Quote from: aceshigh on 05/03/2011 02:51 pmmuch of the evidence for quantum mechanics extraordinary claims only came much later... Nonsense.. everything that came out of quantum mechanics was the result of experiments saying what we knew was wrong. The double slit experiment is one you can do with polarizing filters on your kitchen top and trying to explain it before the era of quantum mechanics would have been quite a head scratch. That's the most valuable form of evidence you can ever put forward, easily repeatable and unexplainable in the current framework.
much of the evidence for quantum mechanics extraordinary claims only came much later...
yes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...
Quote from: aceshigh on 05/05/2011 01:10 amyes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...They didn't like the explanations and figured there had to be better answers, but they never argued with the experimental results because, if you can reproduce them, they're the closest thing to facts. ...
Quote from: QuantumG on 05/05/2011 01:22 amQuote from: aceshigh on 05/05/2011 01:10 amyes, I wonder why there was such a feud between the classic physicists like Einstein with the likes Niels Bohr and others...They didn't like the explanations and figured there had to be better answers, but they never argued with the experimental results because, if you can reproduce them, they're the closest thing to facts. ...I have read about the Copenhagen discussion, but can't recall quite what they disagreed upon. Care to elaborate a bit?
sigh, the day someone proposes an experiment that demonstrates a basic principle of worm holes you can claim that they might some day be feasible.. until then, they're just another item on the long long long list of things that are theoretically possible but we have no clue how to achieve. (not the least of which is teaching people to have reasonable expectations about science and technology).
(1) No where in my post did I say wormholes were feasible. I was speaking in completely hypothetical terms and noting that wormholes could be converted into time machines quite easily. (2) Why does this bother you? Is speculation not allowed here? Would you also sigh at the (3) several hundred published papers on wormholes by people like Kip Thorne, who actually came up with the exact scenario I just mentioned?
(1) From my standpoint, yes, you did suggest wormholes were feasible. "Consider a starship carrying the exit-mouth of a wormhole heading towards ..." By my interpretation, you were not saying: "Consider the starship carrying an infeasible exit mouth of a wormhole". Rather, you were saying, unless I'm totally incorrect in reading your sentence: "Consider the starship carrying a feasible exit mouth of a wormhole". You don't have to mention the word "feasibility" in order for your comment to be interpreted as "feasible".
When is Woodward's paper on wormholes going to be published?I've been reading a bit about them lately, and I've realized that unless you can somehow place the exit-mouth of a wormhole where you want (i.e. light years away) without the need to carry it, then it's going to be very tough to use them in the way we want.Consider a starship carrying the exit-mouth of a wormhole heading towards Vega (25 light years away) at 0.999c with the entrance-mouth sitting somewhere in orbit. The mouth of the wormhole is being accelerated at relativistic speeds along with the crew, which means they're experiencing time dilation. Now from our perspective, it should take the crew 25 years to reach their destination, but the crew experiences only 3 months thanks to relativity. Since we have a wormhole to their ship, it appears that if we were to step through the entrance in orbit and into their ship, we would have time traveled 25 years into the future; and the crew would conversely be able to time travel 25 years into the past by simply walking in through their side of the wormhole.
Somebody mentioned time travel? It seems a smart guy named Stephen Hawking once wrote (I'm not quoting him verbatim) that if "time travel" were to be a fact in the future, we should see "tourists" from the future around TODAY.Where are they? Hiding behind dark glasses, wearing hoodies,and tapping away on their PC's?
Quote from: aceshigh on 03/01/2011 12:10 amQuote from: mlorrey on 02/28/2011 11:44 amBut FTL doesnt actually mean time travel per se. Claims that it does constitute a fundamental misunderstanding of relativity.such as??? I would love to know, because I already lost more than one argument to physics smartasses that told me FTL means time travel to the past. I said "yes, but not if its FTL that are not really faster than light like a hypothetical tachyon, but ftl like "taking shortcuts" or "moving spacetime itself" (warp), etc.he showed me an graph to prove I was wrong. Well, my knowledge was not deep enough to contradict him.This is a common problem with people who think they understand relativity but dont.The assumptions made are that since it takes 1 year per light year distance for light to travel from destination B to departure point A, that if you go to B from A instantly then you are going to emit photons there that wont be observed at A until x years from now, and therefore are in the past of point A, such that if you travelled back to A from B instantly immediately after travelling from A to B, that you would wind up x many years in the past of A.This is false. The photons that are observed at A in the future of you arriving at B are in the past OF THAT FUTURE "A" TIMELINE BUT NOT THE PRESENT POINT IN TIME AT "A". This is easy to confuse and its basically a game of physics three card monte that some know-it-alls try to play to "prove" the impossibility of FTL. Once you see where they palmed the card, it becomes much clearer.
Quote from: mlorrey on 02/28/2011 11:44 amBut FTL doesnt actually mean time travel per se. Claims that it does constitute a fundamental misunderstanding of relativity.such as??? I would love to know, because I already lost more than one argument to physics smartasses that told me FTL means time travel to the past. I said "yes, but not if its FTL that are not really faster than light like a hypothetical tachyon, but ftl like "taking shortcuts" or "moving spacetime itself" (warp), etc.he showed me an graph to prove I was wrong. Well, my knowledge was not deep enough to contradict him.
But FTL doesnt actually mean time travel per se. Claims that it does constitute a fundamental misunderstanding of relativity.
This is a common problem with people who think they understand relativity but dont.The assumptions made are that since it takes 1 year per light year distance for light to travel from destination B to departure point A, that if you go to B from A instantly then you are going to emit photons there that wont be observed at A until x years from now, and therefore are in the past of point A, such that if you travelled back to A from B instantly immediately after travelling from A to B, that you would wind up x many years in the past of A.This is false. The photons that are observed at A in the future of you arriving at B are in the past OF THAT FUTURE "A" TIMELINE BUT NOT THE PRESENT POINT IN TIME AT "A". This is easy to confuse and its basically a game of physics three card monte that some know-it-alls try to play to "prove" the impossibility of FTL. Once you see where they palmed the card, it becomes much clearer.
Quote from: GeeGee on 05/16/2011 02:36 am...sorry, I dont follow why the crew would time travel 25 years in the past by walking through the wormhole.the crew left Earth in 1st january 2100. They are reaching Vega in 2125. To them, only 3 months have passed at relativistic speeds, but for the low speed universe outside, it passed 25 years.When they cross the Wormhole in their ship and appear back on Earth, they are in 2025, just like they would be in 2025 when their ship decelerated back to very low speeds to land on Vega.edit: ok, I see the problem. For some reason (dont know WHICH reason) time is fixed between the two wormhole mouths (always the same on both mouths).yes, if time is fixed on both mouths, there would be time travel (the crew would return to Earth march 2100).I would imagine that if a wormhole mouth was just like a "portal" which you can see through, that if you had TWO clocks, each one at a different mouth, the crew inside the ship would see the clock at Earth, through the wormhole, moving incredibly fast (think of the movie Time Machine), while people on Earth would see everything inside the ship VERY slow.Apparently, that is not correct. The clocks on both places would remain synchronized.now, the question is WHY is time fixed in both mouths? Can anyone explain me? Thanks.
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