Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site denelcor.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!hao!denelcor!lmc From: lmc@denelcor.UUCP (Lyle McElhaney) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Death Star weapon. Message-ID: <451@denelcor.UUCP> Date: Sat, 2-Jun-84 04:29:30 EDT Article-I.D.: denelcor.451 Posted: Sat Jun 2 04:29:30 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 5-Jun-84 08:34:44 EDT References: <1104@qubix.UUCP> Organization: Denelcor, Aurora, CO Lines: 41 > > The plausibility is the same as for FTL, thiotimoline, and the radio in > > Galileo's day - impossibly small *at this time*. Later on, who knows? > >> FTL is *IMPOSSIBLE* DO YOU HEAR ME???? > YOU HAVE A BETTER CHANCE AT MAKING A PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE > THAN YOU HAVE AT MAKING AN FTL DRIVE!!!! > > > {skip the inuendo} > > What Einstein discovered, is a new (UNBREAKABLE) law: much like > the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And ALL THE FUTURE SCIENCE IN > THE WORLD, will not change it, or allow one to get around it > somehow. You are, of course, absolutely correct. Einstein said so, Asimov says so, every physicist I've ever read says so. And yet... After saying so, stridently, in one of his monthly columns, Isaac Asimov followed up the next month with a column of the shearest speculation on what might be possible. Robert M. Powers in "The Coattails of God" says "If rearranging the distances to the stars is not easy to do, there may be ways in which the barrier of the speed of light may be broken...[it] is a tentative "possibility"." To be sure he makes it very doubtful that such may come to pass. I find it very difficult to be as dogmatic as your statement above; but then I'm an engineer, not a physicist (or philosopher, which may be a better judge). As Clarke (Heinlein?) has said, "If a highly placed scientist says that something is possible he is very likely correct; if he says that something is impossible, he is very likely wrong." Of course, that probably doesn't say anything about your position. -- Lyle McElhaney (hao,brl-bmd,nbires,csu-cs,scgvaxd)!denelcor!lmc