No matter how fast an effect propogates, it is always after the cause (with an infinite speed, I guess effects happen instantaneously, but not before).
Of course, this doesn't fit with a universe described by general relativity, where time can be different for different observers. But you wouldn't have a universe described by general relativity without that constraint in the first place.
> No matter how fast an effect propogates, it is always after the cause (with an infinite speed, I guess effects happen instantaneously, but not before).
If everything happens instantaneously then there is no real cause and effect, and the universe would be over before it really got started.
Imagine a universe like Conway's way of life, where only neighboring cells can be affected in one timestep. Now add to it a rule that all blocks have a color, and the color of all blocks are changed when one block changes color. Now you have a universe with both immediate and non-immediate effects.
The distance between the mirrors is a number of meters. A meter is based on how far light travels in a second. How long it takes light to go between them is based on the speed of light. Speed, distance and time are connected.
If we untether the speed of light and it’s unlimited, then in some sense there is no way to say how long it takes light to bounce between the mirrors - it doesn’t take any time. And there is no way to say how far apart the mirrors are, if light passes between them instantly that implies there must be no gap to cross. If light crosses no distance in no time then it also bounces back covering no distance in no time, ahh does lots of bounces in no time. There goes the concept of a time step and any concept of “non immediate effects”.
If you try and add time as a separate thing, then you have some kind of Conway’s game simulation - but that gives you a way to track where light is (which simulation cell it’s in) and therefore a kind of distance (how far the mirrors are apart in simulation cells) and then you lock down how light moves in “simulation cells travelled per timestep” which brings you back to a fixed speed of light again.
on edit: not everything travels at the speed limit, if the speed limit right now is the speed of light - then why doesn't everything travel at the speed of light?
People say if the speed limit was infinite that everything would happen instantaneously - but they still need to explain why everything should go at the speed limit in this other universe, when not everything goes at the speed limit in ours.
The limit of causality is the light speed limit in vacuum, not "whatever happens to be the max speed of light in some medium".
Light (as in visible light) is also irrelevant to this, it's just an example of something moving at that speed.
a hypothetical universe is mostly worth discussing seriously if there's a physics that is coherent, not just a mathematical landscape. At least it isn't that interesting in the discussion of universes, but might be in discussing mathematical ideas, but those do not necessarily mean there's a universe represented by it.
Replace periscope with “wormhole” and you get a more traditional experiment. The question of can we use this to violate casualty is non-sensical, because we can’t violate casualty (even with faster than light travel). In the traditional experiment, if I see the light turn on, the cause has already happened; sending a message “back in time” won’t change that.
However, this is only because all frames of reference stay the same. If you could actually travel back in time, who knows what would happen. That’s largely why this whole conversation makes no sense. You can’t violate casualty with FTL, only with time machines and FTL isn’t a Time Machine.
If light is slower in other mediums, that has no effect on how quickly causation can happen.
It's just that light (if there is nothing in its way, so in a vacuum) will travel at the max speed of causality.
Causality violation can happen in general relativity when something moves faster than the max speed of causality (which is the same speed as light in a vacuum).
Light actually has nothing to do with it; it just happens to travel at the max speed allowed by the universe when there's nothing that impedes it's motion (i.e. in a vacuum).
So the acronym should really be "FTLIAV"!
See also [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_four-potenti...]
Notably, light is a form of electromagnetism, so this shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. c is an explicit part of many formulas, interestingly. And electromagnetism was the first thing tackled in special relativity.
If light happens to move slower than c under some conditions, that is irrelevant. It isn't the speed of light we care about, it is c.
Essentially, when we say FTL, it means "faster than c", not "faster than light".
Edit: wrong one https://youtu.be/yP1kKN3ghOU?si=hsBj0RpzOb3JZWdS the one above is the "why."
In quantum entanglement, two particles can be entangled in such a way that measuring one particle instantly determines the state of the other, even if they are light-years apart. This "instantaneous" connection seems faster than light, but it cannot be used to transmit usable information in a meaningful way.
The phenomenon does not violate relativity because no classical information can travel between the particles faster than light. Entanglement is a correlation, not a means of communication and hence NOT a means of causation.