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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Question on FTL and quantum mechanics
Message-ID: <654@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Nov-84 17:59:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.654
Posted: Fri Nov 23 17:59:03 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Nov-84 08:44:54 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 24

[]

	The following bit of speculation came to me a while back, and
since I'm not competent to evaluate it, I offer it to the net for comment.
	Some of the responses to the recent request for an explanation
of the impossibility of FTL have pointed out that, while travel *at*
the speed of light is impossible, travel *faster* than light may not
be impossible (thus the hypothetical tachyon).
	If this is the case, it is not clear to me that moving between
the two states (slower-than-light and faster-than-light speeds) is
necessarily impossible, either. Suppose velocity is itself not continuous,
but a quantized phenomena? I have heard it suggested that space and time
may be quantized; if this were so, then it would seem that velocity is
also necessarily quantized. If velocity *is* quantized, and velocity
changes occur in quantum increments, it seems that one could, indeed,
move from slower- to faster-than-light speeds without ever having traveled
at *exactly* the speed of light. No messy infinities in the equations.
	Comments?

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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