On 8/22/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >If a physicist were here, > > There are at least two physicists here: Rich and myself. I've only been > active on the list for about six years, so maybe you didn't notice that I'm > here. :-)
I did not know that. There really should be a short page listing names and professions of major posters, to prevent such amusing errors as that. > > >he'd probably smack us and tell us to > >distinguish between entropy and the arrow of time/dimension of time. > > That's not the real problem: the real problem in this thread is that you > are trying to force special relativity (SR) into a classical physics box. > In classical physics, we have x,y,z space, and a separate dimension t. We > have d^2 =x^2+y^2+z^2 (where d is the distance between two objects.) The > values for x, y, and z are coordinate system dependant: x, y, and z can be > defined by any three orthanormal vectors (orthanormal vectors are both > mutually orthogonal and have value 1). The value of d is coordinate system > independent. A minor point: why are you representing the cartesian distance formula in squared form? I've always elsewhere seen it as sqrt(x^2+y^2+z^2). And I agree partially: the time discussion is flowing out of the absolute zero?=space travel discussion, which does suffer from the Newtonian space problem. But I'm not sure our time discussion is similarly flawed. <snippage of some interesting discussion of Einsteinian space> > There is perfect symmetry. Each observation is equally valid. > > Finally, two objects that are timelike (a signal at the speed of light can > travel from one point in spacetime to another), will have the same sequence > in time for all observers. Two objects that are spacelike (a signal at the > speed of light cannot travel from one point in spacetime to another), will > be simultaneous in one inertial system, have A before B for some reference > systems, and have B before A in the remainder of the reference systems. > > Hope this helps. If there are any questions, just yell. > > Dan M. How exactly does that work for space-like relationships? Is this potential to mix up ordering of A and B what allows reverse time travel? ~Maru _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
