Showing posts with label retrocausality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label retrocausality. Show all posts

Monday, 23 April 2007

Denying retrocausality since 1953

Some time ago I came across this article that reports scientists setting up an experiment that will prove retrocausality and hence Einstein's theory of relativity, or atleast partly. For the uninitiated (like me before I read the article) retrocausality is the theory that the chain of causality can be broken, that is the effect will come before the cause... or something like that.
Now I dont claim to be a quantum physicist, but I'm pretty sure that the "cause" of something, by definition, is that which comes first. Sure enough, a quick trip to dictionary.com proved this to be true and vice versa for effect. Check it out here and here respectively (incidentally, 1st definitions for each).
Yet despite the clear lack of logic for retrocausality, who am I to say Einstein was wrong... besides, how much of physics really does make sense? This might be Monty's effect on me coming through though. Anyway, let's just assume that the definitions of cause and effect are, for lack of a better term, crap. So these scientists send a piece of information back in time... to themselves... as they're creating the device that will send this info back to them. If they really expected the experiment to work, wouldn't they know the answer already? And, thus knowing the answer will be recieved prior to completion of the device, stop working and just wait around for it instead?
I hope these guys haven't been given a government grant.