Australian High Court Hears Some Weird Science

mosch writes "In an extraordinarily unusual case, the Australian High Court listened to TJ Rout's arguments that he can make light travel faster than c, due to the properties of division and multiplication by zero. The transcript makes for excellent reading. Next up, the Supreme Court hears the testimony of Time Cube."

Comments

Re:Interesting, x/0 = infinity...

[j.e.hahn]

It's not a question of x/0 maybe being undefined. It *IS* undefined. A common exercise in undergrad math course is to have 2 functions f(x) and g(x) where g(0)=0 and then show that depending on how you choose f and g the limit of f(x)/g(x) as x tends to 0 can take on ANY value you desire.

Division by zero is completely meaningless. Yes there are cases where division by zero creates a removable singularity, and for continuity's sake you can define a new curve/sequence/function/whatever with the convenient value. But that doesn't make the division meaningful...

Oh well. At least he isn't trying to state a value for log(0) -- there's an essential singularity at that point. (The riemann surface for log is very cool...)

Re:Let's all laugh

[mosch]

My goal wasn't simply to have everybody laugh at the guy, though he does make excellent joke fodder. The fact of the matter is that this man somehow managed to get Australia's highest court to hear a case where the plaintiff's goal was to legislate science.

This hearing was, in my mind, as assinine as if the fellow who runs TimeCube managed to get a hearing with the Supreme Court, to try to legislate that there are 4 simultaneous days within each 24 hour earth rotation. How does this happen? Why does it happen? What would happen if the guy had been sane?

It seemed to me to be a real-life version of the urban legend pi === 3 law, except with the judicial branch being abused.