Setting the Clock: the Planet way, the navy way, and the w..

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:10:58 -0700 (PDT), an orbiting mind-control
laser made "rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com" <rlbell.nsuid DeleteThis @gmail.com> write:

>> But I've always wondered why so many people take it for granted
>> that FTL travel is time travel.
>
>Because Einstein said so, not directly,

He either said it, or he didn't...

> but it just rises out of the page when you do the calculations,

IANAP, but, from what part of his equations does it 'just arise'
from?

-SNIP-

>What do you call it when you can get into a machine and travel to a
>location where you can watch events from the past as if they were
>happening right now, because, at the new location, they are happening
>right now?

I call it a really neat investigative tool... but not a 'time
machine' or 'time travel.'

It is not happening 'now.' No matter how you couch it, it's
already happened.

You would not be watching it 'as it happens,' but watching it 'as
it happened.'

>It is not that going faster than light moves you back in time, it is
>that any faster than light journey involves arriving at your
>destination before you left (as seen by an observer at your
>destination), and it gets wierder.

There, perhaps, is the problem.

I probably ought to have couched my initial objection more
clearly.

When someone postulates SFnal 'time travel,' it is usually
accepted (by me, at least) to mean that the 'time traveler' is moving
through time /in the same frame of reference./

Yes, in terms of the remote observing frame of reference,
outpacing your light-cone (if I'm using the term correctly) would
violate causality, but only in the observing frame.

FTL could get you to your destination prior to your source light
indicating that you've left, but it'll never get you back home before
you left.

Perhaps I'm simply inappropriately conflating loose and rigorous
definitions of 'time travel' and 'traveling through time' and simply
gumming up the works.

-JPB
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Spinner wrote:
> "rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com" <rlbell.nsuid.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Apr 12, 2:34 pm, Spinner <nos....DeleteThis@nospam.net> wrote:
>>> "rlbell.ns...@gmail.com" <rlbell.ns....DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Apr 12, 4:49 am, Spinner <nos....DeleteThis@nospam.net> wrote:
>>>>> "rlbell.ns...@gmail.com" <rlbell.ns....DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On Apr 11, 5:38 am, Spinner <nos....DeleteThis@nospam.net> wrote:
>
>>>> How old it is varies with location. The further away you are, the
>>>> younger it is. Relativity is wierd that way. Travelling faster than
>>>> light towards something is going forward in time, faster than it
>>>> elapses. Travelling away from something is travelling back in time.
>>>> Missed Live Aid? Go to a location in space where it is about to
>>>> happen and decode the broadcasts. Wish you could have seen the
>>>> formation of the Crab Nebula? There are places where that star is
>>>> about to go supernova. "Now" is a very location specific term.
>>> We're not defining "now" we're defining time. A pulsar at its surface
>>> has a very fixed and non subjective age. The variable is how old it
>>> appears to be, looking 1 year younger for every LY you move away from
>>> it. 1000 LY away, it LOOKS 1000y younger, but the star isn't any
>>> younger just because YOU are far away from it.
>> Go to what passes for a surface on Jupiter, where spacetime is curved
>> to about 2.5 times the acceleration of where you are likely to be as
>> you read this. Clocks run slower. If pulsars go down in frequency as
>> they age, they look younger when seen from Jupiter's surface, as there
>> is less time between the pulses (as measured by local clocks), even
>> though the difference in distance to the pulsars is practically zero.
>> Now for the mind bending part. Because the clocks run slower, less
>> time has elapsed, so the pulsars seen from the surface of Jupiter do
>> not just look younger, they really are younger. You can argue all you
>> like, it will not matter, as when you go to Jupiter and make the
>> observations, the data will match the jovian claims.
>

I may be aging faster than he is but if he sat and watched me for an
hour by his clock more than a hour would have passed on my clock. The
stars would not look younger nor be younger if we waited 1000 years by
my clock. They would be older if we waited 1000 years by his clock but
then I would also be more than 1000 years older.

You are trying to create a paradox when none exists.



