Waking up before an alarm clock

[Sidoh]

Okay, here's how it works.  Neural messages are chemical reactions.  Unless your body can accelerate molecules to FTL speeds, it ain't gonna happen.  Is that technical enough?

I wasn't referring to that part.  I've already acknowledged that this is the case (you posted before me, but only because I went afk for a while before hitting "post").

What they're saying is when you hear the alarm, neural pathways are traversed faster than the speed of light, c and thus, our 'consciousness' travels back in time.   This is why I said it's nonsense; it's actually a lot slower than c and it's really silly to believe something as mundane as a series of neurons can cause something to travel faster than c. :)

I was speaking of your explanation of the commonly accepted reasons for why this is.  You gave a good high level description of it (I'm pretty sure iago said in his first post that's what it was), but you should link some literature!  I know I've read one or two articles on this topic.

Anyway, I think this has come to a conclusion.  All questions have been answered and there's no reason to continue this discussion. :)

[rabbit]

I officially link my argument to every neuroscience and physics textbook in existence.

[Sidoh]

I officially link my argument to every neuroscience and physics textbook in existence.

I guess the only reason you spoke up is because you pretty much said the same thing as iago and I, but you said it as if you were clearing up the issue when it'd already been cleared up. :P

[rabbit]

I'll clear you up!

[Rule]

Neural messages are generally transmitted about 20010 million times slower than an electrical message light, which is a few hundred travels about a million times slowerfaster than sound, which in turn is a few hundred times slower than light.  There is no possible wayIt is extremely unlikely for a neural message to travel faster than the speed of light.

This makes more sense to me.  From what I remember, our reaction time is about 0.1 seconds, and is at best 0.01 seconds (test yourself by tapping as quickly as you can on a stopwatch).  This means nerve impulses travel at most 10 to 100 m/s.  The speed of light is ~3*10^8 m/s.  Most electrical currents travel at a similar speed -- sometimes 10 to 100 times slower.  So "light" and "electrical message" could pretty much be used interchangeably in the above quote, but it seems more direct just to make the comparison with light, unless you want to write something a little more long-winded about nerve impulses. The speed of sound in air is about 350 m/s.

Of course, there are many problems with this theory, but perhaps most notably -- pretty much your entire body would have to be travelling at some speed relative to the alarm clock, not just some nerve impulse.

[trust]

Okay, here's how it works.  Neural messages are chemical reactions.  Unless your body can accelerate molecules to FTL speeds, it ain't gonna happen.  Is that technical enough?

My body is awesome.