chems on Urth and a FTL Whorl

Michael Buice · 18 Aug 2003, 15:44 · from urth-v0308.mbox · original

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From: Michael Buice <mabuice at uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) chems on Urth and a FTL Whorl
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 10:44:38 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0308-3928 at digest.urth.net>
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On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 04:10  AM,=20
matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk wrote:

> Any requirement for acceleration to or deceleration from that speed=20
> would
> occasion subjective duration for those aboard.  Viz the light-huggers=20
> of
> Alastair Reynolds trilogy.
>

Strictly speaking there are only technological barriers preventing the=20
subjective duration from being as small as desired.  Practically=20
speaking, however, I can only offer a "yup, what he said."  =20
Acceleration would be the difficult engineering feat.

> More "speed of light" isn't sufficient.  A 30 light year journey would
> still take minimum 30 years in the external time frame.  Practically
> speaking to make interstellar travel no more an obstacle to empire than
> say sailing across the Atlantic would require superluminal travel and=20
> I'm
> not sure we even have a theory to suggest what subjective duration=20
> would
> be for those concerned.

We do, however, have a theory that says superluminal travel completely=20
wrecks causality.  To my knowledge, no satisfactory solution outside=20
polysyllabic vociferation or invoking General Relativity in weird and=20
clever ways is known.

Michael

--=20

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