Recent content by PeterDonis

In the case where you're running the experiment one quantum at a time (because the source is at sufficiently low intensity), each individual quantum "interferes with itself"--the interference pattern is there in each individual quantum's wave function at the detector screen, and determines the...

What do you mean by "quantum forces"?

No. If you're using QM--and really the path integral version of QM--in this way, you're not talking about EM waves any more. You're talking about quantum objects. An "EM wave" is a classical concept. No, this is not correct. If you are running the experiment with a normal light source of normal...

If by "special relativity" you mean "my own personal intuition about length contraction", yes, but looking at the whole circumference isn't "locally". Yes. No. See my first comment above.

I'm not sure your scenario can even be analyzed, since it appears to contain internal contradictions. I've pointed a few of them out in my previous posts. Here's a suggestion: try to draw a spacetime diagram of your scenario. I'm not sure that's even possible with the scenario as you've...

I don't understand what this means either.

It's impossible for any ship to have a path through spacetime that's shorter than the path of a light ray. The length of a light ray's path through spacetime is zero.

It's impossible for any ship to move along with the CMB. The CMB moves at the speed of light. And CMB radiation is moving at the speed of light in all directions, so it's not even clear what "moving along with the CMB" would mean.

I don't understand what you mean by this. What does the length in spacetime of the ship's path have to do with the apparent speed of the CMB relative to it?

But the change in topology does create something that is not present in SR on ##R^4##: a preferred frame. To see how this works, consider a simpler example: SR in two spacetime dimensions on a cylinder, ##S \times R##, instead of a flat plane. (The paper @Dale referenced does this with two more...

Thanks, I'll take a look. Edit: I see this is the book of which @RUTA is one of the authors, which IIRC has been discussed in other PF threads. I think those other threads probably already capture the key points of the view it's advocating.

I understand. I understand that too, but I think we're to the point where I would need some references. Otherwise all I have is what you're posting, and what you're posting doesn't convince me that this idea even makes sense. It's not one I've seen in the literature, so unfortunately I have no...

The only sure test you have is evidence.

Where? Can you give a specific reference?

This implicitly assumes deteterminism, as I posted before. But it also, as I said, seems inconsistent since "simultaneous in one frame means in the past (or future) in another" comes from relativity, and non-relativistic QM is not consistent with relativity. You would have to do the analysis...