Re:Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say
by SolarNet on Monday September 24, 2012 @07:24PM
(#4567646)
I realize how this violates relativity, but I don't understand your counter example (if it was one?) because I wasn't talking about absolute time frames, I'm talking about going forward in time when going FTL. And at no point in my example could B reply before A sends a courier.
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Re:Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say
by lmm on Wednesday September 26, 2012 @07:16AM
(#4575045)
It's not a counterexample as such, but it seems obviously absurd (and violating relativity) that B's FTL message to A arbitrarily goes a lot slower than A's FTL message to B, given that the situation is completely symmetrical (you can even have them both send their messages at tA=100,tB=100, which is simultaneous from the point of view of an observer C who stayed behind on the asteroid where the two spaceships initially met up).
The point I was trying to make was that your example description makes sense if the FTL drive is somehow fixed to A's reference frame, i.e. A's reference frame is some kind of absolute reference frame and therefore the situation is not symmetrical between A and B. But that introduces its own problems.