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Thread: Distance=Time?

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    Default Distance=Time?

    If you could instantaneously teleport from Earth to a planet in the Andromeda galaxy; when you arrived, would you have also traveled to that planet 2.5 million years backwards in our Earth time

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    Quote Originally Posted by Maximum77 View Post
    instantaneously teleport
    Instantly Teleport is not very well defined, and there is a lot of flexibility while we wait for teleporters and teleport theory to be invented.

    The nicest most intuitive way, breaks relativity, and what actually happens depends on how this is resolved. You basically want a shared time frame for things to be consistently instantaneous in (at various distances). However that gives you that an instantaneous teleport away and back takes no time, which makes for an interesting story.

    Tying it so you get 'teleported at lightspeed' is a kind of instantly teleporting (from your point of view) and much easier to resolve special relativity wise. This would also mean from their telescopes view they would see you get into the teleporter and instantly get out at their end (earth would have to wait 5 million years to see you or for you to have any affect). On your return earth time would also be 5,000,000 AD. It's a one way trip.

    If you "also travelled 2.5 mY" backwards, then that would have the nice feature that you could see the Andromeda-Brutus sharpening his knife, get in the teleporter and still stop him stabbing Andromeda-Caesar. Also on your return you'd have nearly 5 million years to decide what to do about Earth-Caesar
    Last edited by jayem; 2020-01-01 at 05:38 PM.

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    I don't see how it could. Yes, you would have problems with lightspeed telescopes and such. But I tend to believe time travel in such a way is impossible. Yes there are problems with Special Relativity, but remember, SR is a theory, not a proven fact.

    Just like at one time we did not understand what happened to aerodynamics when we traveled near the speed of sound, we really don't know what happens to time when we travel near the speed of light. All we have is theory and educated guesses backed by very limited set of experimental data.

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    As Jayem said, in a relativistic universe there is no common reference frame in which you can properly define instantaneous. We had a really good thread about it where it was explained in such a way that I got it, but I can't find it. Pre-post edit: I think this was the thread, although re-reading it so that I understand what happened again will take significantly more time than I'm investing in this post.

    The result of what happened was that you can still sort of define a common reference frame for two observers, mathematically it is possible to figure out what happens when someone on Earth sends an instantaneous message to a spaceship moving away from us. It's also possible to figure out when that message arrives if that first spaceship sends it to another spaceship rushing towards us, and when that message arrives if the second spaceship forwards the message back to Earth. But if you take them all together, the message now arrives on Earth before it was sent.

    It doesn't just happen with instantaneous communication/teleportation, any speed faster than that of light gives the same problems. The funny thing is that the problem completely goes away below the speed of light. There is no single reference frame in which the whole universe makes sense, but as long as your only information about the rest of the universe arrives by means as fast as light or slower it seems perfectly sensible anyway.

    So, as to your question: if you teleported instantaneously to a spot 2.5 million lightyears away you would not travel back in time, and Earthlings could observe you arriving through their telescopes (if you happen to be the size of a dwarf galaxy or so at least) 2.5 million years from now, minus maybe a little bit to compensate for the time dilation caused by Earth's speed. But if any aliens were watching, sitting at different points or traveling at different speeds, they would probably see some weird things, like you being gone for a while or appearing in Andromeda before you leave from Earth.



    I would like to state that I figure this is not a problem with relativity. It doesn't become a problem until you start assuming you can travel faster than light and expect the model that says you can't to still make sense. It's a bit like asking how awesome the celebration afterwards would be if those soccer players just picked up the ball with their hands and threw it into the goal. "But what if they could win that way?" They can't. (Except if they're all Maradona, it's an imperfect metaphor.)
    Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2020-01-01 at 06:52 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Maximum77 View Post
    If you could instantaneously teleport from Earth to a planet in the Andromeda galaxy; when you arrived, would you have also traveled to that planet 2.5 million years backwards in our Earth time
    Yes. This requires energy moving, momentum, acceleration, the final engineering term is time to the formula.

    No. It is just very quick evaporation or modulation to demodulation or condensation.

    So, Maybe...
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    FTL time travel in relativity requires changes in velocity, not just position. So if we define teleportation as a change in x without changing v or t, then teleporting to Andromeda and back doesn't make you travel in time at all.

    But if you teleport to Andromeda, accelerate to 100 m/s, then teleport back, then you would go forward/backward by about 300 days.

    You start at x,t = (0,0), then go to (d,0).

    Then change frames to x',t' = (gd, -gvd/c^2) where g is the relativistic gamma = 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) ~ 1 at low velocity.

