Text 22469, 51 rader
Skriven 2008-10-24 00:30:20 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av shannon talley (1:124/311)
Ärende: FTL
===========
Hello shannon,

On Wednesday October 22 2008 08:06, you wrote to me:

 st> Before we can really continue this conversation, I'd like to ask you
 st> to read this article, it's really very interesting

I read it. Interesting? Hmmm... That is not a scientific article, it is just an
interview for a local newspaper. Not much to go on from a schientific POV.

 st> The author interviewing the scientist John Singleton doesn't mention
 st> anyting about "mathmatical abstraction",

No, those were my words. And I stand by them. The only things that go faster
than light are the mathematical abstractions of wave fronts and pulse groups.
Did you read the comment on the article?

 st>  and the scientist makes the claim this is a fact.

Not really. In fact the interview starts with the disclaimer that his findings
do NOT violate Einstein's theories. Specifically Singleton does not claim to
have FTL communication.

I looked a bit further and found an impressive list of articles by John
Singleton and his collegue Mario Perez. All in respectible scientific
publications like the Journal of the Optical Society and Physics Review. None
of these articles are about FTL as far as I can see from a quick glance.

My gues is that the interviewer had no idea waht it was all about and just
wrote down some whishful thinking interpretion of het own.

 st> Perhaps one of these days, we can run a FidoNet Node using FTL <g>

I doubt that, but even if FTL communication is developed during our lifetime,
it would not be of much added value to FidoNet unless there is also FTL space
travel. For phone conversations, the round trip delay of just over two seconds
to the moon is just tolerable. For Mars the delay is between 10 and 30 minutes
and that makes a normal phone call impossible. FTL communication would benefit
there. But for Fidonet even the outer reaches of the Solar system would be no
problem. The delay at light speed is only a couple of hours and in the hay days
of Fido we habitually had much longer delays. Polling once a day was normal for
end nodes and points.

Now if we were to establish a Fido Node on a planet or a space station circling
Alpha Centauri... then it would be another kettle of fish.


Cheers, Michiel

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