🚀 go-pugleaf

markc@smsc.sony.com (Mark Corscadden) writes:

MC> ... The existence of a preferred frame violates
MC> the principles of Special Relativity (I believe) but it does not contradict
MC> the mathematics of SR, and it's the math that has been confirmed over and
MC> over by experimentation.

>Instead of being timid I should have said that my use of a preferred
>reference frame violates the principles of Special Relativity, period!
>Also, the "mathematics of SR" I refer to are only the mathematics of the
>Lorentz coordinate transform, which I *do* assume to be universally valid.
>I could have been more clear about these points.

What do you mean by saying that the Lorentz coordinate transform is
"universally valid"? The meaning in Special Relativity is that the
laws of physics are invariant with respect to the Lorentz
transformations. In your case, you are postulating a Faster Than Light
communication, which can easily be seen to violate this postulate. A
statement such as "It is possible to send a FTL message to a location
a distance of one light-year away such that it will arrive at the same
time it left" is only true in some reference frames, and not others.

So, to repeat: if your laws are not Lorentz-invariant, then what does
it mean to assume that the Lorentz transformations are universally
valid?

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY