Subject: (urth) Christian relativity

From: nastler <nastler at yahoo.dk>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:33:28 +0000

Quote suggesting one reason a Christian author might
wish to write a universe without relativity. The time
scales in the Sun series are extended, but the
principle holds. The "news" cannot have spread through
the universe without bypassing physics as we know it.

Thus in SS we would just have to accept that
relativity is patchy in order to understand the story;
just as we have to accept a form of Lamarkian
evolution.

"Suppose that, at the moment of Christ's death, the
news of it had started traveling at the maximum
possible speed around the universe outwards from the
earth. How far would the terrible tidings have
traveled by now? Following the theory of special
relativity, the answer is that the news could not,
under any circumstances whatever, have reached more
that one-fiftieth of the way across one galaxy — not
one- thousandth of the way to our nearest neighboring
galaxy in the 100-million-galaxy-strong universe. The
universe at large couldn't possibly be anything other
than indifferent to Christ, his birth, his passion,
and his death. Even such momentous news as the origin
of life on Earth could have traveled only across our
little local cluster of galaxies. Yet so ancient was
that event on our earthly time-scale that, if you span
its age with your open arms, the whole of human
history, the whole of human culture, would fall in the
dust from your fingertip at a single stroke of a nail
file."
Dawkins

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:49:59 +0000

Of course, assuming physics 'as we know it' to be true is a bit of a risk; 
relativity being patchy is probably at least as likely as not.

>From: nastler <nastler at yahoo.dk>
>Reply-To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
>To: URTH <urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
>Subject: (urth) Christian relativity
>Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 15:33:28 +0200 (CEST)
>
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From: Stanislaus <sbocian at poczta.fm>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:32:52 +0000

Hello nastler,

> the universe without bypassing physics as we know it.

Check Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen theory and experiments. It has been
conclusively proven that news can spread instanteously, perhaps even
backward in time - but only for the internal purposes of the universe.
You cannot transmit information faster than light. Universe can.

-- 
Best regards,
 Stanislaus                           mailto:sbocian at poczta.fm

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Poznaj Stefana! Zmien komunikator! >>> http://link.interia.pl/f1924

---

From: tom at bitterman.net <tom at bitterman.net>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 17:49:06 +0000

> You cannot transmit information faster than light. Universe can.

a) Details.  Cites.
b) This is God we're talking about here.  You know - omniscient,
omnipotent, omnipresent, creation-ex-nihilo, rising-from-the-dead
God.  Is anybody really worried that he couldn't get information
out faster than light if He wanted to?

enamel

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 18:21:42 +0000

> dust from your fingertip at a single stroke of a nail

Richard Dawkins is a brilliant, brilliant biologist and
writer about biology, but when it comes to religion
his head is so far up his ass it's sticking out his mouth.
He simply does not understand what he criticizes, any
more than seven-day creationists understand the
overwhelming evidence for the "neo-Darwinian synthesis"
(but feel free to analyze and criticize it). As "brights"
go, he's pretty dim.

--Dan'l

--
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
                        -- St Teresa of Avila
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer

---

From: Adrian Robert <arobert at cogsci.ucsd.edu>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 18:23:19 +0000

>> You cannot transmit information faster than light. Universe can.

A good book I read explaining this and related areas is _Quantum  
Reality_, by Nick Herbert.  It's a few years old, maybe there's  
something better now, but it will get the job done..  The ideas of  
the EPR experiment and Bell's Theorem are nonetheless a bit too fuzzy  
in my mind at the moment to try providing details here.

(BTW, I hadn't thought of Bell's in connection with Christian or  
other religious ideas, but that's pretty cool..)

Adrian

---

From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 19:39:16 +0000

S
>> the universe without bypassing physics as we know it.

The Ship (in UOTNS) does travel FTL and does go back and forth in time (the 
two things being the same).  News including divine messages and divine 
messengers do take this route.  Whatever the real universe ordains, in the 
universe of the Sun books FTL is a routine "galactic" technology

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:38:24 +0000

> universe of the Sun books FTL is a routine "galactic" technology

You have just begged the question.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:45:04 +0000

Iorwerth Thomas wrote:

> Of course, assuming physics 'as we know it' to be true is a bit of a 
> risk; relativity being patchy is probably at least as likely as not.

