FAWS comments on Particles break light-speed limit? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Kevin 23 September 2011 11:00AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 September 2011 10:09:49AM 15 points [-]

I'll take bets at 99-to-1 odds against any information propagating faster than c. Note that this is not a bet for the results being methodologically flawed in any particular way, though I would indeed guess some simple flaw. It is just a bet that when the dust settles, it will not be possible to send signals at a superluminal velocity using whatever is going on - that there will be no propagation of any cause-and-effect relation at faster than lightspeed.

My real probability is lower, but I think that anyone who'd bet against me at 999-to-1 will probably also bet at 99-to-1, so 99-to-1 is all I'm offering.

I will not accept more than $20,000 total of such bets.

Comment author: FAWS 27 September 2011 10:58:28AM 2 points [-]

Is that c the speed of light in vacuum or c the constant in special relativity?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 September 2011 08:36:51PM 4 points [-]

c is the constant as it appears in fundamental physical equations, relativistic or quantum. Anything slowing down the propagation of photons through an apparent vacuum (such as interaction with dark matter) which did not affect, for example, the mass-energy equivalence of E=MC2, would not win the bet.