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[Starver]

But that is how the Minkowski Space is defined!

Compare that Minkowski (-, +, +, +) form to (i, 1, 1, 1).  See the trivial transformation?  Probably because the particular worldline/time-like curve equations that I was exposed to are variants related by that same transformation.

The time and space dimensions are not treated equally. And if you plug in an i in that formula of yours, you might retrieve the minus sign, but then you screw up all other formulas where t appears.

To be precise, it wasn't 't' (a measure of time, as time) in that, but T (a measure of time, as spacetime) in formulae.  Compare formulae that deal with height and bredth but don't account for the curvature of the Earth, or how Newtonian physics/assumptions in observation don't account for Mercury's apparent orbit.  One way you can do this is to use "-t^2", another way is to use "+T^2" where T=i.t.  And, besides, it was dT.

(as it was explained to me)

Who explained that to you? Can you give any references for what you are saying?

Suffice to say it was a University tutor, who directly told me.  I doubt you'll have heard of him.  Finding it hard to Google for formulae to trace back the source, this is why I've not pointed you directly at the "Johnson-Olivetti-Chang-Abrihim Conjecture" or whatever it might have been.  I beg your indulgence for my total inability to remember names when it's important.  And that's why I take pains to attempt to explain the reasoning, even when I end up failing to do so.

A citation, [...] a reference for [...] the law of physics "need not apply".

You'll note I quoted the whole phrase "the law of physics need not apply".  That's because I do not mean that no laws of physics apply, just that (compared to 'known' space) it's a special case.  An addition to the main theory.  And moreover quite theoretical at the moment, and it's the theory I mentioned (you might well imagine I wish I hadn't gone into this territory), and a little of my own speculation tapped on with a post-it note or two attached saying that it was my own speculation and not in any way representative of the opinion of Dino Boccaletti/whoever.

(and the escape velocity being greater than c just means you cannot reach it! That's like saying, if you want to travel to Alpha Centauri in 1 second, you need v>c. So yes, it wouldn't work! I don't suddenly start arguing about imaginary time because of that.)

I don't believe in FTL travel in any Sci-Fi way.  Well, maybe wormhole ways (if we can keep them open for matter to get through unscathed, but that's an STL route accomplishing an apparent FTL journey), and if we ever get Warp Drive-style stuff we'll already be capable of dipping our hands below an event horizon and feeling what it's like, most likely, such will be our power over the structure of spacetime itself.  I've been back over what I was actually describing, and I don't know how better to do so so I won't waste any more of your time on that point.

I hesitate to describe it in the same terms as breaking the sound barrier

Don't do it. Arguing about Special Relativity by referring to sound waves and sound barriers just shows that you do not understand what's going on.

I know, which is why I'm was trying to talking only analogously.  I hate the term "paradigm shift" almost as much as I do things like "touch base", but it's the best way I know to describe what I'm saying here.  As much as ancient astronomers could only imagine epicyclics when we now realise it's not a geocentric universe and has elipses rather than perfect circles (and other complications due to solar wind, three(or more!)-body mass equations and the like).  Nothing to do with all that "breaking the light barrier is like breaking the sound barrier, but with light" sci-fi guff where you see Future Echoes, etc.  (Entertaining as that episode of Red Dwarf was, I could never take such pseudo-physics as anything but a plot device.)

Anyway, it looks like I'm two or three replies behind the bleading edge of argument.  My fault for writing so much, I know.

[Starver]

Dude. I meant the sentence before that. Not the tiny bit in the parentheses at the end.

Sorry, overloaded with reading at the moment, my comprehension probably went flat.

Now, as you seem to be unwilling to give references for what you say NB: unable, also only recently passed by the more direct requests for any, I will make your argument for you: It turns out that I was wrong in part, as the concept of imaginary time does indeed exist, although further googling [...]

When looking for references, I found that.  But it's not really the "time as an imaginary-factored dimension" thing that I'm refering to.  So I did not provide that reference, as not having the relevence to my 'cause' that I would have needed.

[edited for tag errors]

[dreiche2]

But that is how the Minkowski Space is defined!

Compare that Minkowski (-, +, +, +) form to (i, 1, 1, 1).  See the trivial transformation?  Probably because the particular worldline/time-like curve equations that I was exposed to are variants related by that same transformation.

I read your statement as saying that space and time need to be treated equivalently. Which they are not, whether with an i or a minus. But maybe I misread it.

