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>Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 17:34:48 -0400
>From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net>
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: Cheap Shots,
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>
>Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:
>>
>> * Michael S. Lorrey <retroman@turbont.net> [000615 11:16]:
>> >
>> > Essentially correct. Frankly I was ready to give up on the whole thing
>> > until I heard this from Cramer, and I'm still not sure I understand
>> > totally why he thinks it would work in those conditions. And you are
>> > right, under normal conditions you'd need some hellaciously cool
>> > materials to keep the centrifuge together under those relativistic
>> > velocities. The two possibilities that intrigue me though are a) using
>> > photons or other subatomic particles as the working 'mass' within the
>> > centrifuge, and b) usinge fluids that have a very very low internal
>> > speed of light.
>>
>> AFAIK (and i'm not a physicist, or anywhere near), option (b) won't give
>> you anything at all. The speed of light in the relativistic equations
>> is the speed of light in a vacuum not in the local medium.
>
>In that case, the relativistic equations are irrelvant to this universe,
>since there is no place where there is an absolute vacuum. If you allow
>that they work in normal space (which has a few atoms per cubic cm of
>space), then they should work in any gas, fluid, or solid.
>
They don't work with absolute perfection in deep space, just very close (as deep space is very close to an absolute vacuum). Remenber that the equations are idealistic, in the sense that they postulate absolutes. In a syrupy viscid, fuggeddaboudit! Ain't no way that such a trick will work, except to confuse gullible souls, but not the workings of the universe. Shell games may confuse the customer, but never the pea.
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