again; child databases are always in their
stubborn teen years.
--
Joseph Nebus
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