To be precise, it wasn't 't' (a measure of time, as time) in that, but T (a measure of time, as spacetime) in formulae.  [...]  One way you can do this is to use "-t^2", another way is to use "+T^2" where T=i.t.  And, besides, it was dT.

So, what about =0 not being time-like, but light-like?

Suffice to say it was a University tutor, who directly told me.  I doubt you'll have heard of him.  Finding it hard to Google for formulae to trace back the source, this is why I've not pointed you directly at the "Johnson-Olivetti-Chang-Abrihim Conjecture" or whatever it might have been.  I beg your indulgence for my total inability to remember names when it's important.  And that's why I take pains to attempt to explain the reasoning, even when I end up failing to do so.

Surely there must be some sort of reference out there in the Worldwide Web?

You'll note I quoted the whole phrase "the law of physics need not apply".  That's because I do not mean that no laws of physics apply, just that (compared to 'known' space) it's a special case.  An addition to the main theory.  And moreover quite theoretical at the moment, and it's the theory I mentioned (you might well imagine I wish I hadn't gone into this territory), and a little of my own speculation tapped on with a post-it note or two attached saying that it was my own speculation and not in any way representative of the opinion of Dino Boccaletti/whoever.

Are we talking about the event horizon or the singularity, please?

I don't believe in FTL travel in any Sci-Fi way.  Well, maybe wormhole ways (if we can keep them open for matter to get through unscathed, but that's an STL route accomplishing an apparent FTL journey), and if we ever get Warp Drive-style stuff we'll already be capable of dipping our hands below an event horizon and feeling what it's like, most likely, such will be our power over the structure of spacetime itself.  I've been back over what I was actually describing, and I don't know how better to do so so I won't waste any more of your time on that point.

What? I don't believe in FTL either. I was just trying to say that the argument of several people (honestly, I can't tell whether you used it or not) that things go haywire beyond the horizon because the escape velocity is larger than c is nonsense because the escape velocity just refers to the velocity you would need if you were to escape. But because it's greater than c, you cannot escape. That's all. You don't actually plug in the escape velocity into any formulas, because in that case there is nothing that actually has that velocity.

I know, which is why I'm was trying to talking only analogously. 

Yes, but it's a bad analogy. It's not a case of just some equations missing. According to current physics, going faster than c is impossible. Not just un-described.

EDIT: Oh and btw, if I recall correctly from the links I posted, imaginary time is (in quantum field theory, again) used as an extension of normal time. So normal time still exists. So I still would like to see a reference for using imaginary units for normal time in the equations of relativity.

[Starver]

To be precise, it wasn't 't' (a measure of time, as time) in that, but T (a measure of time, as spacetime) in formulae.  [...]  One way you can do this is to use "-t^2", another way is to use "+T^2" where T=i.t.  And, besides, it was dT.

So, what about =0 not being time-like, but light-like?

Error in my terminology, I think.

Surely there must be some sort of reference out there in the Worldwide Web?

I'm sure, but my Google-Fu fails me on searching when the only known information (that doesn't send you onto mostly unrelated Wiki pages) is bare equations.  I learnt it from blackboards[1] and word of mouth and perhaps the occasional reference to the appropriate text books, that I've long since forgotten the author of, but used to roll off my tongue like "Kernighan And Ritchie" did.

[1] For the younger people out there, these are like white-boards, only black, and made of wood, not plastic.  And don't worry about it being hard to see black pen on a black board, because they thought of that, and used white chalk which both sticks to wood (in an erasable way similar to white-board pen does for white-boards) and shows up against the black background.  Whoda thunk it!  They were ingenious people, in the old days.

Are we talking about the event horizon or the singularity, please?

I have discussed the singularity (mostly in the context of it not existing, because space curves asymptotically, but here I was discussing the EH.

What? I don't believe in FTL either.

Sorry, that was understood, I was just making sure you knew I didn't, either (under 'known universe' conditions, at least... what's shrouded behind an EH might well be another matter).

You don't actually plug in the escape velocity into any formulas, because in that case there is nothing that actually has that velocity.

I was going to say "except for orbital calculations", but as v_e is "gets to infinity" (or 'out of your gravity well and into an adjacent one in a sufficiently short amount of time') and attaining different orbits needs only sub-v_e velocity (or, more usually with actual rockets, a near-continuous impulse of thrust that only need get the craft continuously gaining altitude and eventually to the orbit velocity required, while not running our of fuel), I suppose I better take that back.