That is just not supportred by the vast bodies of reproduced results. 
Relativity's predictions are spot on accounting for observed effects 
above the quantum level. It could use some reconciliation with quantum 
dynamics, but at the scales above that only the ability of average 
people to comprehend relativity is patchy.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:55:36 +0000

> You cannot transmit information faster than light. Universe can.

There's no meaningful distinction between "you" and a subset of 
"universe" in current physical thought.

There's also no need to restrict news of the Christian Gospel to 
post-crucifixion time in religious thought; Christ not only shares in 
the eternal quality of Gd, but was personally present at the Creation 
and it was only His mortal incarnation for the benefit of the earth that 
  began in Bethlehem. The Scriptures is silent on whether there are any 
extraterrestrial sinners in need of salvation; if their existence can be 
reconciled, so can other appearances of Christ, and they would no more 
violate relativity than the Hubble expansion does.

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:46:24 +0000

> > You cannot transmit information faster than light. Universe can.

As much as I appreciate an eye for detail, this isn't a physics lists. In 
any event I believe he was not referring to any one particular paper on the 
subject - there is a great deal of talk about EPR and its implications out 
there. You can start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_inequality

The gist I think of what he was talking about in the paragraph above is that 
there are things that seem to be instantaneous interactions at a distance, 
but that these do not transfer information in any formal sense and thus can 
be considered not to violate relativity. Maybe.

>out faster than light if He wanted to?

Deists, I would suppose.

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:22:33 +0000

--- Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 
> As much as I appreciate an eye for detail, this
> isn't a physics lists. 

Hear, hear. I'm all for the fun "not" being sucked out
of the room. :) 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:32:29 +0000

On the other hand, I appreciate the physics neepery. Perhaps
it can be marked with a different Subject: so people who don't
want to read it can skip it without missing the rest of the
discussion?

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:20:26 +0000

> want to read it can skip it without missing the rest

I doubt that's necessary. Information like that just
looks like big blocks of code to me anyway and my
brain just glides across it until something sticks.
Sometimes that something happens to be the delete
button. Other times I actually learn something. (dear
god no). I just think physics citations are hardly a
requirement for a valid literary argument. They're
more like cookies. Made of tofu. And Carob. A treat.

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:33:38 +0000

>people to comprehend relativity is patchy.

Oh, I know :).  I specialise in quantum field theory.  I think that I didn't 
quite say what I wanted to say there.  This might be more close to the 
intent (or perhaps not).

The metaphysic that's generally taken to be implied by relativity at present 
isn't necessarily the one that should be taken to apply in the future 
(though one can't actually say what that would be), since metaphysics is 
generally empirically underdetermined.  For example, based on the Stanford 
Encyclopaedia of Philosopy entry on the subject (don't have time to dig up 
the link at the moment; sorry) there's a form of Presentism (the idea that 
Now exists, to butcher the idea slightly) that's compatible with it despite 
it being usually taken that Eternalism  (Now doesn't exist) is 'proved' by 
SR.

I _could_ also mutter 'underdetermination of _theory_ by experimental data', 
but there might be a general outcry of 'anti-science reletavist' and I'd 
have my liscence to practise physics revoked! :D

>post-crucifixion time in religious thought; Christ not only shares in the 
>eternal quality of Gd, but was personally present at the Creation and it 
>was only His mortal incarnation for the benefit of the earth that began in 
>Bethlehem. The Scriptures is silent on whether there are any 

Quite.   I'm also intrigued by the idea that Dawkins is not only an 
authority on biology and theology (he isn't on the latter, though himself 
and many who read him seem to think so) but on theoretical physics.  Not 
that he says anything obviously incorrect in the quoted passage...

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:11:16 +0000

To say that metaphysics is "generally empirically underdetermined" bothers 
me a little bit, although it may - I am not sure - be perfectly true. It 
seems to imply that one arrives at metaphysical conclusions by means of 
empirical investigation, but the metaphysical premises are always there, as 
it were, ahead of time. I may be grossly mistaken but when I see modern 
attempts to work out a metaphysics compatible with modern science, it seems 
to me that mostly what is going on is that they're showing a given set of 
metaphysical premises aren't mutually compatible and then making some 
suggestions as to which ones should be thrown out. But the empirical 
investigation itself gets started on the basis of some metaphysical 
standpoint or other.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 22:07:04 +0000

On 4/14/06, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> it were, ahead of time.

