"Dave" wrote in message
...

"christofire" wrote in message
...

"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
...
christofire wrote:
'Charge' ... can take effect almost instantaneously ...

It's akin to a 100 foot long tube of marbles.
Hit one end of the tube with a hammer and
measure the time it takes the energy impulse
to reach the other end of the tube. How fast
and how far did the energy impulse travel?
How fast and how far did each marble travel?
--
73, Cecil, IEEE, OOTC, http://www.w5dxp.com


Absolutely. When the old lady in the flat below bangs on her ceiling
with her walking stick, the end of the stick hits the ceiling instantly
as she pushes it upwards. Extrapolating, if an
incompressible/inextensible rod or string could be made, wouldn't that
permit communication faster than the speed of light?

I guess inextensible and incompressible are difficult to achieve, but if
either were possible would the communication still be limited to the
speed of light?

Chris


predicting the properties of something that is impossible to make is
impossible.


Agreed, but c is finite so is there a degree of compressibility or
expansibility below which faster-than-c communication would be possible? ...
or would the whole principle be scuppered by Lorentz contraction?

Chris


PS: oh dear, I hope no-one applies the Coriolis effect to turn this into
Penrose-Terrell rotation
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose-Terrell_rotation)!