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From: stern@bnl.UUCP (Eric Stern)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: FTL
Message-ID: <316@bnl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Jan-84 16:54:58 EST
Article-I.D.: bnl.316
Posted: Sat Jan 21 16:54:58 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Jan-84 07:49:10 EST
References: <15702@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: SUNY StonyBrook
Lines: 26


>                                                 For example,
>assume you have a total conversion drive which accelerates all
>particles within a given volume equally--no stresses are placed
>on the substance of the starship or the people inside.  With
>total conversion of matter, accelerations of 2000 or 3000 G should
>be easy enough to achieve.  This violates no physical laws that I know
>of; obviously we don't know how to do it yet nor will we for some
>time.

  Actually, to do this would require communicating a change
in velocity instantly over a nonzero distance, which
is prohibited by special relativity.  This is the cause
of the large-stick-in-the-small-garage special relativity
so-called paradox.

  The point is, that any FTL scheme would require
that special relativity be extended in a radical
way, and we would probably need a new way of
looking at space-time in order to resolve
all the causality paradoxes that arise in special
relativity from FTL communications.

That is why this is science fiction right now.

				Eric G. Stern