thread: 2009-06-22 : Secrets: the Smelly Chamberlain
On 2009-06-23, Mathieu Leocmach wrote:
Sorry for the digression, but it makes me think of a paradox in physics. Extract of the page I was reading this very morning.
Erwin Schr??dinger in
What is life ?
[The theory of realativity revealed] that no physical cause could spread more rapidly than the speed of light[...]
Suppose a friend of mine should board a space ship traveling at half the speed of light and reach the nearest fixed star in eight or ten years. Suppose he settled down there. At a certain moment I might wonder whether he were still alive, and I should have to realize that perhaps there is no objective answer to such a question. If he 'has died', but only recently, so that a radio message carrying the news cannot yet have reached me, or if he is only 'seriously ill' and 'going to die' before my next radiogram can reach him - in both cases, it is, from the standpoint of a physicist, a question of interpretation where my friend is alive or not.
Does this ring a bell ?
