Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
--- On Sat, 9/24/11, Jouni Valkonen jounivalko...@gmail.com wrote: Jouni, I am not certain I follow quite what you're suggesting. Are you suggesting that, possibly, the absolute frame of reference may have differing velocities based on the velocity of the local object? I.E, some planet, Earth or Venus, whatever? I may be completely misreading what you're getting at. Makes me think of a few things, though. Back to the wormhole = time machine thing thrown about for years; if space is taken as an absolute frame of reference, what happens if you move a piece of space WRT uncurved, free space at some velocity? Is it still part of the absolute frame? I'm not sure how to explain what I'm thinking... assume you have a wormhole a la Morris and Thorne... one end is stationary, the other end you move around at some speed close to c, and try to make a time machine out of it. If the space making up the wormhole is considered to be an absolute frame, does that mean that the moved end does not experience time dilation? Meaning that there is an absolute entry and exit time for something traversing the wormhole? I started thinking about this some years back when reading over an old webpage called 'Falling into a Black Hole.' One of the things that struck me was the idea that the 'escape velocity' of a black hole could be considered to be the infall velocity of space into the hole. V(infall) = c at the event horizon, and exceeds c within. A natural question to ask is, then, if space defines an absolute frame of reference, is the frame of V(infall) = 0 (free, uncurved space) the same as that of some part of space close to or within the hole where V(infall) 0? I wish there was some better way to explain what I am visualizing. It probably makes no sense. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
--- On Sat, 9/24/11, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Yeah. Bien sur. The whole issue isn't that some religious law might be broken; it's that you can get contradictions if we allow stuff like this to go on without careful controls on it, and short cuts, improbability physics, and bistromath make no difference to that conclusion. I agree, I wasn't really intending to go that far as to beat religion and science into a pulp, just pointing out a few similarities as I saw them. BTW, I will say I am glad you responded to this. Good to have someone who knows more of relativity than I to throw some change (2 cents is no longer such, due to inflation) at this. And, frankly, I, and lots of other people (I'm sure!), feel pretty strongly that Nature doesn't allow contradictions. Paradoxes may be allowed in the math of the model, but they're never in the real world. Ergo, if FTL travel is possible, there are surely some restrictions buried in the fine print. Count me as one of those lots of other people. No paradoxes. I'd figure the fine print is, FTL is going to take place at different speeds in different directions, depending on the frame. A thought occurs to me; back in the day, as some of my friends say, I did a few thought experiments on the idea of a reactionless propulsion system. If something like it existed, (a Campbell energy-to-momentum converter, however the hell it works), the only way I can see to conserve energy would be to have it have an efficiency depending on velocity relative to an absolute frame. If that is so, such an engine could be, it seems, used as a sort of universal compass. Measuring the efficiency in different directions would be, then, quite telling. --Kyle --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
Kyle, Indeed i again wrote something that is very difficult to understand because we do not have proper words. My less than adequate English does not help either. Anyway for recapitulation, here is the key idea of my definition for absolute frame of reference in ”breef” summary. Imagine rotating body that has certain angular momentum. Then what does it mean that this spinning object has a rotational speed? (This is very difficult question, and does require deep philosophical understanding, but also it is carefully discussed question) Is it rotating in respect of the surrounding stars or does it rotate by itself. I.e. if we remove all the stars from the universe, does it still rotate? Use this idea as an anology for the normal nonaccelerating motion and define velocity not in relative to other objects, such as classical motion is defined relatively, but think motion as a property of particle itself, such as it's spin. Can you do this? We have clear proof that there is no classical absolute frame of reference because we can observe circular motion. In circular or orbital motion relative speed is constantly changing, but what is important that in orbital motion intrinsic