Well, I don't want to be speaking for anyone else but how _I_ read
"empirically underdetermined" is "there is not sufficient empirical
data available to determine the correctness of one set of metaphysics
as over against another;" or, more broadly, "many different metaphysical
systems can be said to fit the empirical evidence we have to date."

> ...[T]he empirical

Well, to the extent that epistemology is a branch of metaphysics,
certainly; empiricism is after all fundamentally an epistemological
approach to things.

At any rate: the whole sentence --

> The metaphysic that's generally taken to be implied by relativity
> at present isn't necessarily the one that should be taken to apply
> in the future (though one can't actually say what that would be),
> since metaphysics is generally empirically underdetermined.

unpacks in my brain (note again: Not speaking for Iorwerth, just
riffing out my own interpretation) something like:

Metaphysics has been significantly influenced by the advent of
modern physics, and especially relativity. (Most philosophers
don't seem to have really gotten their brains wrapped around
quantum theory yet; sadly, some philosophers seem to have
a vague idea that Heisenberg's principle boils down to "the
experimenter influences the outcome of the experiment," or
somesuch.) But because we haven't yet fully worked out the
empirical implications of relativity (and especially because we
haven't yet reconciled relativity with quantum theory), any
metaphysics based on relativity is _necessarily_ premature --
which isn't to say that it may not turn out to be correct for a
relativistic Universe; but if it is, we can't say yet that it is.

Something like that, anyway.

--Dan'l

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:10:17 +0000

More or less what I intended to say;  thanks!  I'm largely riffing off 
Pierre Duheim, who seemed to have some fairly sensible things to say on the 
subject.

I'll also note (in order to muddy the waters a little) that in some 
formulations of QFT (that of Peskin and Schroder's 'Introduction to Quantum 
Field Theory', for example), the causality of special relativity is 
technically violated, as particles can exhibit space-like propagation, but 
operationally preserved, as observables are defined as commutators between 
different field operators which vanish for spacelike propagators (i.e. 
particles propagate faster than light, but you can't measure them, so it 
doesn't matter).  There probably exist other formalisms that don't exhibit 
this slightly unsatisfactory way of dealing with the problem.

Also, I think that in GR, the universe has a preffered frame of reference, 
but I could be wrong.

>From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:41:17 +0000

On 4/25/06, Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com> wrote:
> More or less what I intended to say;  thanks!

Thank _you_! I'm not a scientist, or a philosopher, but an autodidact
who reads and writes on both subjects and keeps hoping to get
paid for it. So it's good to find out that when I set out to translate
a scientist's philosophical statement I got it (more or less) right.

H'mmm. Is there a formulation of QFT in which relativistic causality
is _not_ violated -- or at least rendered irrelevant? I somehow had
the impression this was one of the big barriers to making quantum
gravity theories work. --at any rate, it seems the the experiments
which (seem to) confirm the Bell hypothesis throw relativistic
causality into a very cocked hat.

I'm pretty sure that the whole point of relativity is _not_ to have
a preferred frame of reference. But, ZPF theory may mess that
up pretty good (if it ever amounts to anything).

--Dan'l

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:51:18 +0000

>causality into a very cocked hat.

Well, Bell's inequality is a property (as far as I know; I'm a computational 
field theorist turned condensed matter theorist who needs to bone up on his 
foundations) of non-relativistic QM as opposed to full QFT, which is 
compatible with _special_ relativity, at least at an operational level.  
_General_ relativity is the hard case, partly because the maths is quite 
horrid, but mostly because of the conceptual problems (to do with time - 
canonical quantum gravity has none - and how the wavefunction of the 
universe is defined, measured or if it even exists).  The degree to which 
Bell's inequalities affect relativistic causality is somewhat up in the air, 
because you can't transmit information faster than light, which makes it 
comparable to the apparant violation of relativity in QFT (at least, to me; 
again, others who know more may disagree).

>up pretty good (if it ever amounts to anything).

Well, yes...  But in the case of the universe you get a Machian 'background 
of fixed stars' effect (I think); I'm not sure Lee Smolin is happy with that 
but he's a bit of a purist in this regard.

ZPF theory?

