Re: lawless physics (fwd)

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPomona.Edu>]

On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Jim Green wrote:

> John says --
>
> > I'm not sure I know what it is that you don't follow here.  You *do*
> > understand, don't you, that a person can, in principle, travel from one
> > object to any other in an arbitrarily short time within the framework of
> > special relativity.
>
> John, I am likely with others here -- no I did not know this!!!  Repeatedly
> I have hears (and alas taught) that _nothing_ can go faster than the speed
> of light.
>
> Can photons travel faster than the speed of light?
>
> I clearly need a tutorial here.

I am hoping that the clarifications offered by Bob Sciamanda and my own
response to him will have cleared this up.

> Further, why is it the speed of light that is involved.  Would an
> Einsteinian fish arrive at the same theory??????

There is nothing intrinsically special about light per se other than the
fact that it "happens" to travel at the one speed that is invariant (the
limiting speed if you will) in the Lorentz transformations.  I know I have
seen an article or articles in AJP discussing derivations of the Lorentz
transformations simply from the postulate that there exists such a
limiting speed without any explicit reference to light.

John
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