motion does not change. Hence no matter in what reference frame we are comparing orbital motion, satellites clock ticks in constant pace, because only thing that has an effect for it's clock ticking rate is the orbital speed of satellite and it does not depend on who is observing satellite. This was the fallacy of special relativity and Galilean classical motion, that it failed to grasp that the ticking rate of myon or satellite only depends on it's intrinsic speed. Our own speed is irrelevant how long distance myon will travel before it is decaying. Because time dilatation depends only on intrinsic velocity, we do not need to think what is the relative speed. We just need to measure our own time dilatation rate and we can measure it just assuming that there are no lenght contractions and we measure how far we can get in fixed time interval. If we get to the moon in 10 nanoseconds we have very good insight of our clock's ticking rate, because we know that the distance into moon is 300 megametres. Easy logical proof for this is that clock ticks for two satellites that are orbiting into opposite directions always at the same rate. We cannot understand this in the context of classical motion, without making theory really funny (indeed, how special relativity describes this is really really funny!). But this is very easy to understand that if we assume that time dilatation depends only satellites intrinsic velocity, hence we need to only measure it's intrinsic velocity and we get it's time dilatation rate (easy as making quantum teleports! Instead of teleport, we can also use telephone and ask travellers what is their intrinsic velocity... but i think that there is no way to calculate it exactly, because direction of speed is irrelevant. GPS is working only because we have checked math with empirical feedback, i.e. we have telephoned to the satellite and asked what is the intrinsic velocity of the satellite). Actually this kind of absolute motion is exactly like special theory of relativity, but without lenght contraction. We only need lenght contraction, because special relativity has one extra and unnecessary axiom that it assumes that speed is defined always in galilean relativistic terms. This is however false assumption and it is not supported by evidence. Neat thing about this interpretation is that it does not mind if quantum physics needs instant information transfer due to entanglement. And now this new neutrino finding confirms this theory, because it falsifies the idea of relativistic speed. What is most odd question is that why I have not seen this theory before, although this should be straight forward interpretation of the data we have and also it predicts a bunch of new ways to test this theory (and thus falsify special relativity)? And also, quantum mechanics is it's best friend, not the worst enemy. —Jouni Ps. I hope this helped. I will probably do not try to explain it again. So if you do not get it, i am sure that someone else will explain this more fluently because this is the only explanation for the neutrino data. On Sep 25, 2011 9:00 AM, Kyle Mcallister kyle_mcallis...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Sat, 9/24/11, Jouni Valkonen jounivalko...@gmail.com wrote: Jouni, I am not certain I follow quite what you're suggesting. Are you suggesting that, possibly, the absolute frame of reference may have differing velocities based on the velocity of the local object? I.E, some planet, Earth or Venus, whatever? I may be completely misreading what you're getting at. Makes me think of a few things, though. Back to the wormhole = time machine thing thrown about for years; if space is taken as an absolute frame of reference, what happens if you move a piece of space WRT uncurved, free space at some velocity? Is it
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
On Sep 23, 2011, at 9:58 PM, Kyle Mcallister wrote: --- On Fri, 9/23/11, Horace Heffner hheff...@mtaonline.net wrote: This measurement conflicts with early arrival time data for neutrinos from supernova. The New Scientist article quotes Marc Sher of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, It's not reasonable. ... If neutrinos were that much faster than light, they would have arrived [from the supernova] five years sooner, which is crazy, says Sher. They didn't. AFAIK, Sher wouldn't know this. Kamiokande I came online in 1983, Kamiokande II in 85. SN1987A obviously happened in 1987, so how he gets 5 years as being impossible makes no sense to me. If no neutrino detector existed 5 years prior, then he doesn't know. Sher based his comments on the fact that neutrinos arrived 3 hours before the supernova - as predicted in advance. The prediction was based on the longer time it takes photons to make it through a supernova's interior. