Re: Matter traveling backward in time

Sayke@aol.com
Mon, 23 Aug 1999 03:37:44 EDT

In a message dated 8/22/99 8:23:32 PM Pacific Daylight Time, mike@lorrey.com writes:

> Sayke@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > In a message dated 8/20/99 9:04:24 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
mike@lorrey.com
> > writes:
> >
> > > No it would not. We would see it the entire time. However we would
first
> > > encounter it in what it considers its later life, while it would
> > > encounter us in what we consider our later life. If I met an
anti-matter
> > > clock, i would think that it is moving backwards, while an anti-matter
> > > person would think its moving forwards. If I talked with an
anti-matter
> > > person, I would hear their last word first, and their first word
> > > last.... Any Questions?
> >
> > yea. ok, so lets say ive got this antimatter clock merrily spinning
away,
> > backwards, suspended via maglev in a vacuum chamber. then, to be ornery,
i
> > adjust the magnetic field slightly to tilt the clock to the side... how
does
> > the clock respond? does it actually tilt? that would require that it move
> > forward in time...
> > or am i just picturing your anology wrong, mike? i find this very
> > nonintuitive...
>
> I honestly don't know for sure, but my intuition says that the clock
> will tilt before you adjust the magnetic field (hints of the old
> thalidomide reaction that Azimov used to speak of) though how close the
> action/reaction will occur I cannot say. The fact that we are on this
> side of the big bang (thus dictating the force of entropy in one
> direction) probably decides the issue differently than in an anti-matter
> universe on the other side of the big bang.

well, if the clock is going to tilt before i tilt it, then the blatantly prudent course of action that is presented would be to not adjust the magnetic field that would have caused it to tilt, had i adjusted it... hehe.. hm.

> Someone said my perception of this was a misunderstanding, but they
> failed to explain why the Transactional interpretation should not be
> taken as literally as this. I would be very interested in hearing this
> explaination.

well, as of right now, im not subscribing to the literal transactional interpretation because of the tweaky paradoxes it presents. if someone could explain to me exactly where and when the transactional interpretation stops applying, i would dig it very much. i understood that the transactional interpretation says that although it can, under some circumstances, be useful to think of antiparticles as going backwords in time, they dont really do that.

my questions revolve around the "some circumstances"... help?

may your clocks never tilt before you tilt them, sayke