OT: Christian relativity - in which I mangle philosophyof science

Iorwerth Thomas · 26 Apr 2006, 10:51 · from 2006-April.txt.gz

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From: iorweththomas at hotmail.com (Iorwerth Thomas)
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:51:18 +0100
Subject: (urth) OT: Christian relativity - in which I mangle
	philosophyof science
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370604250841o36708b85na75cc2081ca8ee74 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BAY114-F35A78A8D7AA8C82DE6E07EB9BC0 at phx.gbl>

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

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).

>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).
>

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?

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