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth, approximately 168,000 light-years ... Approximately three hours before the visible light from SN 1987A reached the Earth, a burst of neutrinos was observed at three separate neutrino observatories. ... At 7:35 a.m. Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos, IMB 8 antineutrinos and Baksan 5 antineutrinos, in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds. Sher's number seems to be off a bit, but he may have just been talking top of the head estimates. In the CERN OPERA results, neutrinos arrived about 2.48x10^-5 the travel time sooner than expected. For a 168,000 ly trip the expected photon arrival delay time Dt should be Dt = (2.48x10^-5)*(150,000 yr) = 1359 days = 3.72 years This also assumes that the neutrinos produced in SN1987A would have traveled at exactly the same speed greater than C as those produced at CERN. That's a big assumption. A supernova obviously has a / slightly/ greater power output than a human-made collider. [snip] The CERN result did not show any dependence on neutrino energy in the range checked. If neutrino energy is not a factor then the size of the burst only has to do with the number of neutrinos arriving, not the difference in time from neutrino arrival to light arrival due to distance. The fact early arrival time is not dependent on energy indicates the fast tunneling is more likely provided extra-dimensionally than simply due to ordinary wavefunction collapse. If the teleporting were due to wavefunction collapse then delay should be a function of the de Broglie wavelength, which is a function of momentum. Under the hypothesis, collision of a neutrino with a virtual particle then results in the taking of an instant (or nearly instant) path to the other side of the position occupied by the virtual particle. Another variation of the hypothesis exists if sound can travel on strings at superluminal speeds. The interaction then involves a neutrino-virtual-photon string merging on the arrival side and similar string separation on the departure side. If the string vibration propagation speed is not instant, but significantly larger than c, the same result occurs - an early arrival of the neutrino. In the case of the OPERA experiment this merely means the 18.1 meter cumulative tunneling distance I calculated would be replaced by a longer cumulative distance during which neutrinos effectively travel at the speed of sound in the strings. The neutrinos then are momentarily converted from a separate string into a vibration, a pulse, traveling on a momentarily merged string. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
A slight correction to the Dt calc made below. On Sep 23, 2011, at 9:58 PM, Kyle Mcallister wrote: --- On Fri, 9/23/11, Horace Heffner hheff...@mtaonline.net wrote: This measurement conflicts with early arrival time data for neutrinos from supernova. The New Scientist article quotes Marc Sher of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, It's not reasonable. ... If neutrinos were that much faster than light, they would have arrived [from the supernova] five years sooner, which is crazy, says Sher. They didn't. AFAIK, Sher wouldn't know this. Kamiokande I came online in 1983, Kamiokande II in 85. SN1987A obviously happened in 1987, so how he gets 5 years as being impossible makes no sense to me. If no neutrino detector existed 5 years prior, then he doesn't know. Sher based his comments on the fact that neutrinos arrived 3 hours before the supernova - as predicted in advance. The prediction was based on the longer time it takes photons to make it through a supernova's interior. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth, approximately 168,000 light-years ... Approximately three hours before the visible light from SN 1987A reached the Earth, a burst of neutrinos was observed at three separate neutrino observatories. ... At 7:35 a.m. Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos, IMB 8 antineutrinos and Baksan 5 antineutrinos, in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds. In the CERN OPERA results, neutrinos arrived about 2.48x10^-5 the travel time sooner than expected. For a 168,000 ly trip the expected photon arrival delay time Dt should be Dt = (2.48x10^-5)*(168,000 yr) = 1521 days = 4.17 years This also assumes that the neutrinos produced in SN1987A would have traveled at exactly the same speed greater than C as those produced at CERN. That's a big assumption. A supernova obviously has a / slightly/ greater power output than a human-made collider. [snip] The CERN result did not show any dependence on neutrino energy in the range checked. If neutrino energy is not a factor then the size of the burst only has to do with the number of neutrinos arriving, not the difference in time from neutrino arrival