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 17:59:59 +0000

On 4/26/06, Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Well, Bell's inequality is a property (as far as I know; I'm a
> computational field theorist turned condensed matter theorist who
> needs to bone up on his foundations)

Heh. Back in my days at Berkeley, one of their Nobel winners in
Physics insisted on sitting on all doctoral defenses. He would
inevitably ask "What is the definition of force?" and similar
questions -- if you couldn't come up with F=MA, you were hosed.
Some of the candidates, who hadn't touched "that stuff" in ten
years or more, had to cram before their oral

> _General_ relativity is the hard case, partly because the maths is
>quite horrid, but mostly because of the conceptual problems (to do
>with time - canonical quantum gravity has none

Okay I didn't know that there was a canonical version of quantum
gravity yet... I clearly need to catch up on my science mags. (There's
a huge pile by the bed...)

> The degree to which Bell's inequalities affect relativistic causality is
> somewhat up in the air, because you can't transmit information
> faster than light,

Ummm ... I have this idea that you can, by exploiting exclusion.

Consider three points, A, B, and C. B is between A and C,
but one light-microsecond closer to A. B emits photon-pairs
towards both A and C, at regular intervals.

At C, you set up a device to detect photons coming from B as
waves.

At A, I measure every other (odd-numbered) photon as a particle. If
I'm understanding exclusion and the inequality correctly, this means
that you can't measure these photons as waves, so your wave-
measuring doodad misses every odd-numbered photon, which gives
us a kind of synchronization. Then I measure the even-numbered
photons as waves for 1 and as particles for 0. You will only be able
to detect the ones paired to the ones I measure as waves. So no
matter how far A and C are from each other, the information I
encode in this way will reach you in one microsecond.

True? False? I'm not sure -- I don't have the maths to understand
why I'm wrong, if I am.

> Well, yes...  But in the case of the universe you get a
> Machian 'background of fixed stars' effect (I think); I'm not sure
> Lee Smolin is happy with that but he's a bit of a purist in this regard.

Mmmm. I see the point while not conceding it -- if I move an
inch, my position relative to the farthest actual star _has_
changed, even if the change is below any conceivable threshold
of measurement. I don't think this creates an actual preferred
frame of reference, but a difference of scales in which certain
effects become smaller than quanta and effectively disappear.

> ZPF theory?

Zero point field theory, which (aside from offering a nifty source
of hypothetical free energy, at least in science fiction) seems
to propose an actual reason why inertial mass is related to
gravitational mass.

--Dan'l

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:59:10 +0000

> True? False? I'm not sure -- I don't have the maths to understand

I don't think this will work, as you're essentially doing a 
slightly-rearranged double-slit experiment. Empirically, one slit has to 
be slightly closer to the source on the same scale as your A, B, and C 
above, if for no other reason than measurment error in construction of 
the apparatus. Yet the outcome still depends on the presence of that 
second slit. Likewise,  the ultimate resolution of state will depend on 
what happens at A and C, not solely A as you have it above.

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:12:01 +0000

>years or more, had to cram before their oral

Ouch...

>a huge pile by the bed...)

Canonical quantum gravity is just the term for what Stephen Hawking does 
(i.e. take GR and second quantise it); it isn't hugely successful...

>True? False? I'm not sure -- I don't have the maths to understand

I'll have to think about that...  I suspect that it may be an ill posed 
problem :) (that is, there's a catch, but I'm buggered if I know what it 
is).

>effects become smaller than quanta and effectively disappear.

I think it's a little more fundamental than that (and my refernce to Mach 
may be slightly misleading).  Maybe it's a property of the particular 
space-time metric cosmologists use?

>to propose an actual reason why inertial mass is related to

Ah yes, I think I've heard of that (vaguely), though I don't know much about 
it; most of my particle physicist watching at the moment constists of 
observing the general kerfuffle as string theory dies a messy death for the 
_third_ time...

---

From: Stanislaus <sbocian at poczta.fm>
Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 02:16:22 +0000

Hello Dan'l,

>> needs to bone up on his foundations)

I'm a lawyer, so my explanation can be a bit flawed.

> True? False? I'm not sure -- I don't have the maths to understand

Some variation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen conception? You can measure
any photon as wave. The problem is, if an entangled photon has been
measured before, it will change - statistically - the results of the
measuring of the second photon. But the problem is that you will know
what the results should be when you get the results of the first
measurement.

So you can transmit information quicker than light - but you cannot
decode it.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 06:30:09 +0000

Stanislaus,

Thank you. I _knew_ there had to be a problem with this
somewhere. This is a good clear explanation.

Not bad for an attorney whose first language isn't English.
I wish I had Polish half as good as your English! 8*)

--Dan'l