    Then return to Earth at x',t' = (0, -gvd/c^2). Then decelerate to x,t = (0, -g^2 vd/c^2) which is about a displacement in time of vd/c^2 since gamma is very close to 1.

    So 2.5 MLy/c is 2.5M years, and 100 m/s / c is 1/(3 million), that gets you roughly a year.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Yes there are problems with Special Relativity, but remember, SR is a theory, not a proven fact...All we have is theory and educated guesses backed by very limited set of experimental data.
    Gravity is "just a theory", and I don't see truthers jumping out of high places. Relativity is well tested in the domains where it's relevant.

    More importantly, Einstein didn't completely overturn Newton and laugh at all the foolish things Newton once thought. Relativity had to contend with the fact that classical mechanics works really well in the domains it was designed for. Similarly, experiments done confirming relativity still stand, and its eventual replacement will have to report similar things in those domains.


    More on topic, one of the interesting things about relativity is that the very idea of simultaneity depends on your viewpoint. Which makes sense if you think about it; if you and someone in a place where time goes a little faster or slower break for lunch but agree to call again in an hour, whose watch would you use to determine when an hour is up? If you want to have a galactic civilization where people regularly fly on ships that go close to c, there will be disagreements between people as to the simple ordering of events. The only important thing is that, so long as nobody goes ftl, everybody can at least agree as to which events caused other events.

    My general advice if you want to make a universe for fun swashbuckling space action is to assume that the universe is generally Newtonian. A privileged reference frame makes a lot more intuitive sense to people, and unless you're trying to tinker with hard sci-fi where the oddities of whatever science are indeed integral to the plot (in which case it helps a lot to have studied the relevant areas of science in depth yourself), being intuitably graspable by most people is a good thing.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Yes there are problems with Special Relativity, but remember, SR is a theory, not a proven fact.
    That's a misunderstanding of how theories work. A scientific law says what happens. A scientific theory says why that happens. So the law of universal gravitation says that matter attracts all other matter based on mass and distance. The theory of gravity says that's because of these forces which interact in these ways.

    A theory will never "grow up" to become a law of its good enough. A theory can be a hypothesis that has yet to be tested and so the accuracy is completely unknown, or it could be a hypothesis that has been rigorously tested for decades and found to be proven fact. For example, the theory of evolution is both a theory and proven fact. The oxygen theory of combustion is both a theory and proven fact.

    "Theory" does not mean "not fact."
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    That's a misunderstanding of how theories work. A scientific law says what happens. A scientific theory says why that happens. So the law of universal gravitation says that matter attracts all other matter based on mass and distance. The theory of gravity says that's because of these forces which interact in these ways.

    A theory will never "grow up" to become a law of its good enough. A theory can be a hypothesis that has yet to be tested and so the accuracy is completely unknown, or it could be a hypothesis that has been rigorously tested for decades and found to be proven fact. For example, the theory of evolution is both a theory and proven fact. The oxygen theory of combustion is both a theory and proven fact.

    "Theory" does not mean "not fact."
    A theory, in scientific linguo, is a description of a mecanism that explains all known facts, is contradicted by none and can be used to make accurate predictions.
    A hypothesis that has yet to be tested is just that, an hypothesis, not a theory yet (even though the terms are synonymous in everyday parlance).

    A theory is not a fact because facts are observed while theories are models constructed to explain those facts. "Evolution" is a fact, "Evolution is caused by the interplay of random mutations and natural selection" is a theory, the Hubble-Lemaître Law (the further a galaxy is from us the faster it is moving a way) is a fact, the "big bang" model is a theory, the law of gravitation is a fact, general relativity is a theory, etc. All scientific theories are thought to be incomplete and fated to be
    replaced by new theories as our understanding of the universe progresses but none of them can be proven "wrong" at this point, simply their replacement will work in broader contexts and encompass the mecanisms we've already modelled.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Maximum77 View Post
    If you could instantaneously teleport from Earth to a planet in the Andromeda galaxy; when you arrived, would you have also traveled to that planet 2.5 million years backwards in our Earth time
    Assuming that time is a constant, IMO, no, unless that's what you wanted to happen.

    Let us say that, for some reason, you are using light to aim your teleportation. Now, obviously, you'd be aimed at the location of the star 2.5mya, because it took light that long to travel here. If you teleported instantaneously to that position, again assuming time is a constant, you'd wind up in open space wherever that planet was 2.5mya. But, really, that would be a really WEIRD way to do intergalactic teleportation.