I'm actually very interested in 'special case' border situations, though.  For example, the universe is expanding and (at one time, and still is in some camps) it was very much a question of whether it had enough outward expansion to continue forever, or if it didn't and it would Big Crunch[2].  But I always wondered about a universe which had the precise quanta of energy that lay between the two extremes.  One less, and it would Crunch, one more and it was a definite infinitely expanding and heat-death-fated universe...  Of course, it's like rolling a perfectly round ball up a crazy-golf hillock in a frictionless and resistanceless environment.  You could never get it to sit precisely at the top, because if it was still moving enough to move onto the point of equilibreum, it would move over that point and down the other side.  It could take a long time if it had been slowed to a near infinitesimal speed as it reached an point infinitesimally before the 'flat' top, but it would still continue when it got onto there.  Regardless, a certain value ultimately dictates the inattainable borderline between rolling over or rolling back, and the EH has that sort of quality.  Depending on its precise movement qualities, an item on this side of an EH may or may not be destined to 'roll over' (be dragged within black hole), but assuming there's no bigger 'hill' waiting on the other side to slow and return the item, another route back that it can take or a windmill-blade/someone using a putter able to give it the energy to return, one that has passed over the top is most definitely going to stay on the other side of the hump.  (With those caveats allowed, you can clearly label items that will pass across that boundary and those that won't, but might not be able to say why that boundary was more special than any random boundary in space, so maybe the answer is in the concept of Hawking Radiation and that items don't get lost at all, so it is barely less arbitrary than any other boundary you could suggest.  More like merely the entryway to a region where one-way travel[3] is enforced, along with all points beyond the EH until any 'exit' into more normal, 'bi-directional' space.)

I know this doesn't relate precisely to the limit of 'c', but it relates to the limit of the EH, which has a gradient of 'c' for all intents and purposes.  Nor does it ascribe any special properties to the 'beyond the hillock' territory, I'll readily admit.  It is of course a 'classic' physical example.  The complications of Dark Energy make things interesting for the Universe, also (though it still wouldn't site

[2] My favoured theory at the time was that we had a universe consisting of a number of Big-Bang/Big-Crunch cycles, and the final conditions of the BC would dictate the starting conditions of the next BB.  I think I favour the "n-dimensional bubble sat in n+1 dimensions" idea now, static and timeless within the n+1 dimensional meta-verse, as with any other bubble also sat there, but 'our' time dimension(s) represented in the surface dimensionality of the bubble, i.e. by me "latitude = time" idea, already mentioned previously in this thread.  But that's all hypothetical (it's certainly beyond our capability to test) and probably a transient opinion that I'll supercede in a few years' time when I learn something interesting and new about current theories which answers gives a few more answers, or possibly pose a few more interesting questions.

[3] Again, I'll mention the similarity of 'unidirectional space' in this zone and 'uni-directional time' in the universe we can observe, but I don't think you have much truck with that, so please feel free to ignore that reiteration.

Yes, but it's a bad analogy. It's not a case of just some equations missing. According to current physics, going faster than c is impossible. Not just un-described.

Just like the square root of a negative number is impossible and undescribed... until you work with a number system that allows complex numbers with imaginary components?  I'm just thinking 'further out'.  I may be wrong.  And I'm not advocating v>c as a casual thing, merely as response to the severe slope of spacetime beyond the EH.

[dreiche2]

So, what about =0 not being time-like, but light-like?

Error in my terminology, I think.

Good. Unfortunately, your argument relied on the equality. And the equality only holds for light. Worldlines of objects with rest mass (time-like) have <0.

Are we talking about the event horizon or the singularity, please?

I have discussed the singularity (mostly in the context of it not existing, because space curves asymptotically, but here I was discussing the EH.

So we are discussing the EH. Then again I restate that the EH does not  "create a zone where the laws of physics as we know them need not apply", and I would like see references to the contrary. Physics gets extraordinarily weird, indeed, but there is no fundamental problem with the current theories. Problematic and yet to be properly explained are just things like the singularity, or when quantum gravity comes into play.

Thus again in that context:

I know this doesn't relate precisely to the limit of 'c', but it relates to the limit of the EH, which has a gradient of 'c' for all intents and purposes.

I do not think that is correct/makes sense. What is the gradient, and what are all intents and purposes.

My favoured theory at the time was that we had a universe consisting of a number of Big-Bang/Big-Crunch cycles [...]

I liked some versions of these theories as well.

