Originally Posted By: Bill S.
Possibly you consider Sean’s science to be inferior to yours

Sean definitely gets out to the extremes where at times I would call his work not science. Over the years I would not be alone to say that. Read his discussions on Quantum Bayesian (QBSim) if you want a real eye opener. In general he is a reasonable scientist who I don't mind reading but I would never take anything he says as gospel and I would never blindly accept his opinion.

He is an interesting character who likes to push the limits (sometimes a bit far) but writes well and I know why people like his books.

His science is sometimes different to mine but inferior requires a grading which would be subjective. Will you accept different at times rather than inferior?

Originally Posted By: Bill S
Perhaps I should take the OP to another science forum and see what the response is.

Please do .. I can tell you why it will get canned in a simple description .. they will say it is ad-hoc.

Science requires you to consider the prior understanding as the default. I can not for example create a valid science experiment in which I consider there is a point on earth that gravity doesn't exist. Do you see why, because I have no description of physics that allows that it is totally ad-hoc. So you want me to allow something science says can't happen and then discuss it using science ... LOGIC FAIL 101.

Any good science forum will kick you, they will initially give you a nice response and try to send you off but they definitely won't let you discuss it in that form.

Originally Posted By: Bill S
This is more-or-less my starting point. There are too many impossibilities to allow physical time reversal to work.

That isn't true a black hole could possibly have time reversal in it as it causes no problems to our normal physics. Wormhole physics are another classical case of following that line.

That was the bit I was trying to get you to realize that your question as posed was ad-hoc but you could turn it to an area with a horizon (an interface) between forward and backward time. The key point you needed to get clear is why your situation requires a horizon of some form otherwise you get inconsistent logic which you seemed to have realized. Once I put a horizon of all the different options in place none of the results give your OP answer they all give different and sometimes weird answers.

So if you turn your thought experiment to an area with a horizon you would be able to ask it on a physics forum. You can then discuss what features the horizon might have and take on. Those horizon features will determine the answer you deduce in your thought experiment.

Final comment, you can't bring the horizon area down to a point, all the physics will blow up in your face in a singularity. You must keep the horizon as a finite area or surface so that you can formally describe the interface.

If you assume the LIGO result is correct you should probably start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_horizon

I will add one other quote for you to ponder: "The LIGO results provide the first experimental observation of the uniqueness or no-hair theorem"

Last edited by Orac; 06/23/16 07:11 PM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.