(urth) OT: Christian relativity - in which I mangle philosophyof science
Iorwerth Thomas
iorweththomas at hotmail.com
Wed Apr 26 03:51:18 PDT 2006
>From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com>
>H'mmm. Is there a formulation of QFT in which relativistic causality
>is _not_ violated -- or at least rendered irrelevant? I somehow had
>the impression this was one of the big barriers to making quantum
>gravity theories work. --at any rate, it seems the the experiments
>which (seem to) confirm the Bell hypothesis throw relativistic
>causality into a very cocked hat.
Well, Bell's inequality is a property (as far as I know; I'm a computational
field theorist turned condensed matter theorist who needs to bone up on his
foundations) of non-relativistic QM as opposed to full QFT, which is
compatible with _special_ relativity, at least at an operational level.
_General_ relativity is the hard case, partly because the maths is quite
horrid, but mostly because of the conceptual problems (to do with time -
canonical quantum gravity has none - and how the wavefunction of the
universe is defined, measured or if it even exists). The degree to which
Bell's inequalities affect relativistic causality is somewhat up in the air,
because you can't transmit information faster than light, which makes it
comparable to the apparant violation of relativity in QFT (at least, to me;
again, others who know more may disagree).
>I'm pretty sure that the whole point of relativity is _not_ to have
>a preferred frame of reference. But, ZPF theory may mess that
>up pretty good (if it ever amounts to anything).
>
Well, yes... But in the case of the universe you get a Machian 'background
of fixed stars' effect (I think); I'm not sure Lee Smolin is happy with that
but he's a bit of a purist in this regard.
ZPF theory?
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