Yes, but it's a bad analogy. It's not a case of just some equations missing. According to current physics, going faster than c is impossible. Not just un-described.

Just like the square root of a negative number is impossible and undescribed... until you work with a number system that allows complex numbers with imaginary components?  I'm just thinking 'further out'.  I may be wrong.  And I'm not advocating v>c as a casual thing, merely as response to the severe slope of spacetime beyond the EH.

Again, I can't see what beyond specifically the EH suggests v>c.

As for the analogy: Yes, a theory of v>c would indeed require a radical "paradigm shift", like introducing the imaginary numbers, if you like (and who knows, maybe it will happen). But that's exactly why the supersonic speed is a bad analogy. There was never a fundamental problem with supersonic speed being possible, given scientific theories of the time (I mean there is no air in space, so how can sound play a role for speed limits anyway). There is, however, something fundamentally wrong with v>c given current theories.

[eerr]

Starver, it's kind of annoying to debate things other people can't research.
It's also double-annoying to state such things as fact.

[Earthquake Damage]

But I always wondered about a universe which had the precise quanta of energy that lay between the two extremes...  Of course, it's like rolling a perfectly round ball up a crazy-golf hillock in a frictionless and resistanceless environment.  You could never get it to sit precisely at the top, because if it was still moving enough to move onto the point of equilibreum, it would move over that point and down the other side.  It could take a long time if it had been slowed to a near infinitesimal speed as it reached an point infinitesimally before the 'flat' top, but it would still continue when it got onto there.

So, if I understand this correctly, you're basically saying that there is no such thing as escape velocity.

[Starver]

First of all, I perceive that I'm not making myself understood the way I intend.

(Actually, very first of all, I'm in the middle of changing where I'm working, for various reasons (not including spending too much time on Bay12Forums while at work, as it happens), so while I may be about to offer the absolute weakest excuse for not continuing a discussion, i.e. no longer being able to log into the forum, but with any luck that won't be the case.  I mention it because it'll amuse you if nothing else.  I start at the new place on Monday unless a phone call I make in a few minutes changes anything.)

Very quickly:
@dreiche2 - "zone where the laws of physics as we know them need not apply".  Compare and contrast to "Rockets could never fly in the vacuum of space, because there's no air to push against", an early-to-mid 20th Century belief.  I acknowledge that you could easily use that example against me (rockets still work in vacuum, time and space still works as we know it beyond the EH), but how I was going to use it of that as illustration is to suggest that our "laws of physics as we know them" are 'airbound' ones, from people who cannot imagine a vacuum and who have derived their physical laws with a 'resistance factor' similar to the erroneous original concept of the Cosmological Constant, not understanding the nature of an atmosphere.
- "Gradient of 'c'": Spacetime is distorted at a gravity well.  And for other reasons, but let's stick with gravity for now.  It's implicit in the "everything travels in straight lines, but across a curved spacetime" idea.  The gradient is the measuerement of the distortion.  At the EH the gradient is such that it is exactly steep enough for a photon to not get away, thus my assigning of the value 'c', though I'm sure it's measured in another manner.  And the gradient steepens.  Eventually the gradient is more than 2c (by the same measure).  Though prior to this point I haven't given a specific importance to that limit, is it the case that between gradients 'c' and '2c' everything is forced to travel at (from an outside-the-universe-POV) increasing speeds up to 'c' (because they can't go faster) directly inwards?  What happens beyond the '2c' point?  A serious change in physics?  I don't believe so.  Thus I'm inclined towards an 'adjustment' of 'c' in an inwards direction for perpetuity.  Just like photons just outside the EH, attempting to head outwards, are only slowly escaping (at first, quicker as they actually do escape), photons just inside that are nominally travelling outwards will end up heading inwards at a small speed inwards.  Photons headingly inward (now that they are veiled from the universe as a whole) break 'our' laws of physics in travelling an actual /or/ virtual speed (probably the latter, but it counts for the equations) slightly in excess of 'c'.  Wierdness applies.

@Eerr - Yes, I apologise about the research angle.  I do try to avoid "stating as fact" the parts that are my hypotheses and I have attempted to make that plain throughout where they are my extensions to the 'everyday' facts that everyone who I am currently discussing with appears to agree upon.  I regret that they may have become mixed up with the areas where I've been stating the same common theories as other people to help Sean out with his understanding of the nature of the universe.  Maybe a [ hr ] kind of break would have been a good idea.