    To play the [tech] game, I'd say you want to aim your instantaneous transport via something like quantum entanglement. You have to get stuff physically there, first, of course, so you might teleport to near the Andromeda Galaxy with your ansible, get it into position through standard FTL (whether that's hyperspace, some sort of warp drive, or short-range teleports), then do your long-range teleports to your ansible.

    Now, you might want to check out Schlock Mercenary which has actually had just this scenario... and is a damn fine hard sci-fi webcomic with enough back catalog to give you some fun reading material.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    *stuff*
    Except that it isn't just about how the light takes so long to reach you, so what you see far away is the photons coming from an event in the distant past. The really mindbending part is that depending on where you are and how you're moving, people can disagree about what events happened before or after which others. So long as everybody obeys the speed of light limit at least everybody can agree on which events caused or were caused by which other events. But going faster than light (which includes instantaneous teleportation) means that you can have some people seeing an event happening before its cause.

    Like I said upthread, in fiction it's best to handwave all this unless exploring hard science is the point of your fiction. But the universe is a very weird place.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anymage View Post
    Except that it isn't just about how the light takes so long to reach you, so what you see far away is the photons coming from an event in the distant past. The really mindbending part is that depending on where you are and how you're moving, people can disagree about what events happened before or after which others. So long as everybody obeys the speed of light limit at least everybody can agree on which events caused or were caused by which other events. But going faster than light (which includes instantaneous teleportation) means that you can have some people seeing an event happening before its cause.

    Like I said upthread, in fiction it's best to handwave all this unless exploring hard science is the point of your fiction. But the universe is a very weird place.
    Just seeing cause after effect can happen classically (consider a case where you can only see the cause event through a longer path than you can see the effect event, such as via a high IOR medium or bounced between mirrors). The screwy thing with FTL is that you can see the effect event and transmit a signal that reaches the location where the cause event will occur before it does so.

    So the causal structure of events with FTL mechanisms in play can have loops which would need to be solved self-consistently, which means that for a given setup a solution might not exist - which is problematic for a mechanistic theory. On the other hand, investigations into that kind of scenario seem to indicate that instead you end up with multiple possible solutions (and no way to choose between them in relativity at least).

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    Thanks for the discussions on Facts, Theories and Hypothesis. They told me nothing I didn't already know, but appreciate the effort. (Note, no where did I indicate a scientific theory indicated fact or not fact.)

    So, in this case, the OPs, we have a Theory that predicts what will happen. But since we have no observation or experiment that proves the results of the theory, we do not know Fact. So, stating we only have a Theory is accurate. Claiming that Theory, which is untested in this case, must be fact is scientifically ... arrogant. (I'm sure their is a better word for it, but I will stick with that for now.)

    Again, no where did I say the Theory of Special Relativity was wrong. Nor did I say it should not be ass-u-med to be correct. I simple said that it is a Theory. And now I'm saying to assume that in this case it must be Fact is arrogant.

    We currently have no other reasonable theory or hypothesis to predict what might happen in this case (other than SR). But we should also be humble enough to know that "We" are not always right. To assume that existing Theories that have not yet been proven wrong, or proven right in certain situations, must be true is the height of scientific arrogance. And is often why some scientists do not receive the acclaim and trust of some in the general public.

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    The pushback against 'it's just a theory' comes from when that kind of argument is used to justify the speaker's own intuitions (or what they assert to be common sense) as being more credible than the predictions of the theory.

    'The physics of the universe is causal' is also just a hypothesis, after all.

    Seeing a weird prediction doesn't on its own imply that the theory is wrong, though it often indicates a nonsensical question was asked. Asking about FTL in a relativistic context is probably nonsensical, but the math actually does produce predictions in that limit (even if the answers violate our expectations), so it's fair to say that given the evidence we have, if we were presented with an FTL mechanism, we should take those predictions as our best bet for anticipating what would happen when we used it.

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    On the one hand, we know that relativity is incomplete. Nobody who really knows their stuff is arguing that we've figured out everything that can be figured out.

    On the other hand, and much more importantly, relativity works extremely well as a predictive tool. Its replacement will have to look a lot like relativity on a wide range of scales, in order to accommodate all the experiments we've done that have matched the predictions made by our current theories.

