Re: FTL: a device (just for fun)

From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Tue May 14 2002 - 14:44:08 MDT


> >There are no equations at all - that should be a tip-off.
Hal

> Depending on the paper and context, it's not necessarily bad
> when a paper has no equations.
Amara

Ha-ha!

"Mathematics is that study which knows nothing of observation,
nothing of experiment, nothing of induction, nothing of causation."
Thomas Henry Huxley quoted by Sylvester in excerpt of address to
British Association 1869 (*The World of Mathematics*, James R.
Newman, p. 1759)

"Gauss has called mathematics a science of the eye." Sylvester in
excerpt of address to British Association 1869 (WOM, p. 1760)

But, yes, sometimes words are much better. Just one little
example ... under the curtain of QM.

Pauli wrote (to Heisenberg), about EPR: "Quite independently
of Einstein, it appears to me that, in providing a systematic
foundation for quantum mechanics, one should start more from
the composition and separation of systems than has until now
    ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^
(with Dirac, e.g.) been the case. - This is indeed - as
Einstein has correctly felt - a very fundamental point in
quantum mechanics ......".

Deep, cute and crucial, for the FTL issue. Because QM seems to
forbid 'separability' (= two systems, separated by some spatio-
temporal interval, possess their own separate states, regardless
of their previous history, and the joint state is completely
determined by their own separate states). But the theory of
Relativity seems to forbid 'non-separability'.

Oh, the references, interesting too:

Don Howard
"Einstein and Locality and Separability"
in "Studies in History and Philosophy of Science"
(1985), 16, 171-201

Don Howard
"Holism, Separability, and the Metaphysical Implications
of the Bell Experiments", in "Philosophical Consequences
of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem", J.T.
Cushing and E. McMullin eds., 1989, Un of Notre Dame Press

Don Howard
"Nicht sein Kann was nicht sein darf, or the Prehistory
of EPR, 1909-1935: Einstein's Early Worries about the
Quantum Mechanics of Composite Systems"
in "Sixty-Two Years of Uncertainty: Historical, Philosophical,
and Physical Inquiries into the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics",
A. van der Merwe, F. Selleri and G. Tarozzi eds, 1992,
World Scientific, Singapore

Don Howard
"Space-Time and Separability: Problems od Identity and
Individuation in Fundamental Physics", in "Potentiality,
Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance / Quantum Mechanical
Studies for Abner Shimony, Vol. Two", R.S. Cohen and M. Horne
and J. Stachel eds, Kluwer Academic Publ., 1997



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