Earthquake Damage - no, I'm not saying there's no such thing as an escape velocity.  Not entirely sure how you read that into what I said, but I'm rushing some of these things due to the job-change so the fault probably lies with me.  As with all the current fuss, doubtless.

[dreiche2]

First of all, I perceive that I'm not making myself understood the way I intend.

I appreciate you being apologetic about not explaining things properly, but I think you should start to consider the possibility that your reasoning is actually wrong.

At the EH the gradient is such that it is exactly steep enough for a photon to not get away, thus my assigning of the value 'c', though I'm sure it's measured in another manner

(Emphasis mine) Again you're basing your argument on something that by your own words you actually are not fully sure about.

And the gradient steepens.  Eventually the gradient is more than 2c (by the same measure).  Though prior to this point I haven't given a specific importance to that limit, is it the case that between gradients 'c' and '2c' everything is forced to travel at (from an outside-the-universe-POV) increasing speeds up to 'c' (because they can't go faster) directly inwards?  What happens beyond the '2c' point?  A serious change in physics?  I don't believe so.  Thus I'm inclined towards an 'adjustment' of 'c' in an inwards direction for perpetuity.  Just like photons just outside the EH, attempting to head outwards, are only slowly escaping (at first, quicker as they actually do escape), photons just inside that are nominally travelling outwards will end up heading inwards at a small speed inwards.  Photons headingly inward (now that they are veiled from the universe as a whole) break 'our' laws of physics in travelling an actual /or/ virtual speed (probably the latter, but it counts for the equations) slightly in excess of 'c'.  Wierdness applies.

Even if the gradient of whatever would be beyond c by any measure, that simply does not imply that anything has an actual velocity of v>c. If you fall down an arbitrarily deep gravity well, you just accelerate asymptotically to c (* as 'seen' from an outside observer), and that's it.

However, here comes the killer:

Just like photons just outside the EH, attempting to head outwards, are only slowly escaping (at first, quicker as they actually do escape), photons just inside that are nominally travelling outwards will end up heading inwards at a small speed inwards

Photons. Slowly. Small speeds.

You just talked about photons at small speeds. What happened to the constancy of the speed of light? And according to you, you even get slow photons outside of the EH.

(Not that it matters, because photons always have c (in vacuum), whether inside or outside the EH. It just matters in your own argument in which things get weird only beyond the EH.)

Again, as far as I know, there is nothing special about the EH apart from that light (* and anything else) cannot escape from beyond it (and what that implies for what outside observers see).

And btw, my original uncertainty about what happens from the point of view of someone approaching the EH has been resolved as well:

To a distant observer, clocks near a black hole appear to tick more slowly than those further away from the black hole.[30] Due to this effect, known as gravitational time dilation, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down as it approaches the event horizon, taking an infinite time to reach it.[31] At the same time, all processes on this object slow down causing emitted light to appear redder and dimmer, an effect known as gravitational redshift.[32] Eventually, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen.

On the other hand, an observer falling into a black hole does not notice any of these effects as he crosses the event horizon. According to his own clock, he crosses the event horizon after a finite time, although he is unable to determine exactly when he crosses it, as it is impossible to determine the location of the event horizon from local observations.[33]

Emphasis mine. From here. Also here:

In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime, most often an area surrounding a black hole, beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. Light emitted from beyond the horizon can never reach the observer, and any object that approaches the horizon from the observer's side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon, with its image becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. The traveling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time.

Edit: (*) clarifications.

[Starver]

Photons. Slowly. Small speeds.

Today is stressful, words were rushed.
By a given frame of observational reference within the structure of spacetime they are light-speed, as ever.  (Even to themselves, but because of root(1-v^2/c^2)=0 that's, well, impossible.)  All photons 'seen' (ignoring the lack of "light by which we see light by" for demonstrative purposes) escaping a black hole are seen to do so at light-speed.  But by looking at the tapestry of multi-dimensionality from an external POV that can 'see' the topology and the causal links...  No, I can see I still don't have the descriptive language.

This is all because there is no practical observational frame of reference that can see what's happening within the EH (light-cones of effect/communication within are constrained to contain the singularity, so one could view from further within the singularity anything that you have preceded/overtaken and a "fish-eye" view of the outside world, of course, supposing one survived all the other hazards and could deal with the dopplering).

