h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, IMO it's like this. As soon as photons have reached you, you're an observer (whether or not you've looked at them or not). Now in relativity simultaneity breaks down as well, so for any two causally related events it is possible to choose a reference frame where they are arbitrarily close to being "simultaneous". This means that downstream causality *cannot* travel faster than light because that means in some reference frames it will be *upstream* causality. In fact it will in all, but in some the "effect" event will still happen "after" the "cause" event. OK so far? Good.

Now, supposing that photons (and other luminal intermediary particles) are the carriers of causality. In fact this is suggested by QM, and moreover it is suggested that until information is received about an event, in a crucial sense, *it has not happened*. This may be the same as saying that until you pass through an event's trailing light cone, it is unresolved, and this is fine because in some reference frames it actually *hasn't* happened yet.

In other words, a partial combination of relativity and QM may help answer one of QM's nastiest philosophical problems. Right now I'm reading up on Quantum Field Theory so I can do this properly.

Oh, and *don't tell anybody about this*!

I couldn't, I'm afraid. I will have to read it a few times more to get the hang of it!

I'll draw a picture of that, too ....

Ah! Got it now!

Heyy!

I think it's quite neat, how think you?

Technically it's also BBC copyright now, but screw 'em.

Yeah, it's good. I had to read it a few times, but that's quantum for you. It's *supposed* to be complicated.

in a very Zenlike way

I think Quantum Mechanics is the universe's way of telling us that it's way better at making jokes than we will ever be.

That and deep sea fish.

that is the best answer to 'why, dammit, why??' I've ever heard. God sticking two fingerrs up and saying 'in still cleverer than you'!

Well, funnier. And always in a nice way. Probably.

One of the weirdest things about my being in love situation aforementioned was that I would occasionally think the most ridiculous thoughts like

Why doesn't she love me? I'd be so happy if she did. But hang on. Someone else might love her too. Then, if she loved me, she wouldn't love him. And that would devastate him.

Poor guy.

Hang on, that's me!

I nearly embodied that in a cartoon strip ... it did actually make me laugh. Weird but good.

It's funny, isn't it, how your brain does things like that. Trouble is, I wouldn't get as far as the 'that's me!' bit and end up feeling guilty for someone else!

Driving a train of thought through the buffers of reason is possibly my favourite pastime.

I should really edit that and use it in preciously witty conversation in the hope that someone will quote me. An old old friend of mine used to say the same aphorism over and again in the hope, I genuinely believe, that he'd make it into a "wit and wisdom" collection in 100 years' time. I can no longer recall what it might have been.

Put in on your Space. Right at the top. I've done a similar thing, but I think only clarinettists will find it funny. Ah well.

Good plan ... it goes on tomorrow. Although I think a journal entry would be better. I'm quite proud of some of my shorter ones ("Aftermath" being the most recent).

I will have to have a look...