Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-light-barrier/
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
What, aside from the overwhelming weight of evidence, suggests
Einstein was right?
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-light-barrier/
On 2025-09-08, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-light-barrier/
I seem to remember that A. E. van Vogt in _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_ also ignores that whole pesky relativity and speed-of-light thing.
On 9/8/25 13:44, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
On 2025-09-08, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-light-barrier/
I seem to remember that A. E. van Vogt in _The Voyage of the Space
Beagle_
also ignores that whole pesky relativity and speed-of-light thing.
Yes because light speed limitation seemed to destroy the ambitions of many
USA fans who apparently believed in a Manifest American destiny
Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/8/25 13:44, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
On 2025-09-08, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-
speed-of-light-barrier/
I seem to remember that A. E. van Vogt in _The Voyage of the Space
Beagle_
also ignores that whole pesky relativity and speed-of-light thing.
Yes because light speed limitation seemed to destroy the
ambitions of many
USA fans who apparently believed in a Manifest American destiny
Van Vogt was Canadian.
We don't have Manifest Destiny in our psyche.
We have Manifest Winter.
William Hyde
On 9/8/2025 12:18 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
What, aside from the overwhelming weight of evidence, suggests
Einstein was right?
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-light-barrier/
I have read "The Skylark Of Space" and the wonderful "Citizen Of The
Galaxy".
I am reminded of what people said would happen when we exceeded the
speed of sound. Heinlein simply applied the same logic to exceeding the speed of light in COTG.
Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 9/8/25 13:44, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
On 2025-09-08, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-light-barrier/
I seem to remember that A. E. van Vogt in _The Voyage of the Space
Beagle_
also ignores that whole pesky relativity and speed-of-light thing.
Yes because light speed limitation seemed to destroy the ambitions >> of many
USA fans who apparently believed in a Manifest American destiny
Van Vogt was Canadian.
Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 9/8/2025 12:18 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
What, aside from the overwhelming weight of evidence, suggests
Einstein was right?
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-
speed-of-light-barrier/
I have read "The Skylark Of Space" and the wonderful "Citizen Of The
Galaxy".
While SF that observes the light speed limit can be great, I also have a great love for many works that zip past light speed without so much as a
wave in Einstein's direction. Just don't embarrass yourself babbling inanely about something you don't understand, but which some readers might.
I do admire the way Charles Stross does tackle some of the problems of
FTL, but I'm not going to demand that every writer who uses FTL peruse
Judea Pearl's "Causality", before setting fingers to keyboard.
I'm here for the stories. If I want the science, I have to shamefacedly confess that I never did finish Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's
"Gravitation" (close but not close enough).
The book stares at me from a nearby shelf. Accusingly. Good thing I
never bought "Causality".
I am reminded of what people said would happen when we exceeded the
speed of sound. Heinlein simply applied the same logic to exceeding
the speed of light in COTG.
That's a terrible insult to Heinlein and to engineers in general. And
to the word, "logic".
Remember, Andy Libby in "Methuselah's Children" is an absolute genius at physics and mathematics who does not have a first-year physics student's understanding of special relativity. Taking that passage out would significantly improve the book for me.
Still, aside from Milton Rothman (Lee Gregor), John Pierce (JJ Coupling)
and perhaps Arthur Clarke, few Astounding readers would have known how
silly this passage is, so RAH was safe enough writing it.
RAH didn't understand SR. Certainly he could have, but he didn't want to.
William Hyde
I'm here for the stories. If I want the science, I have to shamefacedly >confess that I never did finish Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's
"Gravitation" (close but not close enough).
The book stares at me from a nearby shelf. Accusingly. Good thing I
never bought "Causality".
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
This is very mysterious because, when two modifications are
done to such a system, we often cannot say which one is the
earliest that actually changes the initial state of the system.
There is so much non science in speculative fiction that non science has become commonplace. My personal favorite non science is not FTL
spaceship drives, but the gravity pulse senders in the Honorverse by
David Weber that have gravity waves traveling at 4X or 8X (I cannot
remember which) speed of light (SPEOL).
Christian Weisgerber wrote:ht-barrier/
James Nicoll wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-speed-of-lig
I seem to remember that A. E. van Vogt in _The Voyage of the Space Beagle_ >>also ignores that whole pesky relativity and speed-of-light thing.
That appears to be the case:
Grosvenor shook his head, more puzzled than alarmed. He
shifted the viewer over to the bank of supplementary
instruments. According to the star's spectral type, magnitude,
and luminosity, it was just over four light-years distant.
The ship's speed was up to a light-year every five hours.
Since it was still accelerating, that would increase on a
calculable curve. He estimated roughly that the vessel would
reach the vicinity of the sun in approximately eleven hours.
However hyperspace is postulated as the medium of instant teleportation
being used by the Beagle's adversaries.
ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote or quoted:
This is very mysterious because, when two modifications are
done to such a system, we often cannot say which one is the
earliest that actually changes the initial state of the system.
It might be clearer to just explain that when an influence
moves faster than light, there are observers to which it
travels from the future into the past. In quantum systems, this
seems to be possible, but since this kind of influence cannot
carry outside information, it cannot be used to send information
into the past, and so paradoxes are avoided . . .
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:
I'm here for the stories. If I want the science, I have to shamefacedly
confess that I never did finish Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's
"Gravitation" (close but not close enough).