    More relevant to the point at hand, asking "what does the math in our current theories say would happen in certain unusual - and possibly impossible - scenarios" can at least be interesting/entertaining. "What does science say would happen if our current scientific understandings all turn out to be completely wrong and we're just a massive sims game" is a nonsense question. You level up and reach the care bear level, because that answer makes as much sense as any other when you discard the premise of our current theories being meaningful.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    (Note, no where did I indicate a scientific theory indicated fact or not fact.)
    Except the part where you indicated that "theory" indicates "not fact"?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Maximum77 View Post
    If you could instantaneously teleport from Earth to a planet in the Andromeda galaxy; when you arrived, would you have also traveled to that planet 2.5 million years backwards in our Earth time
    Nope, nope and nope. If you looked at Earth it would APPEARE to be 2.5 million in the past, but the actual date does not change if the method of transport is truly instantaneous. The "lag" is caused by the time light have to travel the distance between the two locations.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Except the part where you indicated that "theory" indicates "not fact"?
    Exactly. "Theory" does not mean "Fact". If you think it does, you are wrong. Go read the explanations provided by others in this thread. Or go look it up if you still don't believe it. A theory may or may not be factual, and it may or may not predict accurate modeling of a situation that has not yet been experimentally or observationally supported. Or are you just being arrogant?

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Exactly.
    Uhhhh... did you mean to write something different upthread? Because you wrote:
    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    (Note, no where did I indicate a scientific theory indicated fact or not fact.)
    Or, put differently, you said "I did not say X." I replied, "you said X though." And now you are saying "of course X!"
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    Ok, let me try to clarify. Though this has been stated more clearly up thread by someone else. A scientific theory is not a scientific fact. A scientific theory is a hypothesis that has supporting observation and/or experimental support. Those supporting evidence may or may not include support for the entire spectrum that the theory covers/predicts. A theory has not yet been scientifically disproven, but it also does not mean that it might not be disproven in the future.

    That is key to my initial statement that SR is a theory. It is the best the human scientific community can do to understand these types of "situations" at this time in our collective knowledge. At this time it is reasonable to assume it is reasonable accurate at it's core. But again, as others have statement with probably more technical accuracy, SR has edge cases that seem to contradict either itself or other scientific theories. Therefore it is not unreasonable to question the validity of edge cases solutions that use SR to predict the outcome of such a model.

    Skepticism is CRITICAL to scientific understanding. Science is about exploring boundaries and asking questions. Assuming something is correct and infallible because it is a long held scientific theory should be anathema to any scientist. Don't agree with me? Then see what these scientists have to say about it;
    - https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/27/tech/...ter/index.html
    Or this article by Stanford University;
    - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/s...fic-discovery/
    Or UC Berkley;
    - https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/...cienceworks_04
    - https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/...atisscience_02

    Am I clear yet?
    Theories are Theories. That does not mean they are Facts. It also does not mean they are unsupported hypothesis. Many theories are supported by years and years of scientific and observational support that they can be used to accurately predict the universe around us. In general I assume they provide excellent models for predicting the physical universe for things we know well. But we know they are not perfect. Look at Newtonian Theory. Or how it is used / related to relativistic physics and more recently special relativity. Or Caloric Theory, that mostly worked but has been replaced by the more comprehensive Mechanical Theory of Heat.

    We (the human species) learn more as time goes buy, theories evolve. We know Special Relativity is an "evolution" of Newtonian physics, yet neither is perfect. Every theory I'm familiar enough with to know just enough about has edge cases that don't work, that things break down.

    Therefore calling something, or reminding someone that some scientific viewpoint is a Theory is not wrong, bad or even unsupportive of the Scientific Method is key to responsible discussion of Science. It also does not mean that naming something a Theory implies that it is not fact, it is reminding those involved in the discussion the difference between a known Fact and a Scientific Theory.

    Ok, I feel like I'm totally rambling. Somebody else is going to have to provide a different point of view or way of explaining my perspective if needed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Am I clear yet?
    No, because you are arguing something completely different. Let me try to rephrase.

    Bob said, "Apples are fruit."
    Bob said, "I never once indicated that apples are fruit."
    Betty said, "You literally said 'apples are fruit' like two minutes ago. Here is a recording of that."
    Bob said, "Exactly, apples are fruit!"
    Bob then goes into two needlessly lengthy explanations of apples and fruit.
    Last edited by Peelee; 2020-01-06 at 12:57 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    No, because you are arguing something completely different. Let me try to rephrase.

    Bob said, "Apples are fruit."
    Bob said, "I never once indicated that apples are fruit."
    Betty said, "You literally said 'apples are fruit' like two minutes ago. Here is a recording of that."
    Bob said, "Exactly, apples are fruit!"
    Bob then goes into two needlessly lengthy explanations of apples and fruit.
    {Scrubbed}. To help you, here it is. Relative parts in bold;

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    I don't see how it could. Yes, you would have problems with lightspeed telescopes and such. But I tend to believe time travel in such a way is impossible. Yes there are problems with Special Relativity, but remember, SR is a theory, not a proven fact.