So, I'm not even saying "there's a viewpoint where you can see all this happening, as time passes".  I'm discussing an analytical model where a static image of the entire universe (in space and time) contains all dimensions of freedom, (inclusive of time), are laid out in a hyperdimensional whole, ready to be analysed.  Photons can be seen as long lines, original source to ultimate destination, and 'coloured' and 'shaded' (those terms being far from correct) in various ways.  Slices of 'now' (at differing angles according to the Frame) and cones of History and Future can be referenced by laying meta-dimensional cosmic 'rulers' and set-squares[1] much as the sailor's map instruments and the design of the map can let one lay out a course on a flat paper that depicts a spherical world.

And in that, one has strange twists, cusps and, they're chucking me out.  See you Monday. probably.

[1] If you'll allow that space dimensions and time dimension(s) proportions are such that a right-angle is correct for a light-cone's angle to/from a point.

[dreiche2]

No, I can see I still don't have the descriptive language.

Of course! When people disagree and point out holes in your argument, it must be because you don't explain things properly. From the things you have said by now, you really must believe you're some sort of misunderstood genius or something. I'm starting to see a pattern here in this thread...

Today is stressful, words were rushed.
By a given frame of observational reference within the structure of spacetime they are light-speed, as ever.  (Even to themselves, but because of root(1-v^2/c^2)=0 that's, well, impossible.)  All photons 'seen' (ignoring the lack of "light by which we see light by" for demonstrative purposes) escaping a black hole are seen to do so at light-speed.  But by looking at the tapestry of multi-dimensionality from an external POV that can 'see' the topology and the causal links...  No, I can see I still don't have the descriptive language.

This is just silly. You made a major faux pas for someone who claims to argue in the spirit of relativity by talking about photons slowing down and turning around, and instead of admitting that the argument itself is flawed you now hide yourself behind bloomy language. Einstein is spinning so fast in my freezer, he's about to create his own singularity.

So, I'm not even saying "there's a viewpoint where you can see all this happening, as time passes".  I'm discussing an analytical model where a static image of the entire universe (in space and time) contains all dimensions of freedom, (inclusive of time), are laid out in a hyperdimensional whole, ready to be analysed.  Photons can be seen as long lines, original source to ultimate destination, and 'coloured' and 'shaded' (those terms being far from correct) in various ways.  Slices of 'now' (at differing angles according to the Frame) and cones of History and Future can be referenced by laying meta-dimensional cosmic 'rulers' and set-squares[1] much as the sailor's map instruments and the design of the map can let one lay out a course on a flat paper that depicts a spherical world.

That's all nice and dandy, and sounds awfully lot like Minkowski diagrams to me (on which I took exams in uni, btw), but it's all just a big smoke screen to hide the fact that there are loads of holes in your argument, which you seem to be unwilling to admit.

Again:

• You based your argument on an equality (using wrong terminology) that does not apply for anything but light. You did not get back to me on that.
• You claimed beyond the (specifically!) EH, currently known laws of physics need not apply, in particularly, light having v>c. You can't give a reference.
• You use imaginary units for normal time in the standard equations of relativity. No reference.
• You talk about ill-defined gradients, compare light to sound, and finally talk about photons slowing down...
  

I'm sorry, but you really don't have a clear mathematical argument, you're not backing things up with references either, and in some things you're simply wrong, as far as I can see.

I guess we can stop the discussion now. I'm not going to respond to another bloomy post, unless there is again clear factual errors that no one else is willing to correct.

Also, I'm sorry if I sound harsh again, I'm just trying to get the point across. No bad feelings intended.

[Neruz]

Wait, Einstein is in your freezer?

Goddamnit, that means i have Schrodinger. That explains much.

[dreiche2]

Is he dead or alive.... or BOTH?

[Neruz]

Depends on how he's feeling, sometimes when i open the freezer he's all stiff, other times he offers me some icecream.

Which, like i said, is perfectly reasonable if he's Schrodinger, i thought he was Einstein and i couldn't work out what the bastard was playing at.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Is he dead or alive.... or BOTH?

Or neither. Anyway, even electrons can produce (or induce) compression-like effects (Cherenkov radiation), I don't see why it should be any different with anything else. The universe is known for repeating patterns of structure - from atoms to galaxies. Each level up inherits most of the precursor's properties and behavior. It's thus at least plausible that some properties are inherited from the base energy component, and not acquired due to structure. So, it's possible that particles can form "light compression" shockwaves, and "breach the light barrier". Comparing light to sound (or in my case, energy and EM emissions to sound) may not be as impossible as you scientists think.