The book stares at me from a nearby shelf. Accusingly. Good thing I
never bought "Causality".
I only made it to the point near the start that talks about
how ants crawl on an apple. A text that I like very much is,
Mathematical Tripos Part III
General Relativity
Harvey Reall
(2022)
Lecture notes, see the Web,
"part3_gr_lectures.pdf".
The first half introduces the math needed. This is heavy
and terse, but it focusses on the math needed for general
relativity. The second half then talks about physics.
When I was young I was just impressed by the looks of
"Gravitation",
might actually make it more difficult to learn from it.
On 9/9/2025 5:23 PM, William Hyde wrote:
Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 9/8/2025 12:18 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
What, aside from the overwhelming weight of evidence, suggests
Einstein was right?
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-
speed-of-light-barrier/
I have read "The Skylark Of Space" and the wonderful "Citizen Of The
Galaxy".
While SF that observes the light speed limit can be great, I also have
a great love for many works that zip past light speed without so much
as a wave in Einstein's direction. Just don't embarrass yourself
babbling inanely about something you don't understand, but which some
readers might.
I do admire the way Charles Stross does tackle some of the problems of
FTL, but I'm not going to demand that every writer who uses FTL peruse
Judea Pearl's "Causality", before setting fingers to keyboard.
I'm here for the stories. If I want the science, I have to
shamefacedly confess that I never did finish Misner, Thorne and
Wheeler's "Gravitation" (close but not close enough).
The book stares at me from a nearby shelf. Accusingly. Good thing I
never bought "Causality".
I am reminded of what people said would happen when we exceeded the
speed of sound. Heinlein simply applied the same logic to exceeding
the speed of light in COTG.
That's a terrible insult to Heinlein and to engineers in general.
And to the word, "logic".
Remember, Andy Libby in "Methuselah's Children" is an absolute genius
at physics and mathematics who does not have a first-year physics
student's understanding of special relativity. Taking that passage
out would significantly improve the book for me.
Still, aside from Milton Rothman (Lee Gregor), John Pierce (JJ
Coupling) and perhaps Arthur Clarke, few Astounding readers would have
known how silly this passage is, so RAH was safe enough writing it.
RAH didn't understand SR. Certainly he could have, but he didn't want
to.
William Hyde
There is so much non science in speculative fiction that non science has become commonplace. My personal favorite non science is not FTL
spaceship drives, but the gravity pulse senders in the Honorverse by
David Weber that have gravity waves traveling at 4X or 8X (I cannot
remember which) speed of light (SPEOL). I so want it to be true but I highly doubt it.
Lynn
jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote or quoted:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
There are actually two instances where speeds can be faster than c.
One is kind of "extraphysical", the other is a bit, subtle.
When a laser is pointed to the moon, a spot appears on the moon's
surface. When we now carefully tilt the laser a bit, the spot is
moving, and it can move faster than c because its movement does not
represent a transport of energy in the direction of its movement.
So, the spot can move faster than c, but it's not actually
a kind of object physics deals with, so it's extraphysical.
In quantum physics, quantum systems can be spatially extended, yet
they have no parts, only a state. So when such a system is then
modified, its state kind of changes immediately everywhere in the
whole spatial region of that system. This transfers information,
but only internal information within the system which cannot be
modulated from the outside to transfer a payload of information.
This is very mysterious because, when two modifications are
done to such a system, we often cannot say which one is the
earliest that actually changes the initial state of the system.
However, it is real in the sense that it can be found in
standard textbooks on quantum mechanics:
|We are led, then, to distinguish two types of influence:
|the "causal" variety, which produce actual changes in some
|physical property of the receiver, detectable by measurements
|on that subsystem alone, and an "ethereal" kind, which do not
|transmit energy or information, and for which the only
|evidence is a correlation in the data taken on the two
|separate subsystems - a correlation which by its nature cannot
|be detected by examining either list alone. Causal influences
|cannot propagate faster than light, but there is no compelling
|reason why ethereal ones should not. The influences associated
|with the collapse of the wave function are of the latter type,
|and the fact that they "travel" faster than light may be
|surprising, but it is not, after all, catastrophic.
"Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" - David J. Griffiths.
And a most recommendable textbook this is!
So, since this is rec.arts.sf.written, I'd like to add that
the novel "Hidden Variables" by Jed Brody tries to address
such things, albeit in an experimental way, that might be
too strange for some readers. But I like the language it uses,
I like it very much. From its start:
|I found the hidden variables, the ones that Einstein always
|insisted on. It turns out they were under my couch all along
.
On 9/8/2025 12:18 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
What, aside from the overwhelming weight of evidence, suggests
Einstein was right?
https://reactormag.com/five-books-that-just-said-to-hell-with-the-
speed-of-light-barrier/
I have read "The Skylark Of Space" and the wonderful "Citizen Of The
Galaxy".
I am reminded of what people said would happen when we exceeded the
speed of sound. Heinlein simply applied the same logic to exceeding the speed of light in COTG.
I suspect that we will find out some day but not soon.
Lynn
On 2025-09-10, Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
There is so much non science in speculative fiction that non science has
become commonplace. My personal favorite non science is not FTL
spaceship drives, but the gravity pulse senders in the Honorverse by
David Weber that have gravity waves traveling at 4X or 8X (I cannot
remember which) speed of light (SPEOL).
Gravity waves travel at lightspeed as just about every article on
gravity wave detection points out,
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