    Just like at one time we did not understand what happened to aerodynamics when we traveled near the speed of sound, we really don't know what happens to time when we travel near the speed of light. All we have is theory and educated guesses backed by very limited set of experimental data.
    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Thanks for the discussions on Facts, Theories and Hypothesis. They told me nothing I didn't already know, but appreciate the effort. (Note, no where did I indicate a scientific theory indicated fact or not fact.)

    So, in this case, the OPs, we have a Theory that predicts what will happen. But since we have no observation or experiment that proves the results of the theory, we do not know Fact. So, stating we only have a Theory is accurate. Claiming that Theory, which is untested in this case, must be fact is scientifically ... arrogant. (I'm sure their is a better word for it, but I will stick with that for now.)
    I should have made this point more clearly, that in the case of the OP, we do not have any experimental or observation data to support SR in this niche case.

    Again, no where did I say the Theory of Special Relativity was wrong. Nor did I say it should not be ass-u-med to be correct. I simple said that it is a Theory. And now I'm saying to assume that in this case it must be Fact is arrogant.

    We currently have no other reasonable theory or hypothesis to predict what might happen in this case (other than SR). But we should also be humble enough to know that "We" are not always right. To assume that existing Theories that have not yet been proven wrong, or proven right in certain situations, must be true is the height of scientific arrogance. And is often why some scientists do not receive the acclaim and trust of some in the general public.
    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Exactly. "Theory" does not mean "Fact". If you think it does, you are wrong. Go read the explanations provided by others in this thread. Or go look it up if you still don't believe it. A theory may or may not be factual, and it may or may not predict accurate modeling of a situation that has not yet been experimentally or observationally supported. Or are you just being arrogant?
    So, I never said 'apples are fruit'. I said that SR is not proven fact in every case in which it might be used, and certainly not in the use case presented by the OP. And I clearly said that Theory does not indicate fact or non-fact.
    Last edited by Ventruenox; 2020-01-07 at 03:29 PM.

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    You would not travel back in time, by the definition of "instantaneously" you would necessairly travel to the same time.

    However "the same time" is in this case ambiguously defined. Over that distance you can't really define a single "Earth Time" relative to the andromeda galaxy. The relativistic effects of movement on time are magnified over distance such that what time it is in andromeda may vary by days or weeks depending on how an observer on earth is moving. This phenomenon is, in fact, known as the Andromeda Paradox
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    Maybe I can help,

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    Yes there are problems with Special Relativity, but remember, SR is ... not a proven fact.
    This right here indicates that SR is not a fact. It is something you have said. You later say you didn't say it.
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    Default Re: Distance=Time?

    In any case relativity and quantum physics contradict each other and at certain scales predict results that are definitely at odds with experimental results, therefore neither can be entirely right
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    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Distance=Time?

    Quote Originally Posted by The Random NPC View Post
    Maybe I can help,
    By editing what I actually typed when you quote it so that important punctuation is removed? Like this?
    This ... here indicates... It is something you ... didn't say

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    Default Re: Distance=Time?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    In any case relativity and quantum physics contradict each other and at certain scales predict results that are definitely at odds with experimental results, therefore neither can be entirely right
    More precisely: special relativity was perfectly and seemlesly combined with quantum physics. In particular see Dirac equation for relativistic quantum mechanics or the entire field of quantum electrodynamics, which due to the way classic electrodynamics works needed to be relativity-compliant from the get-go.

    What is still a problem is connecting general relativity with quantum physics or in other words enhancing general relativity to quantum level. There are some reasonable attempts and there are even interesting results (mostly in cosmology), but as far as I know there is no universal set of equations devised yet.

    The part about relativity being at odds with quantum physics is just sensationalism. Even the typical classical vs. quantum comparisons and contradictions are a bit misleading, since classical mechanics is a proper limit case of quantum mechanics. There are even neat quantisation methods that can slide smoothly between classical and quantum.
    In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.

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    Default Re: Distance=Time?

    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    By editing what I actually typed when you quote it so that important punctuation is removed? Like this?
    Considering the missing words were "a theory," I'm not sure there's all that much being taken out of context. I mean, "thing is X, not Y," is usually a statement implying that X and Y are opposed.

    But would you feel better if we phrased it as "Special Relativity is a scientifically useful series of explanations that predict observed facts to high degree of accuracy?"
    Quote Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant View Post
    We should try to make that a thing; I think it might help civility. Hey, GitP, let's try to make this a thing: when you're arguing optimization strategies, RAW-logic, and similar such things that you'd never actually use in a game, tag your post [THEORETICAL] and/or use green text

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