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From: mam@charm.UUCP (Matthew Marcus)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Sure we can!
Message-ID: <288@charm.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Mar-84 14:55:12 EST
Article-I.D.: charm.288
Posted: Wed Mar 28 14:55:12 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Mar-84 00:49:48 EST
References: <16018@sri-arpa.UUCP>, <850@qubix.UUCP>, <983@dartvax.UUCP>
Organization: Physics Research - AT&T Bell Labs MH
Lines: 22

<---- Zap

	The problem with FTL and special relativity is NOT that the speed of C
is an "illegal" one for anything with mass or that it is mathematically impossible
to go continuously from STL to FTL.  Both are true under special relativity, but
there are always loopholes, one of the most popular being hyperspace.
	The real problem is that FTL is equivalent to time travel into the
past.  This equivalence is derivable from STL Lorentz transformations which
have been amply verified many times over.  Thus, FTL and time travel share the
same set of paradoxes.  My own favorite to the Grandfather Paradox of time
travel (back 50 yr., kill Gramps, you never born, you didn't kill....)
is that NOTHING is certain, so by attempting to set up a paradox, you FORCE
something unlikely to happen.  As Niven puts it, "Try to save Jesus with a
submachine gun, and the gun will POSITIVELY jam."  In other words, time machines
(and thus hyperdrives) are finite improbability generators in the sense of
Hitchhiker.  I once wrote an article for a fanzine called
"Through a Black Hole and Into the Past on an FTL Ship with the Infinite
 Improbability Drive".
It had section headings such as '"Don't Write That Article!", Said the Man who
Looked a lot Like Me...".
	Enough maundering!
		{BTL}!charm!mam