chems on Urth and a FTL Whorl

matthew.malthouse · 19 Aug 2003, 07:03 · from urth-v0308.mbox · original

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From: matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk
Subject: Re: (urth) chems on Urth and a FTL Whorl
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 08:03:40 +0100
Message-ID: <urth-v0308-3946 at digest.urth.net>
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On 18/08/2003 16:44:38 Michael Buice wrote:

>On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 04:10  AM,
>matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk wrote:
>
>> Any requirement for acceleration to or deceleration from that speed
>> would
>> occasion subjective duration for those aboard.  Viz the light-huggers
>> of
>> Alastair Reynolds trilogy.
>>
>
>Strictly speaking there are only technological barriers preventing the
>subjective duration from being as small as desired.  Practically
>speaking, however, I can only offer a "yup, what he said."
>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
>> I'm
>> not sure we even have a theory to suggest what subjective duration
>> would
>> be for those concerned.
>
>We do, however, have a theory that says superluminal travel completely
>wrecks causality.  To my knowledge, no satisfactory solution outside
>polysyllabic vociferation or invoking General Relativity in weird and
>clever ways is known.

*Waves Magic Wand*

Father Inire's mirrors side-step all these issues.

Matthew

--=20

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