to light arrival due to distance. The fact early arrival time is not dependent on energy indicates the fast tunneling is more likely provided extra-dimensionally than simply due to ordinary wavefunction collapse. If the teleporting were due to wavefunction collapse then delay should be a function of the de Broglie wavelength, which is a function of momentum. Under the hypothesis, collision of a neutrino with a virtual particle then results in the taking of an instant (or nearly instant) path to the other side of the position occupied by the virtual particle. Another variation of the hypothesis exists if sound can travel on strings at superluminal speeds. The interaction then involves a neutrino-virtual-photon string merging on the arrival side and similar string separation on the departure side. If the string vibration propagation speed is not instant, but significantly larger than c, the same result occurs - an early arrival of the neutrino. In the case of the OPERA experiment this merely means the 18.1 meter cumulative tunneling distance I calculated would be replaced by a longer cumulative distance during which neutrinos effectively travel at the speed of sound in the strings. The neutrinos then are momentarily converted from a separate string into a vibration, a pulse, traveling on a momentarily merged string. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
RE: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
Kyle, Enjoyed your rant! Thx. RE: the 'god' particle being really hard to find... Makes me wonder if the (unconscious?) motivation for its existence came out of a realization by the physics powerbrokers that they needed a reason to justify an even larger research budget. Let's hypothesize a new particle that probably doesn't exist, and it'll take a ginormous accelerator, which will take 10 years to build, to prove that! -m
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
On 11-09-24 01:58 AM, Kyle Mcallister wrote: [ ... ] It should be pointed out that there are formulations of relativistic transforms (Tangherlini, Selleri, etc.) which allow some form of absolute reference frame, and therefore absolute simultaneity. There is a distinct 'past' and 'future'. These various formulations are indistinguishable from conventional special relativity up to C. Above C, they give wildly different predictions; with special relativity, you run into causality violations. I believe I alluded to something like this earlier. In a universe which adheres in general to the SR model, you can, none the less, allow instantaneous information transfer in a single, distinguished universal rest frame without leading to any causality violations. It's when you allow the instantaneous transmitter to move at an arbitrary velocity, and send information to an arbitrary receiver in the same inertial frame as the transmitter, with arrival time being instantaneous in the (arbitrarily selected) rest frame of the transmitter, that you run into trouble. The causality violations happen when you send information FTL in one frame (frame #1), relay it to someone in another (carefully selected) frame (frame #2), and send it back to the starting point in the that other frame. When it comes back in frame #2, it's going backwards in time in frame #1, and it ends up at the same spatial coordinates it started at in frame #1, but at an earlier time. Note well: Time travel is just fine (entails no contradictions) as long as the destination is outside the backward light cone of the starting point. It's getting the destination into the backward cone of the starting point which requires the frame hopping. This becomes clear if you try to draw the contradiction on a space time diagram. You can move from certain positions which are outside the backward light cone of an event to inside it, if we allow single-frame FTL travel, but to move from the event to a position outside either of its cones from which you can still get to a point inside its backward cone, you need to frame-hop. To put it another way, two events which are separated by a space-like interval can occur at (nearly) any relative times you like in any particular inertial frame. To get the contraction, you need to travel across one or more space-like hops, and end up with a time-like separation from your starting point -- and the separation must be in the wrong direction. (I hope this made at least a little sense...) If an assumed absolute frame is present, Which, BTW, is the case according to at least some modern theories of cosmology. Any model in which you can see yourself if you look far enough out into space has an implicit absolute frame in it. As I recall, there was a major search, using Hubble, for just such a situation a while back (no luck, tho, the universe may still be open for all that experiment showed).
