Traveling faster then the speed of light?

[phr0m]

I wa wondering if it is at all possible to travel faster then the speed of light in anyway. Here is one example:
You are sitting on a trian going the speed of light. You stand up and take a step forward...... would you go faster then the speed of light?
would the lights (on the trian) flicker when taking that step if you went faster then the speed of light?

 

[villageidiot111]

Its impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, for it would take infinite energy and you would have infinite mass. It is even impossible to travel at the speed of light. I think you would actually become energy yourself, but I'm not sure of that... its late... can't think...

I'm sure others can explain it better and in more detail.

 

[TuxDave]

If you were on a train that travelled the speed of light, the train would appear to have a length of 0 to a standing person. If you were on that 0 length train and you took a step forward (which looks like 0 distance), the standing person would still think you were all moving at the speed of light.

 

[Falloutboy]

you proubly can't actually go that fast but proubly with enough energy you could open a wormhole to make a shortcut

 

[Addis]

Its impossible for an object to travel at the speed of light. Let alone faster. For when an object would hit c then it would (i think) turn into pure energy. If that were to happen then I would assume that your matter would be destroyed.

 

[Zap Brannigan]

K-Pax was a good flic.

 

[jhu]

if string theory is an accurate model of the universe as we know it, then there are particles called tachyons that can't travel less than the speed of light.

 

[AbsoluteParadigm]

Not sure about matter, but quantum states have been transmitted faster than light. Actually it's "teleported", as in traveling distance in zero time. I would assume that's faster than the speed of light. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: AbsoluteParadigm
Not sure about matter, but quantum states have been transmitted faster than light. Actually it's "teleported", as in traveling distance in zero time. I would assume that's faster than the speed of light. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

you're referring to quantum entanglement. however, i don't think we can pass information this way.

 

[kotss]

Even if you could possibly go faster than the speed of light, you would have no way of proving it.
No one would be able to observe you since no light waves would be fast enough to reflect off of you.
You would be outracing them all. No object with rest mass is allowed to even go the speed of light.
You would need infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light from just a fraction below the speed of
light. You would not be converted into energy, you just would never be able to go the speed of light.
Using a wormhole, you do not exceed the speed of light, you exceed the average velocity of light.
Average velocity is measurement of distance over time, which is a vector quantity and speed is scalar.
Even several time travel theories proposed by Gott do not have anyone exceeding the speed of light.
It is fun to imagine and theorize, but it just will not happen.

 

[evilbix]

The speed of light has been conquered. There is no concrete explanation as to why it does it, but when particles are propelled at a barrier they can approach speeds that are somewhere between 3C and 4C. Apparently Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle isn't so uncertain.

I forget who did it first, but it is a simple experiment. They did it with some kind of data containing music, and it travelled beyond the speed of light and the data came out in a slightly altered (similar to listening to an FM radio with some distortion) form.

Can this be done for larger objects? Probably not for a long long time, but hopefully it can be used for the transmission of information.

 

[MetalStorm]

evilbix, can you cite any references for this?

 

[RichPLS]

The speed of light is a freeky. If you are traveling ahead of a spaceship traveling at half the speed of light, and a light was shined from ship behind you, as you watched and measured the beam as it passed you, it would still pass you at the speed of light, even though you are traveling half the speed of light.

 

[RichPLS]

It has to do with time being relative. Time is different from each perspective.

 

[Farmer]

kotss:

So you're saying the first person that doesn't reflect off of a mirror could be travelling faster than light? Of course, you'd need quite some mirror.

It's fun to limit the scope of our technological advancement, isn't it? You are the man that said "The world cannot possibly be round" five hundred years ago. I don't blame you. Most people would say such.

villageidiot111:

Yes, if you use the equation we have for it now. Maybe that'll change as we know more. Who knows?

It's also good to note that, if you get past the infinite energy barrier, the less energy you have, the faster you go. Imagine something like a cosecant or secant graph (well, not really), velocity is x, energy is y, where you have a vertical asymptote at lightspeed, a positive slope exponential graph on the right (sub-light), and a negative slope exponential graph on the right. Never negative, since cant have less than no energy (well, as far as we know).

