(fwd) Where Do We Go From Here?

No, you don't. It's working through the math problems that develops our intuition. Special relativity is something completely foreign to human experience.

You don't need the math? Then go ahead and draw the Minkowski space-time diagram for a stationary observer, complete with light cone. Draw a second light cone, to show the light-cone from the stationary observer's view of someone going .25, .5, and .75 c. Notice a pattern? The light cone tips over and gets narrower. Now, draw the light cone for an observer going c. It's a straight line - equivalent to the line of simultaneity in the stationary observer's view.

Now, draw the light cone for someone going 10c, 100c and 1000 c. The light cone now increasingly dips below the line of simultaneity and begins to widen out again. This means that the FTL observer can move into regions of the stationary observer's past and affect them. The light cone for someone going infinite c (instantaneously) is an upside-down light cone. From the stationary observer's view, the instantaneous travelers is no longer moving in space - he's moving backward in time.

Can you follow that without the math? I can, but that's because I've plotted enough Minkowski diagrams using the math. Even then, I have to stop and think about it. I'll admit that I had to look at the equations to figure out the slope of the world line for someone doing FTL.

Chris, if you want to go on believing that FTL is not the equivalent of time travel in Special or General Relativity (as currently formulated) then go ahead. It's fine with me.

Why should I care what mistaken beliefs you have?

Zooty

Prove it. Prove time travel occurs.If time goes backwards it is for the TRAVELER only. prove that non relative time (IE for others except the traveler) changes in any way.

The stationary (and that is relative as well since it pretty hard to determine if you are REALLY stationary since the space you are in is moving as well (galactic expansion and all) would not see him moving back in time since he would vanish immediately if he was actually traveling in time backwards (since the stationary observer relatively speaking is still moving in a forward direction)

Tell me what those mankowski cones are and I can probably give a verbal visualation of them. Or don't the term sounds familiar to me and has peeked my interest so I am going to look it up when time permits.

Time on changes for the one moving. not for those around him. If time starts to move "backwards" I think is is our "defective" understanding of time that causes us to call it "backwards"

I personally believe time simply progresses nothing more nothing less.

when you move within a dimension. moving one way is no different than moving the other for all intents and purposes.

so when what you call time moving backwards occurs I see it as simply being time moving in the other direction of tis dimension but still progressing all the same.

ie IF for the moment we assume our math is not flawed (and it probably is) at some speed faster than C time dilation would equal out (as your "backwards" time got faster and faster) until the people on the ship would be moving at the same speed as we are in normal time (relatively speaking)

you ASSUME that because time reverses that our possibly incorrect interpritation of Forwards and Backwards applies.

I say there IS no forward or backwards. I say time simply progresses at X speed etc.. forward and backward are human creations attached to times progression.

so you "slow down" as your velocity increases to C and then when you PASS C it starts to speed up again. (purely a guess)

this imposes new problems though since if this proves to be the case as we go faster we will age faster. that could get problematic depending on how far you are going and how much faster etc..

But consider this. ALL of whatever math you have in your head. its based on assumptions and it only applies if ALL of those assumptions are correct. they will remain assumptions untill we actually can somehow TEST them.

Chris Taylor

PUBLIC NOTICE: Arguing with Chris Taylor on any technical or metaphysical subject is pointless.

Jerry

I can't wait for the "verbal visualation"...

Should be kewl..

tah

Name one example of where a test of Special or General Relativity has failed.

Zooty

It's quite simple, really, Chris:

Complex Minkowskian spacetime relates to complex probability, the nonconjugated wavefunction squared

1. The Hilbert space observer state vector is orthogonal to that of the object.
2. Special relativity mediates observer-object action.
3. The wavefunction for macroscopic special relativity is assumed sinusoidal.
4. The object state vector minus the observer state vector yields the complex relative state vector.
5. The complex relative state vector corresponds to a complex squared nonconjugated wavefunction, i. e., complex probability.
6. The complex squared conjugated wavefunction determines normalization of observer-object relativity.

(John Archibald Wheeler, but not Stephen Hawking, argues against using the imaginary number i as a relativistic reality.)

Thus:

(Note: some Greek characters do not translate well into the text-only Usenet medium. See "Relativity's Complex Probability" by Loren Booda at

for the graphical representation. Otherwise, substitute "phi" for most occurrences of "y" and "gamma" for most occurrences of "g". You're on your own for determining the superscripts representing powers.)

r=distance and t=time between observer and object; a is their relative phase

y=B·exp(2pi(rp+Et)/h)=B(cos(a)+i·sin(a))

The integral from object to observer of   |y2|c·drdt=1,   thus   B=(rct)-1/2

|y2| [/=] y2   for complex  y

g=(1-v2/c2)-1/2     0

...snip...

