starship-design: FTL

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Curtis Manges writes:
 > Since the topic of time travel appeared again, I wish to add that
 > this assymmetry is the basis for my own belief that time-travel is
 > impossible, at least to the extent that anti-matter is impossible.

Antimatter isn't impossible, and antiparticles are routinely created and
manipulated, both naturally and artificially.  The universe shows a very
high preponderance of matter over antimatter now; it appears that
certain critical but small asymmetries in particle physics originally
resulted in slightly more matter than antimatter being created during
the Big Bang, and after the antimatter annihilated its equal amount of
matter, the matter currently in the Universe is what we have left.

 > However, I've found that good philosophers _can_ teach you
 > something. Pertinent example: our universe is not symmetrical, as
 > shown in our search for anti-matter.

If this is what your "good" philosophers are teaching you, you need to
find better philosophers.

>From what I've seen most philosophers are more interested in the
question "what can we think about?", not "which of the things we think
about can be verified to be true and in factual correspondence with the
outside world?"  Consequently many philosophers are not particularly
good at thinking about science, let alone making useful contributions to
it.