4 ms·

We wouldn’t know about such events until light reached us anyway - light is the speed of causality, so we’d never apply this tense you propose.

CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
Was just going to say that we should perhaps start with using the term “speed of time” instead of “speed of light” to get in the right frame of mind. But then I started to think about it and it doesn’t seem exactly right either. Causality kind of implies interaction, and interaction implies mass (no?), so causality as such must necessarily be strictly slower than C. That is, the speed of the propagation of the wave function between causally connects to events is C but causality as such are the interesting things happening at those events.
- dnadler 5y ago
  > interaction implies mass (no?) Not necessarily. Photons, for example, are massless. But you're still pretty much correct. Information cannot travel faster than C. Though there may be some special cases that I'm not too familiar with. One I'm a little curious about is entangled quantum particles, though I'd have to do a little reading to be able to say anything further.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Entangled quantum particles cannot transfer information, regardless of your interpretation.
Razengan 5y ago
We have words for infinity and shit that would never be “applied” but are useful logically.
ben_w 5y ago
We might, but Relatively makes it counterintuitive. In the past/future you find all the stuff within the corresponding light cone. The stuff outside the cones can flip between being what seems (non-Relativistically) like it should be past and future, can be either depending on your motion relative to it, so an extra tense for spacelike separation is something I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilisation using.
foota 5y ago
You might know that something will happen, but it hasn't happened yet in your reference frame. I guess this is actually just the return of the past, where you wouldn't know something had happened yet if it were thousands of miles away. I wonder if there's remnants of that time in the language used.
vincnetas 5y ago
Well, if you observe two black holes moving towards each other, you might conclude that they "will" collide, But at the time when you made this observation these black holes have already collided, you just have not observed that. It's like using future tense. "I will go to work tomorrow", event though you don't know for sure if you will go to work tomorrow.
nytgop77 5y ago
It could be useful when discussing lightcones of others. If we have two alien neighbour planets aranged so, that we are in the middle between them. Then we could see both aliens' election results at the same time, knowing that aliens still have to wait a bit before they know each other's results.

CuriousSkeptic 5y ago

Was just going to say that we should perhaps start with using the term “speed of time” instead of “speed of light” to get in the right frame of mind. But then I started to think about it and it doesn’t seem exactly right either. Causality kind of implies interaction, and interaction implies mass (no?), so causality as such must necessarily be strictly slower than C. That is, the speed of the propagation of the wave function between causally connects to events is C but causality as such are the interesting things happening at those events.

dnadler 5y ago
> interaction implies mass (no?) Not necessarily. Photons, for example, are massless. But you're still pretty much correct. Information cannot travel faster than C. Though there may be some special cases that I'm not too familiar with. One I'm a little curious about is entangled quantum particles, though I'd have to do a little reading to be able to say anything further.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Entangled quantum particles cannot transfer information, regardless of your interpretation.

Razengan 5y ago

We have words for infinity and shit that would never be “applied” but are useful logically.

ben_w 5y ago

We might, but Relatively makes it counterintuitive. In the past/future you find all the stuff within the corresponding light cone. The stuff outside the cones can flip between being what seems (non-Relativistically) like it should be past and future, can be either depending on your motion relative to it, so an extra tense for spacelike separation is something I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilisation using.

foota 5y ago

You might know that something will happen, but it hasn't happened yet in your reference frame. I guess this is actually just the return of the past, where you wouldn't know something had happened yet if it were thousands of miles away. I wonder if there's remnants of that time in the language used.

vincnetas 5y ago

Well, if you observe two black holes moving towards each other, you might conclude that they "will" collide, But at the time when you made this observation these black holes have already collided, you just have not observed that. It's like using future tense. "I will go to work tomorrow", event though you don't know for sure if you will go to work tomorrow.

nytgop77 5y ago

It could be useful when discussing lightcones of others. If we have two alien neighbour planets aranged so, that we are in the middle between them. Then we could see both aliens' election results at the same time, knowing that aliens still have to wait a bit before they know each other's results.