So, what you're saying is that the universe's event horizon is defined at the radius where spacetime's recessional velocity from the observer equals the speed of light? What if, beyond this horizon, there exists a region of space whose peculiar velocity (that deviating from the global velocity-distance relationship) toward us caused a blueshift relative to the horizon? Its velocity relative to us might fall back below light speed and tunnel information to us from outside our classically observable universe. By virtue of its relativistic potential, this tunneling allows us to see through a classically forbidden zone by a quasi-quantum effect. There may be extensive, radically peculiar regions of such space that from our perspective would create, e. g., fluctuations in the microwave background radiation.

Or, is this an oversimplified analogy?

The one I did next Monday...

David Erbas-White

PUBLIC NOTICE

Have any reasonable discourse with jery irvine on an issue at all is impossible.

Name one test of backwards time travel that has succeeded

I am waiting.

Interesting over my head stuff (like I said I will have to look into this stuff)

but it is based on some "assumptions" that you assume are true.

you have to assume that time travel CAN move "forward or backward"

When I move alone one of the 3 physical dimensions their is no forward or backward. I am simply moving X units alone X axis.

WE created the idea of "direction" forward and back so that we can compare movement.

When I move in any direction on one of these axis nothing it getting bigger or smaller or faster or slow. I am simply progressing along an axis.

I feel the same is true of time. Their is no real forward or backwards. no "forward in time or backwards in time as we are using them here"

you can move "this way" at x speed or "that way" at X speed. the result is the same. you are simply altering the RATE at which time progresses not the direction (as we are using the term direction)

the only reason you can go "forward or backward" alone a ruler is because we have placed a 0 on one end and a positive integer on the other end.

if their were no "numbers" and you simply devided the distances into units of measure without any other marking. then you would have no "forward or backward" you would have simple x untis on x axis over x time.

If it is not possible to get past C then you can NOT legitimately say what will happen (theoretically mathmatically or otherwise) when you DO go past C since you can NOT (go past C)

I think the math you use shows backwards time travel because we interject our assumptions and maybe flawed ideas onto something that does not have these things.

We treat time as a dimension that is unlike other dimensions. if it is a dimension then their is no logical reason it will be any different than another dimension.

its this special treatment that we give to time that might be caus>

basically like a 2D entity going faster than what should be possible by bypasing the distance by moving in the third dimension (ie moving from one point of a U to the other poing without going "aronud" the U

IE what we see as a straight l>

Chris,

You claim to "understand" relativity and it's effect on the concept of "simultaneity. " Yet you've clearly shown that you don't.

My statement is that FTL implies time travel in special and general relativity.

Perhaps you have some great scientific theory that replaces Einstein and would actually permit faster-than-light travel without time paradoxes.

Perhaps you need to buy a clue.

Perhaps you need to buy clues at Sam's Club.

Go take a basic class in Relativity and we'll continue this discussion.

Zooty

..

Now _that_'s silly, Chris!

-dave w

Prove it.

off-topic, but 'funny':

In Heinlen's book "The Door Into Summer", he discusses testing of a time-travel machine. In the story, the test worked, and sent a grad student back in time, but he couldn't return. The student's name was 'Leonard Vincent'... I've always been somewhat whimsically captivated by that idea...

David Erbas-White

For Chris' benefit: that's supposed to be a reference to 'Leonardo da Vinci'

Chris Taylor Jr wrote:

ROTFLMAO!

or should I say...

Point!

David Erbas-White

I'm too darn lazy for my own good. If I had any gumption, I'd patent a spit-take shield for computers. Anyone who wants to rip my idea off, please go ahead. I'll buy one.

In all seriousness, Chris isn't really ignorant. I suspect there are stages in learning relativity (and quantum mechanics).

Stage 0 Completely reject all concepts. "Just put more motors on the rocket, and it will go FTL.

Stage 1 Accept some concepts, but not understand how they fit together. Chris is at this stage.

Stage 2 Take a class in relativity. Go temporarily bald tearing hair out. Bad to enter this stage after age 35, when hair torn out does not regrow.

Stage 3 Thoroughly accept relativity.

Stage 4 Wonder if there might be some loopholes. This is where I'm at, although in answering Chris's question, I closed one loophole I'd thought of.

Stage 5 Actually be able to do the math to investigate loopholes. Brian Greene, in a great article in Scientific American, talks about higher order effects that are important at high energies and small densities, according to string theory:

(URL followed by TinyURL in case it wraps.)

We just need to get Chris to take the class.

Zooty