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: evilbix
The speed of light has been conquered. There is no concrete explanation as to why it does it, but when particles are propelled at a barrier they can approach speeds that are somewhere between 3C and 4C. Apparently Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle isn't so uncertain.

I forget who did it first, but it is a simple experiment. They did it with some kind of data containing music, and it travelled beyond the speed of light and the data came out in a slightly altered (similar to listening to an FM radio with some distortion) form.

Can this be done for larger objects? Probably not for a long long time, but hopefully it can be used for the transmission of information.

That's not quite right. You're referring to quantum tunneling where 2 photons can go down two separate paths of equal length and have one beat the other. What happens is this:

A photon is "fuzzy". It looks sorta like this: ..::||::..

If you set up a detector to detect this photon there's a small chance that you will get it with the leading . but the highest probability for detection occurs in the "fat" part of the photon ||. When you quantum mechanically tunnel a photon it gets shifted so that it looks more like this: ...:::||:.

So there is a higher probability that the photon will be detected earlier now just because its "fat" part got shifted ahead. It didn't actually move any faster though.

 

[TuxDave]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: evilbix
The speed of light has been conquered. There is no concrete explanation as to why it does it, but when particles are propelled at a barrier they can approach speeds that are somewhere between 3C and 4C. Apparently Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle isn't so uncertain.

I forget who did it first, but it is a simple experiment. They did it with some kind of data containing music, and it travelled beyond the speed of light and the data came out in a slightly altered (similar to listening to an FM radio with some distortion) form.

Can this be done for larger objects? Probably not for a long long time, but hopefully it can be used for the transmission of information.

That's not quite right. You're referring to quantum tunneling where 2 photons can go down two separate paths of equal length and have one beat the other. What happens is this:

A photon is "fuzzy". It looks sorta like this: ..::||::..

If you set up a detector to detect this photon there's a small chance that you will get it with the leading . but the highest probability for detection occurs in the "fat" part of the photon ||. When you quantum mechanically tunnel a photon it gets shifted so that it looks more like this: ...:::||:.

So there is a higher probability that the photon will be detected earlier now just because its "fat" part got shifted ahead. It didn't actually move any faster though.

So what got the photon mad?

 

[silverpig]

I'll fix that

 

[DrPizza]

for the original post... and since you've found out you can't go the speed of light (without infinite energy, yadda yadda)
Ask this: suppose you're on a spaceship going 5mph less than the speed of light. Then you jogged forward at 5mph.

 

[zakee00]

lol wow we have some nerds in here
pretty intresting stuff though

 

[Machine350]

The Bible says that angels can travel at the speed of thought. How's that for a mind twister?

 

[Idleuser]

and god created the universe but we can't prove that

 

[pakigang]

We can't even say what existed before the big bang. And why the universe exploded in a specific manner rather than just through out everything! -> explanation god exists!

 

[RichPLS]

Everyone will find out all the answers to all the questions about creation and God one day, that is for sure.

 

[JosephM]

Well, I'm not exactly sure (maybe someone could help me here), but if you had a circular disk and were able to get the inside part of the disk revolving at almost the speed of light, the outside of the disk could be going faster than the speed of light. So if something was put on the inside of the disk and went in a straight line out from the center (towards the outside) the object would be going faster then the speed of light. I think anyway.

For an easy example, take an umbrella. If you were able to get an umbrella spinning at almost the speed of light, and then opened it up (and extended it), the outside part would then be spinning at over the speed of light. Now, any umbrella would probably fail and snap at such a speed, but I think it illustrates the idea well.

*Edit*: The more I think about it, the more I think it wouldn't work. Reason being is because the more you extend a rotating object, the higher the moment of inertia gets (I think). So it would require more energy to rotate it, and would never be able to supply enough to get the outside rotating faster than the speed of light. That's because of the current physics laws stating that traveling at faster then the speed of light requires infinite energy.