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
2011/9/24 Kyle Mcallister kyle_mcallis...@yahoo.com: If an assumed absolute frame is present, these do not happen, you simply arrive quicker, but the speed in different directions is varied. It would be, I think, an interesting experiment, if possible, to measure the speed of these (if they are) superluminal neutrinos at various times of year, or with travel paths oriented in particular directions. Points of interest might be in the constellations Leo/Crater, Aquarius, Octans, and in the vicinity of Ursa Major. I am speculating based on our apparent motion WRT the CMBR. Absolute reference frame does not necessarily mean that we could observe velocities in respect of something classical absolute frame of reference, but velocity is rather the property of moving body itself. It does not matter in which direction we are moving, but only thing that matters is when we are changing the velocity. I.e. when we can observe Δv while accelerating. It does not matter into what direction satellite is orbiting the Earth, but both have the same intrinsic velocity that is ca. 8 km/s greater than ours. Therefore both satellites that are orbiting Earth into opposite directions measure for their internal clocks the same pace, although their relative speed is different in respect of our frame of reference due to Earth's rotation. It might be difficult to understand this perspective, because we are so used to think velocities as relative value in respect of other bodies, but it is no more difficult than understanding rotational motion. We can define rotation in respect of some absolute frame of reference or surrounding stars, but we can also define rotation in respect of the object itself. Similarly we can define the velocity of object in respect of the object itself. Therefore the absolute frame of reference is nothing that is external for the moving object itself, but it is the similar to angular momentum, that is the property of rotational body itself. Although on Earth we travel very fast around the sun and towards Andromeda, but we do not observe any Δv's. Therefore every observation we have made, have been made without changing our own velocity. Therefore the rate of our clocks has remained always constant although we have observed change of pace in clocks that have been moved faster than us. Such as myons or airplanes. If we are to test this hypothesis, we should leave Earth's low orbit. We cannot observe probably time dilation itself, but if time dilatation is realistic and is depended on our absolute speed, then we should be able to measure different value for speed of light, because speed of light is not affected by our local time dilatation. Too bad that we can measure the speed of light only within the accuracy of ±1m/s, therefore we may not get accurate enough measurements at low Earth orbit, but if we go to Venus' orbit or fly fast to Mars, we should get total Δv more than 15 km/s, therefore we should be able to measure the greater value for speed of light, if time dilatation happens in real time and is depended on intrinsic velocity of observer. Anyways this kind of absolute velocity is extremely difficult to understand, because there is no change of absolute velocity in circular orbital motion. But orbital motion is no different that rotational motion in general. It was also from Newton very insightful observation when he noticed the problem that do we need to define rotational motion in respect of absolute frame of reference? Same logic will apply also for steady motion! Do we need to really define steady motion in respect of some frame of reference? Note also that this interpretation of absolute motion is mathematically identical to special theory of relativity, if we are making observations from the frame what's Δv is close to zero, i.e. ±10 km/s. Therefore we have not seen this effect in our scientific tests. But from logical point of view this is radically different, because it allows superluminal transfer of information in principle. And indeed I do believe that quantum mechanics does predict that in teleportation, there is information exchanged instantly over arbitrary distance. I was so confident for this theory that I have bet €100 to support my theory. And also I was 19 years old when I invented this, and I have not needed to change it's core principles and also I have not seen any scientific observation that would be in conflict with this interpretation, but it neatly explains everything from GPS to pulsars. And now I am very sure that we have first indirect evidence that supports this kind of absolute motion. –Jouni
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
And by the way... On 11-09-24 01:58 AM, Kyle Mcallister wrote: Now, the article goes on to say that maybe the neutrinos did some funny travel through another dimension, and arrived at the destination sooner by taking a shortcut. So, no, they never really traveled faster than light. This is quite possibly one of the stupidest things I've ever read. If you crack open Taylor and Wheeler, do a few space-time diagrams, you will find that it DOES NOT MATTER whether the thing took a shortcut through the dimension of somebody else's problem via bistromathics; from our point of view, the thing traveled at a global speed defined by V = D / t, and since the arrival at position D = x (with the origin being defined as D = 0) took place at time t x / c, it still went faster than light as far as special relativity is concerned. Period. Yeah. Bien sur. The whole issue isn't that some religious law might be broken; it's that you can get contradictions if we allow stuff like this to go on without careful controls on it, and short cuts, improbability physics, and bistromath make no difference to that conclusion. And, frankly, I, and lots of other people (I'm sure!), feel pretty strongly that Nature doesn't allow contradictions. Paradoxes may be allowed in the math of the model, but they're never in the real world. Ergo, if FTL travel is possible, there are surely some restrictions buried in the fine print.
