Re:A Binary Star Is About to Go Supernova and Could Produce ...
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @10:58PM
(#18500062)
I'm afraid it is true regardless, at least in cosmic scales. "now" is entirely dependent on your reference frame, and it is possible to construct two frames of reference such that if they could instantly communicate they would receive eachother's responses before the original messages were sent. See: Tachyonic antitelephone [0].
Re:A Binary Star Is About to Go Supernova and Could Produce ...
by shkkmo on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @10:56PM
(#18500054)
> This is only true if you spend too long navel gazing.
Not at all. "Now" can only have meaning withing a spaciotemporal frame of reference. We are used to operating within a single such context and our language assumes that.
Your point 2) explicitly brings up people from two different contexts discussing what "now" means.
While language that assumes a single spaciotemporal reference frame will continue to be used and to be useful, that doesn't make it useful for discussing systems with multiple frames of spaciotemporal reference.
This is only true if you spend too long navel gazing.
Relativity may have made a strict, absolute, universal "now" and "simultaneous" obsolete or non-existent, but language can't and won't adapt to the absurdity of claiming they don't exist. No one was making grand claims about absolute certainty of simultaneity before relativity, saying it doesn't exist has really only minor effects.
Language is contextual and with context it is indeed silly to claim "now" doesn't exist. Language can understand frames of reference and acknowledge disagreements without throwing out everything.
Unless photons and black holes start having conversations.