>>> <SNIP>
>
> There are no time machines. Something is not younger because it you
> are seeing light from it that left a while ago. And there is absolute
> age. Create some uranium in a supernova. Make star. A very very very
> predictable and fixed amound of that uranium will decay to lead as
> local time goes tick tick tick. The isotopic relationships of certain
> atoms is an absolute determinant of age. Now. Assume there have been
> 10^27 decays since it was created, and you just happened to watch all
> of them, but because youre a long way away, you've only seen 10^22 of
> them. Just because you have seen fewer decays (and thus the thing
> seems younger) doesnt mean IT is younger.
>
> Theres no absolute clock but there is age. And if the uranium is at
> the bottom of a deep gravity well, it will in fact age more slowly
> because time passes more slowly in its local frame - but its AGE is
> what it is.
>
> Saying something is younger by viewpoint is absurd. How it looks to
> you is not how it is. Look at a tree in your back yard. It's
> actually about 10 nanoseconds older than it appears to you. Now move
> away a bit. Now its about 20 nanoseconds older than it looks to you.
> You are telling me because you moved a few yards away, the tree got
> "younger"?
>
> Gimme a break.
> --
> 2+2!=5 even for extremely large values of 2
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In article
<1c77b3de-3394-49e3-88af-4619386dc328 RemoveThis @26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>,
"rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com" <rlbell.nsuid RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 16, 9:01 pm, Offbreed <offbreed_... RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Dahak wrote:
> > > Outpacing the light-speed flow of information is one thing, and
> > > outpacing 'cause and effect at a distance' is fine, for certain values
> > > of time 'travel.'
> >
> > > But I tend to think of time travel in terms of the original frame
> > > of reference.
> >
> > > Sure, FTL would have the obvious effect of outpacing the origin's
> > > light-cone, but you can never do so /at the source./
> >
> > What you said is exactly what I've been thinking.
> >
> > Saying the equations prove FTL is time travel reminds me of the old bit
> > about "mathematically proving" that bumble bees cannot fly.
> >
> > (Assuming someone really did come up with any such equation), what was
> > proven was that math can be complete within it's self, and still be
> > sadly incomplete in the real world.
>
>
> It was about WWII. Everything known about aerodynamics proved that a
> bumblebee as too heavy for its two pairs of wings to lift, with the
> muscle power available. As far as what gets applied to flying
> insects, everything that we have learned about aerodynamics since has
> confirm the initial fact. What was only found recently was that the
> two pairs of wings have interlocking ridges that allowthe two seperate
> pairs to act as a single pair. Redoing the calculations with single
> pair of wings proves that bumblebees are fully capable of flight.

There are a lot of different sources for where that came from, but most
of them have the "bumblebees can't fly" calculation being done as a back
of a napkin calculation at a party, and the aerodynamicist who did it
straightened it out as soon as he'd sobered up again and checked some of
the assumptions he'd used, but the biologist who had original posed the
problem had already spread the "aerodynamics proves bumblebees can't
fly" version far enough that it got rooted in the scientific folklore.

--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
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I missed the Staff meeting, but the Memos showed that Offbreed
<offbreed_106 DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote on Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:01:41 -0800 in
alt.books.david-weber :
>
>> Sure, FTL would have the obvious effect of outpacing the origin's
>> light-cone, but you can never do so /at the source./
>
>What you said is exactly what I've been thinking.
>
>Saying the equations prove FTL is time travel reminds me of the old bit
>about "mathematically proving" that bumble bees cannot fly.

Actually, the saying was that, according to the then understood
principles of flight, there was no way to account for the flying
ability of bumblebees. Or to put it another way, bumblebees could fly
in the field, but not according to theory.
>
>(Assuming someone really did come up with any such equation), what was
>proven was that math can be complete within it's self, and still be
>sadly incomplete in the real world.

That's been a "given' since Godel published his Incompleteness
Theorem.
--
pyotr filipivich
The two oldest cliches in the book are "The Good Old Days were
better." and "After all, these are Modern TImes."
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On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:22:52 -0800, Offbreed
<offbreed_106 RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:

>rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com wrote:
>> How old it is varies with location. The further away you are, the
>> younger it is. Relativity is wierd that way. Travelling faster than
>> light towards something is going forward in time,
>
>I've often wondered what sort of theory of relativity a species without
>the ability to detect electromagnetic radiation (light or heat) would
>come up with.

There's a short story whose title utterly eludes me at present. It's
set on a large, low-g planet with a permanent cloud cover and only one
haibitable landmass and the large seas mean huge storms. The race has
no idea that space exists.

With no view of the sky and deep ocean voyages apparently pointless
they never discovered that their planet is round, they think they are
still on a flat land with a tech level near ours.

