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Re: starship-design: This and that.




In a message dated 6/20/97 8:05:41 PM, stevev@efn.org (Steve VanDevender)
wrote:

>kyle writes:
> > > The problem is that if you go faster than light Einstein's equations
> > > start producing complex numbers (that is, numbers with both real and
> > > imaginary components) as results.  Nobody knows how to interpret the
> > > imaginary components in a physical context, nor has any evidence of
> > > physical phenomena with these quantities been seen.
> > 
> > Maybe because we haven't done it yet? 
>
>If FTL is possible, then there's a good chance that it can happen as
>part of some natural phenomenon, and that would produce pretty
>noticeable effects.  Not observing FTL in the natural universe is a
>pretty good indication that it can't be _too_ easy.  Nevertheless, any
>FTL method will have to be reconciled with relativity and quantum
>mechanics, both of which have been extensively tested by experiment and
>for which there aren't any widely-acknowledged exceptions.


I don't.  Nuclear reactors turned out to be pretty simply when developed.
 Yet induced mater conversion wasn't exactly thought of as an obvious
phenomenon in nature before we figured it out.  Transister radios aer a lot
easier then a lighting storm would suggest also.  And space launchers.  Super
conductors.  etc..  

Their are lots of things our science lets us to routinely that looked pretty
impossible before.

Kelly