duntemann.wbst@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (01/26/84)
If we can discuss the likes of Deryni, Darkover, Terry Brooks, and Tolkien in SF-Lovers, we can damned well discuss speculative physics relating to space travel. --Jeff Duntemann duntemann.wbst@PARC-MAXC
steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (02/17/84)
>> If we can discuss the likes of Deryni, Darkover, Terry Brooks, and Tolkien >> in SF-Lovers, we can damned well discuss speculative physics relating to >> space travel. I should point out that there is one difference between "speculative physics relating to space travel", and "Deryni, Darkover, Terry Brooks, and Tolkien". And that is this: In all cases, the books that you have mentioned are internally self-consistant (i.e. there is no place where you can say "This part of the novel disagrees with this part"). That is not true with "FTL" drives. What most authors misunderstand about Einstein's theory of relativity is that it is not the ACT of moving through space that "makes time go slower", but rather that space and time are two components of the same thing. "Going through Hyperspace" would do absolutely nothing, because the very ACT of ARRIVING at a location before light would (given any frame of refrence), is the very ACT of going backwards through time. Thus, though is is possible for "Psychism" to exist, even "magic" (as long as it is in another universe), FTL cannot. This fact will not go away. Period. You might as well write 1000 novels based on Perpetual Motion machines, and have the same degree of truth in them as Star Wars, Star Trek, etc, etc, etc. Steven Maurer
kcarroll@utzoo.UUCP (Kieran A. Carroll) (02/21/84)
* Tish, tosh. If we were able to travle faster than light, we'd new definitions of simultaneity and causality, it's true. That still doesn't make such travel physically impossible. We have no idea of exactly what is physically impossible. We know a great many things that are >possible<, are at least that were possible the last time that we tried them. The fact that something hasn't yet been done, or that nobody's yet thought of a way to do it, doesn't mean that it can't be done. If that was the case, then (anecdote of your choice: man would never have flown, Columbus would never have flown to the moon; whatever). Besides, FTL travel makes for a damned convenient plot device. -Kieran A. Carroll ...decvax!utzoo!kcarroll
tom%LOGICON@sri-unix.UUCP (02/24/84)
From: Mike Gannis (offnet)
Sender: tom@logicon
Steven Maurer (steven@ucb-vax) calims as "fact" the impossibility
("Period.") of FTL travel, based on Eisteinian Relativity. Great! As
long as there is identical correspondence between relativity and
reality. But suppose not? Superluminal velocities *are* permitted in
theories that postulate a preferred frame of reference. We can't yet
rule this out; indeed, there are some hints (e.g. Mach's principle)
that this could be the case. Would you class as fantasy all stories
involving sub-c time dilation effects simply because they aren't
predicted by Newtonian physics? Newtonian physics is "true" - it
adequately describes the world around you, doesn't it?
Besides - are you claiming that the Darkover stories are entirely
self-consistent?
Mike Gannis
-------karl@dartvax.UUCP (Karl Berry) (03/26/84)
Although you may be correct in that faster than light travel is not
possible, you seem to be rather fanatically set against any other
possibility. Einstein would probably admit that Special Relativity
is not the be-all and end-all of the universe. And if you think all
the vagaries, quirks, and bizarre happenstances of time have been
ironed out, read Timescape, by Gregory Benford.
{decvax,cornell}!dartvax!karl karl@dartmouthmam@charm.UUCP (Matthew Marcus) (03/28/84)
<---- Zap
The problem with FTL and special relativity is NOT that the speed of C
is an "illegal" one for anything with mass or that it is mathematically impossible
to go continuously from STL to FTL. Both are true under special relativity, but
there are always loopholes, one of the most popular being hyperspace.
The real problem is that FTL is equivalent to time travel into the
past. This equivalence is derivable from STL Lorentz transformations which
have been amply verified many times over. Thus, FTL and time travel share the
same set of paradoxes. My own favorite to the Grandfather Paradox of time
travel (back 50 yr., kill Gramps, you never born, you didn't kill....)
is that NOTHING is certain, so by attempting to set up a paradox, you FORCE
something unlikely to happen. As Niven puts it, "Try to save Jesus with a
submachine gun, and the gun will POSITIVELY jam." In other words, time machines
(and thus hyperdrives) are finite improbability generators in the sense of
Hitchhiker. I once wrote an article for a fanzine called
"Through a Black Hole and Into the Past on an FTL Ship with the Infinite
Improbability Drive".
It had section headings such as '"Don't Write That Article!", Said the Man who
Looked a lot Like Me...".
Enough maundering!
{BTL}!charm!mam