🚀 go-pugleaf

In message <329276...@mail.utexas.edu> - Pat Lett
<le...@mail.utexas.edu>Tue, 19 Nov 1996 21:08:44 -0600 writes:
:>
:>   Actually, I think the "what if" questions push science. I believe
:>that we have to have faith in our theories in order to accomplish
:>difficult tasks and enrich our lives, but when something comes up that
:>doesn't conform to our theories or just doesn't fit into any known
:>theory, it is the "what if" questions that make us search for an answer.
:>It is the sense of discovery that drives the "why should we study this"
:>question.
:>   Now, there may or may be a way to go faster than the speed of light,
:>and there is nothing wrong with asking "what if" questions and searching
:>for a way. But, until someone stumbles upon a way to break the "light
:>barrier" and the Theory of Relativity continues to support our
:>observations, we have to go on the "assumption" that we cannot go faster
:>than light.
:>
:>Pat

I'm puzzled then on how you would explain the effects observed within a ring
of super-conducting material constructed in such a way that it is possible to
create an electron wave half a centimetre long; and whose entirety responds to
stimulus applied at one point.  Not "responds in the time it would take a
message travelling at lightspeed to inform the other side of what happened",
but "instantaneously."  Somehow the entire structure is instantaneously aware
of the state of all of it's constituent particles, effectively responding as a
single quantum particle.

This is a not very good description of an experiment carried out by Brian
Josephson, but it serves to illustrate the point that there is good evidence
to suggest that there are faster-than-light phenomena occurring within our
universe.

Read any book on quantum physics and you'll see that Einstein's theories are
not the only description of our physical universe.  It is much, much stranger
than he wanted to believe (he was not at all happy with many of the
implications of the emerging quantum explanations of reality).  

To a large extent it's a case of 

"The slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimbal in the wabe"

 - Eddington using another rather well know individuals words to describe our
understanding of the atom (which has nothing at all to do with the classic
nucleus/electron sphere arrangement we are taught at school).


Regards,
David Sutherland.
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