On 11/24/07, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I thought that physics was such that if Pooh chose the wrong paw, time would then go backward...
(CPT - invariant only if charge, parity & time are all simultaneously interchanged.)
But so would his digital watch --- so he still wouldn't be able to tell ...
Also, in quaternions, x^2+1=0 has an infinity of solutions, as Hamilton points out. I think that Hamilton favored left-hand coordinates; does anyone know if he himself was left-handed ?
Er --- what's the connection between left-handedness and "left-handed" coordinate systems? Which reminds me --- quite irrelevantly --- of a claim I fear I may have made previously in these august pages: that a most effective means of causing a polite gathering to descend into an incoherent brawl is to remark that "a mirror exchanges left with right" and then to enquire innocently "so, why doesn't it also exchange up with down?" Excuse me, everybody --- just remembered an urgent appointment ... WFL