[ExI] QT and SR

[John K Clark]

"Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>

> No, you *cannot* change anything on the other side of the
> universe faster  than light. And to even use the word
>"instantly" in your sentence displays  a lack of familiarity or
> understanding of special relativity.

We've been over this before, and in harping on this point I strongly
suspect you are trying to imply a subtlety and vast understanding
of this subject that in fact you do not have.

If by "instantly" you mean changing matter or energy or information
at a distance without a time delay then it's true, relativity says that
is imposable and no experiment has ever contradicted it. However
in the experiment I was referring to the thing that was changing
was not composed of matter or energy or information; and don't
ask me what it was composed of, the English language does not
have a word for it.

But clearly it is SOMETHING and that something changed; and the
experimenters did not claim to prove that change occurred at
infinite speed, but they did find a lower bound, 4 orders of
magnitude faster than light.

> Just memorize this: every elementary textbook on Relativity
> Theory  dismantles the notion of simultaneity or "instant
> changes" over space and  time.

Thanks a bunch for the helpful hint but I have read that before,
the first time when I was about 8 and read "The Big Boy's Book
of Science". However unlike cold fusion events in this field have
not remained static. After that book was published, especially
after 1967, things have happened that would lead me to believe
that if a second edition of that fine volume were to come out
today it might be wise to make a few revisions. At least put in a few
"howevers" and maybe a "on the other hand" or two.

You can try to sweep it under the rug all you want but it is
now beyond dispute that things can change in ways that Relativity
and even early Quantum Theory (before 1967) did not think possible.

> I have explained this all before. Suppose that indeed you go
> ahead with  the experiment and [..]

Yea yea. When somebody demonstrates that they know more about
a subject than me I don't mind them being patronizing, they've
earned it. You haven't earned it.

> nothing "spooky" going on

Then you are a braver man than me, I think it's spooky as hell.

> no action at a distance

Bullshit! Even if Hugh Everett's theory turns out to be 100% true
it would be no help in explaining WHY a mass moves the way it does
in a gravitational field. We can say it moves that way because
Spacetime is curved and we can say how it is curved, but we can't
say WHY matter does that to Spacetime. All we can say is
"action at a distance". Nor can it explain why charged particles 
effect each others motion at a distance, more "action at a distance"

But that's OK, a good theory (and I think Everett's theory is good
and perhaps even true) need not explain everything, a good theory
just needs to explain something.

  John K Clark