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
--- On Sat, 9/24/11, Horace Heffner hheff...@mtaonline.net wrote: In the CERN OPERA results, neutrinos arrived about 2.48x10^-5 the travel time sooner than expected. For a 168,000 ly trip the expected photon arrival delay time Dt should be Dt = (2.48x10^-5)*(168,000 yr) = 1521 days = 4.17 years Right. But either way, Sher's claim that (it's) crazy doesn't really hold up. Kamiokande wouldn't have seen anything anyways if they had arrived that much sooner. The facilities weren't up and running, or just barely. It would be interesting if they DID have some preliminary data to see if there was a spike around that timeframe. The CERN result did not show any dependence on neutrino energy in the range checked. If neutrino energy is not a factor then the size of the burst only has to do with the number of neutrinos arriving, not the difference in time from neutrino arrival to light arrival due to distance. I don't know if neutrino energy by itself has anything to do with their speed. I don't see any reason why they couldn't have different speeds due to different initial conditions. That is to say, technically, the oscilloscope sitting across the room from me has more energy (on a per mass basis) than an individual alpha particle being emitted from the Am-241 source in my smoke detector. But the alpha is moving far, far faster. Put another way, how much of the neutrino's energy is expressed as kinetic energy? How/what is required/done to make the neutrino move at a given speed? I do recall reading, years ago, in Cramer's Alternative View column about an experiment purporting to measure the rest mass of the electron neutrino as being the square root of a negative number. I.E., tachyonic. I don't know what came of it. At the very least, it's something to think about. Another variation of the hypothesis exists if sound can travel on strings at superluminal speeds. The interaction then involves a neutrino-virtual-photon string merging on the arrival side and similar string separation on the departure side. If the string vibration propagation speed is not instant, but significantly larger than c, the same result occurs - an early arrival of the neutrino. In the case of the OPERA experiment this merely means the 18.1 meter cumulative tunneling distance I calculated would be replaced by a longer cumulative distance during which neutrinos effectively travel at the speed of sound in the strings. The neutrinos then are momentarily converted from a separate string into a vibration, a pulse, traveling on a momentarily merged string. Regardless of the mechanism, does it still provide the same result, arrival of information at the destination at t D / c? If so, it is still FTL, and could conceivably be used for the transfer of data. Don't get me wrong, figuring out HOW it works is bloody interesting, but the big thing at the moment is, it seems to me, can it transfer information faster than light in free space. If so, it is nothing short of wonderful. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
but the big thing at the moment is, it seems to me, can it transfer information faster than light in free space. No, only in dense matter, not free space... Best regards, Axil On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 1:30 AM, Kyle Mcallister kyle_mcallis...@yahoo.comwrote: --- On Sat, 9/24/11, Horace Heffner hheff...@mtaonline.net wrote: In the CERN OPERA results, neutrinos arrived about 2.48x10^-5 the travel time sooner than expected. For a 168,000 ly trip the expected photon arrival delay time Dt should be Dt = (2.48x10^-5)*(168,000 yr) = 1521 days = 4.17 years Right. But either way, Sher's claim that (it's) crazy doesn't really hold up. Kamiokande wouldn't have seen anything anyways if they had arrived that much sooner. The facilities weren't up and running, or just barely. It would be interesting if they DID have some preliminary data to see if there was a spike around that timeframe. The CERN result did not show any dependence on neutrino energy in the range checked. If neutrino energy is not a factor then the size of the burst only has to do with the number of neutrinos arriving, not the difference in time from neutrino arrival to light arrival due to distance. I don't know if neutrino energy by itself has anything to do with their speed. I don't see any reason why they couldn't have different speeds due to different initial conditions. That is to say, technically, the oscilloscope sitting across the room from me has more energy (on a per mass basis) than an individual alpha particle being emitted from the Am-241 source in my smoke detector. But the alpha is moving far, far faster. Put another way, how much of the neutrino's energy is expressed as kinetic energy? How/what is required/done to make the neutrino move at a given speed? I do recall reading, years ago, in Cramer's Alternative View column about an experiment purporting to measure the rest mass of the electron neutrino as being the square root of a negative number. I.E., tachyonic. I don't know what came