Because it's a large, low-g world escape velocity is low. Maglev
trains can reach velocities approaching orbital velocity. A scientist
is trying to resolve this and come up with a set of equations that
look an awful lot like the SR ones but they put the ultimate speed
limit at orbital velocity.
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On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:10:58 -0700 (PDT), "rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com"
<rlbell.nsuid.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

>Because Einstein said so, not directly, but it just rises out of the
>page when you do the calculations, and no one has found any indication
>that his model is sufficiently imprecise that the next new model will
>prove him wrong. It is really important to mention that for most of
>what we see, Newton's laws are perfectly accurate and slogging through
>Einstein's laws require stupendous precision to show that Newton's
>laws are incomplete. To prove that FTL travel is not time travel, you
>have to present a model of the Universe where it is not and show that
>your new model not only accurately explains everything that Einstein's
>model explains, but either it explains things that do not fit
>Einstein's model, or it is easier to understand and use than
>Einstein's model (the copernican model of a sun centered universe was
>not initially accepted because it was right, but because it produced
>the same results as the ptolemaic earth centered universe with much
>less work).

It seems to me that Einstein's prohibitions only apply to FTL travel
within our universe and thus do not preclude FTL drives based on
leaving our universe--things like the hyperdrive.
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:34:32 -0700, Loren Pechtel
<lorenpechtel.RemoveThis@hotmail.invalid.com> wrote:

>It seems to me that Einstein's prohibitions only apply to FTL travel
>within our universe and thus do not preclude FTL drives based on
>leaving our universe--things like the hyperdrive.

Doesn't matter - the time travel effect is a result of "action at a
distance", and whether you achieve that through normal space or
hyperspace or a Dirac jump, it's still time travel in terms of the
universe we live in.
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On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:17:11 -0400, Dahak
<Dahak_II.DeleteThis@theXOUTfifthimperium.com.invalid> wrote:

>But I tend to think of time travel in terms of the original frame
>of reference.
>

Hey - i'm already pretty good at time travel. Now alli need to do is
figure out how to work the "FF" and "Rewind" buttons".

>
> It's like trying to argue simultaneity at light-year distances.

Which is exactly what i was talking about.
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On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:01:41 -0800, Offbreed
<offbreed_106 DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote:

>Saying the equations prove FTL is time travel reminds me of the old bit
>about "mathematically proving" that bumble bees cannot fly.

Actually, the math used in that case - according to John Campbell by
engineers at the "Skunk Works" - was both complete and totally
applicable to the Real World - it was just the wrong math; fixed-wing
when rotary wing should have been used.

>(Assuming someone really did come up with any such equation), what was
>proven was that math can be complete within it's self, and still be
>sadly incomplete in the real world.
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mike weber wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:01:41 -0800, Offbreed
> <offbreed_106.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Saying the equations prove FTL is time travel reminds me of the old bit
>> about "mathematically proving" that bumble bees cannot fly.
>
> Actually, the math used in that case - according to John Campbell by
> engineers at the "Skunk Works" - was both complete and totally
> applicable to the Real World - it was just the wrong math; fixed-wing
> when rotary wing should have been used.

Uh-huh. Einstein is applicable sub light. How do we know the equations
are applicable FTL?
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:42:27 -0800, pyotr filipivich
<phamp.DeleteThis@mindspring.com> wrote:

>Actually, the saying was that, according to the then understood
>principles of flight, there was no way to account for the flying
>ability of bumblebees. Or to put it another way, bumblebees could fly
>in the field, but not according to theory.

So could helicopters; and the math applicable to helicopters that wa
sknown at the time also accounted for the bees, according to JWCjr.
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On 2008-04-19, mike weber <fairportfan RemoveThis @gmail.com>
allegedly proclaimed to alt.books.david-weber:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:42:27 -0800, pyotr filipivich
><phamp RemoveThis @mindspring.com> wrote:
>>Actually, the saying was that, according to the then understood
>>principles of flight, there was no way to account for the flying
>>ability of bumblebees. Or to put it another way, bumblebees could fly
>>in the field, but not according to theory.
>
> So could helicopters; and the math applicable to helicopters that wa
> sknown at the time also accounted for the bees, according to JWCjr.

"Helicopters do not so much fly as beat the air into submission."

--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
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In article <q24k04d8or825sl94bufhk73qppebsjdd9.DeleteThis@4ax.com>,
mike weber <fairportfan.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:42:27 -0800, pyotr filipivich
> <phamp.DeleteThis@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >Actually, the saying was that, according to the then understood
> >principles of flight, there was no way to account for the flying
> >ability of bumblebees. Or to put it another way, bumblebees could fly
> >in the field, but not according to theory.
>
> So could helicopters; and the math applicable to helicopters that wa
> sknown at the time also accounted for the bees, according to JWCjr.

The story I heard about "bumblebees can't fly" is that the original
back of the envelope (or napkin) calculation was done using a
linear theory that assumed that air was non-viscous (and
incompressible). This works fine for a DC-3, but it is not good for
something as small as a bumblebee where viscous effects start
becoming noticeable.

--
Robert Woodward <robertaw.DeleteThis@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
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