Brain Fertilizer

This reminds me of another "foible" of the Gravitational Theory.

"How 'fast' is Gravity?"

There is a current theory that Gravity travels at the speed of light, meaning that an object will not exert a gravitational force on you, until you can see it. (Make sense?)

Personally, I think gravity is faster then light, but like *I'm* going to prove that anytime soon...

Thing is, Jeremy, in order for the answer to the question to matter to physicists, there would have to be a theoretical situation in which a gravity well could potentially be made to travel faster than light, so that an otherwise inexplicable lag time could be detected, or not as the case may be.

Matter, of course, isn't the same as information, which is organized energy, so physicists aren't likely to revise their whole notion of the universe based on this one finding.

But if this means one day we'll finally be able to tune in to Galactic Federation News and find out where to send our membership application, that sounds plenty cool to me.

Well, Kevin, they already had to revise their whole theory of the universe to even consider this experiment necessary.
Sure, information isn't matter, but according to old-style science, even information shouldn't be able to travel faster than light.
From what I understand, this doesn't make teleportation any more likely, because it is more observational than causal.

<tangent>

Have you by any chance read the books by Ian Douglas: Semper Mars, Luna Marine, and Europa Strike?

This "quantum teleportation" is a factor in one part of the alien technology discovered as the trilogy unfolds.

I'm hoping it turns out not to be a trilogy...

Oops. I keep forgetting to close tags.

</tangent>

Never heard of it, actually. I'll go check it out.

Ah, yes, quantum entanglement moves to the forefront! Can the ansible be all that far behind? If it can be made to work reliably, think of the implications for space exploration. No 'speed-of-light' time delay between Earth and robot probes, making real-time tele-operation and tele-presence a reality.