4 ms·
>I'd be much more optimistic about the plausibility of a proposed warp technology that only lets you go FTL relative to the implicit reference frame of the dist
by gizmo686 13y ago
>I'd be much more optimistic about the plausibility of a proposed warp technology that only lets you go FTL relative to the implicit reference frame of the distant stars.
That sounds like a stationary ether; where there is some 'true' reference frame in the universe. The main intuition behind relativity is that there is no preferred reference frame.
- btilly 13y agoMy point is that the laws of physics can be have symmetries that do not exist in practice. For instance in the Standard Model there is nothing to say that protons need to be heavier than electrons. But thanks to the Higgs field, they are different everywhere that we see. In the case of general relativity, even when there is no preferred reference frame in the theory, there is an obvious one that is still special. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%27s_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%27s_principle for more on that.