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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdcsu!herbie
From: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong, Computing Services)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Re: Could someone explain why FTL is illegal?  In small words?
Message-ID: <604@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Nov-84 21:26:46 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.604
Posted: Fri Nov  2 21:26:46 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Nov-84 07:15:09 EST
References: <327@mhuxt.UUCP> <8130@watarts.UUCP>, <333@mhuxt.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 26

The Michealson-Morley (sp?) experiment was not a proof but a confirmation
of the validity of Einstein's hypothesis about the speed of light to the
accuracy of the experiment.  There have been at leastfive experiments since
then that have improved the accuracy of this hypothesis several orders of
magnitude.  BTW, his hypothesis was that the speed of light was invariant
when observed from any inertial frame of reference.  The consequence that
nothing can move faster than the speed of light is a conclusion of several
"thought" experiments that Einstein did whose results are bizarre unless
nothing can move faster than the speed of light.  It's been a few years
since I've had to do this so I would have to look in my old physics texts
to remember the details.  I believe the experiments had to do with the
concept of simultaneaity and it's interpretation in special relativity.
Incidentally, I know of frame of reference which meets all the criteria
of an inertial one precisely.  One can come very close though.  Most 
problems involving relativity that I've ever had to do needed only special
relativity.  General relativity deals with what happens in a reference
frame that has gravity.

Herb Chong...

I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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