From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Oct 21 1996 - 05:54:03 MDT
On Sat, 19 Oct 1996, Chris Hind wrote:
> >> I keep trying to think what could be finite? Everything is nearly or is
> >> infinite with technology.
> >
> >Unfortunately, this isn't true. The lightspeed limit makes arbitrarily
> >high velocities impossible
>
> But this doesn't prevent our intentions. There are many other alternative
> methods which could allow us to travel beyond the light barrier such as
> higher-dimensional travel or wormholes. There are many more being
> theororized as we speak.
Theorized, yes. But that doesn't mean they will work; even fairly
well-understood (!) methods such as wormholes might be infeasible. There
are even theorems that demonstrate that by manipulating spacetime, we
cannot get out of our future lightcone, although we might be able to FTL
inside it.
It is easy to say that there is always a way out - but the burden of
proof is on you.
> Human intelligence can practically work around any
> barrier. Someday we may even be able to alter the structure of space-time to
> design baby universes with us defining the laws of physics in them!
It might be possible. But that doesn't change that in our current
spacetime there are conservation laws and limits we do not know how to
work around. We might be able to do it, and we might not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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