of it. At the very least, it's something to think about. Another variation of the hypothesis exists if sound can travel on strings at superluminal speeds. The interaction then involves a neutrino-virtual-photon string merging on the arrival side and similar string separation on the departure side. If the string vibration propagation speed is not instant, but significantly larger than c, the same result occurs - an early arrival of the neutrino. In the case of the OPERA experiment this merely means the 18.1 meter cumulative tunneling distance I calculated would be replaced by a longer cumulative distance during which neutrinos effectively travel at the speed of sound in the strings. The neutrinos then are momentarily converted from a separate string into a vibration, a pulse, traveling on a momentarily merged string. Regardless of the mechanism, does it still provide the same result, arrival of information at the destination at t D / c? If so, it is still FTL, and could conceivably be used for the transfer of data. Don't get me wrong, figuring out HOW it works is bloody interesting, but the big thing at the moment is, it seems to me, can it transfer information faster than light in free space. If so, it is nothing short of wonderful. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Neutrinos, FTL, and scientific textus receptus
--- On Sat, 9/24/11, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: From: Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com I believe I alluded to something like this earlier. In reading back over previous emails, yes, you're right. In a universe which adheres in general to the SR model, you can, none the less, allow instantaneous information transfer in a single, distinguished universal rest frame without leading to any causality violations. Well, as far as I can tell (and remember from the countless space-time diagrams I sketched out) it is of equal, isotropic velocity in that rest frame. From other frames' perspectives, the speed (of some superluminal motion) is different in differing directions. The difference between conventional special relativity and theories including an absolute rest frame, seems to me, to be that effectively, in the absolutist framework, time is universal, or put another way, propagated instantaneously. In SR, time is apparent propagated at c. Relativity of simultaneity and all that. I can see how an /apparent/ causality violation could happen; if a body exceeds c, it outruns its own light signal, and a suitably positioned observer could detect photons emitted from the body at the destination before photons from its departure position reached it. It would LOOK like the thing moved acausally, but it is just a trick of the light in this case. But whereas in one case it is just an illusion, in the other case, it is assumed to be something real. It's when you allow the instantaneous transmitter to move at an arbitrary velocity, and send information to an arbitrary receiver in the same inertial frame as the transmitter, with arrival time being instantaneous in the (arbitrarily selected) rest frame of the transmitter, that you run into trouble. Yes. There should be, for superluminal velocities, an anisotropy in different directions of propagation velocity. It would seem, if I am thinking this correctly, that if we have thing that can travel at v c, that we can build an 'ether compass', to borrow an outdated term, to determine our velocity with respect to an absolute rest frame, and determine the direction in which we are moving against it. Unless something weird happens see my upcoming response to Jouni's post. Note well: Time travel is just fine (entails no contradictions) as long as the destination is outside the backward light cone of the starting point. It's getting the destination into the backward cone of the starting point which requires the frame hopping. This becomes clear if you try to draw the contradiction on a space time diagram. You can move from certain positions which are outside the backward light cone of an event to inside it, if we allow single-frame FTL travel, but to move from the event to a position outside either of its cones from which you can still get to a point inside its backward cone, you need to frame-hop. Right. Which is why I said, if you do some frame switching, you can cause real problems within the scope of conventional special relativity if FTL is allowed. (I hope this made at least a little sense...) It did. Many thanks! If an assumed absolute frame is present, Which, BTW, is the case according to at least some modern theories of cosmology. Which theories in particular? Robertson-Walker is one I've heard about in the past. If I even remembered the name right. Don't remember much to be honest. Any model in which you can see yourself if you look far enough out into space has an implicit absolute frame in it. As I recall, there was a major search, using Hubble, for just such a situation a while back (no luck, tho, the universe may still be open for all that experiment showed). That gives me something to think about. --Kyle
