Re: FTL transmission?

From: Ian Field (field_ian@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2000 - 08:38:40 MDT


Chuck Wrote:

| Since when does FTL imply instantaneous? There's still a transmission
| delay, otherwise, we should drop FTL and use the word instantaneous.

It doesn't - it implies a negative time cost (simultaneous being a 0 time
cost).

|
| The assumptions you ask us to make enable the paradox. In the real world,
| the comm delays and processing delays will ensure that the return message
| happens safely after the first message was sent.

True, for now, but reality changes. You can't expect an extropian to be
limited by what is currently possible, can you?

|
| All I see happening here is that you are substituting a long tunnel
("delay
| line") with a finite delay for actual space.

I don't think so, could you clarify on this?

The receiver and transmitter
| could be sitting next to each other on a bench, or separated by light
| years, it makes no difference.

True, though the assumption here was that they had some physical connection
to the controller which enabled instantaneous (0 cost) communication with
it. The only FTL transmission going on was between transmitter (B/E) and
receiver (C/F).

| Even if the transmission is instantaneous, the same rules apply. The only
| way you get a paradox is to assume that the first message arrives at the
| distant station far enough BEFORE it is transmitted so as to allow the
| paradox.

Read (from the nyt article):
"That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of
the pulse exits the far side of the chamber even before (the term before
suggesting, as Hal put it, an inertial reference frame) it enters at the
near side."

|
| You need a time machine, not FTL.

One and the same?

|
| Chuck Kuecker
|
|



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