Traveling faster then the speed of light?

[Gibsons]

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.

nope, angular momentum will be conserved. Simple experiment: sit on a chair or stool that rotates. start it rotating and hold your hands close to your chest. While you and the chair are rotating extend your arms. You'll find that the speed of rotation slows down. You can pull your arms back in and speed back up, too.

 

[RichPLS]

You make quite a ballerina

 

[everman]

Originally posted by: 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.

Actually you can. Specific properties of an atom such as spin can be used to transmit data, just look up info on quantum computing.

It's not "that" simple though, but the basic premise that data can be transmitted via quantum entanglement seems to be valid.

 

[Farmer]

pakigang:

Are you like a modern day Descarte? God exists because we are imperfect? What is your point?

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Is it mathematically impossible to travel faster than the speed of light? I'm not sure what proof Einstein formed to come to this conclusion. Or is it an assumption?

 

[zugzoog]

Originally posted by: 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.

In all this you must remember that the measurement of the speed must be RELATIVE to an observer.

The space ship that you are referring to will be travelling at c-5 mph relative to someone measuring the speed of the space ship (a huge assumption, (looking at length contractions and time dilations of least 10 or more orders of magnitude, i.e 1 second to the observer is the same as 300 or more YEARS to you), but I will run with it).

When you jog forward at 5mph, you are jogging forward RELATIVE to the spaceship you are on, not to the observer. Because of the length contraction and time dilation at this speed, relative to the observer, the increase in speed (relative to the observer) due to your jogging will be infinitesimal and will not carry you over the speed of light.

 

[boatillo]

Nothing is impossible in a universe with no absolutes.

 

[boatillo]

Originally posted by: 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!

Atm it seems what existed before the "Big Bang" was an exact opposite of our current universe. This previous universe shrunk until it became what we know as the "Big Bang." From that point it spreads outward again to its maximum size where everything...flips? again

 

[flawlssdistortn]

Actually, math is the only absolute we have, as decendents from western thought. It's like an extension of human logic.

 

[kotss]

Originally posted by: 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.

Actually Farmer it is not a matter of mirrors. How do we actually see anything at all, we see the
reflections of light waves off of objects. If it were possible somehow to travel faster than the speed of
light you would be able to outrace the light waves and they would not "bounce off of you" to form the
image that others would see. While this is a similar idea to mirrors, I do not know where you came
up with a reference to mirrors in regards to what I said.

As per the World is not round, I am quite capable of fantasizing, but when you come back to the plane of
reality, you would find oh so much in physics utilizes the speed of light in many various calculations.
Plus the fact that even in particle accelerators, they cannot even get small particles to go the speed of
light, they can never supply enough energy. So when you come up with a theorey for traveling faster
than the speed of light for other than a tachyon, let me know. Once it has been rigourously verified I will
be the first to say "Gee, I was wrong in beleiving that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.".

I also am aware that even Einstein questioned things that were considered absolute and he saw things
differently. Is there a possibility that the speed of light might be exceeded someday, I guess it has a
probability, but I beleive it to be near zero. Too many observations verify that the speed of light is
constant in a vacuum. When dealing with quantum entanglement you might be seeing things that are
dealt with by string theorey. There could be organized and valid explanations without requiring the speed
of light to be "broken". Remember that event the atom is still a theorey. It is a good explanation for
observations but no one truly knows what lurks in the domain of "atoms".

 

[Farmer]

kotss:

A person that light does not bounce off of is a person that cannot be seen in a mirror.

"So when you come up with a theorey for traveling faster than the speed of light for other than a tachyon, let me know."

Well, if I'm still alive when that happens, I'll be sure to let you know.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: zugzoog

Originally posted by: 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.

In all this you must remember that the measurement of the speed must be RELATIVE to an observer.

The space ship that you are referring to will be travelling at c-5 mph relative to someone measuring the speed of the space ship (a huge assumption, (looking at length contractions and time dilations of least 10 or more orders of magnitude, i.e 1 second to the observer is the same as 300 or more YEARS to you), but I will run with it).

When you jog forward at 5mph, you are jogging forward RELATIVE to the spaceship you are on, not to the observer. Because of the length contraction and time dilation at this speed, relative to the observer, the increase in speed (relative to the observer) due to your jogging will be infinitesimal and will not carry you over the speed of light.

Yup. I just wanted to mess with some people's minds a little bit.

 

[Pohemi]

Originally posted by: 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.

I think it was about 2 yrs ago now, a couple of European scientists actually accelerated a beam of light (carrying data none the less) past the known and accepted speed of light. The way I understood the explanation, the beam actually finished being received at point B before it had completely left the point of origin, or point A. I would imagine this might be conceived as teleportation.

They achieved this by projecting the beam through a special high density sodium gas of some type. They stated that while they don't forsee ever being able to do this with solid matter, it could revolutionize communications and even computer hardware. Interesting thoughts... :shocked:

 

[Farmer]

Originally posted by: Pohemi420

Originally posted by: 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.

I think it was about 2 yrs ago now, a couple of European scientists actually accelerated a beam of light (carrying data none the less) past the known and accepted speed of light. The way I understood the explanation, the beam actually finished being received at point B before it had completely left the point of origin, or point A. I would imagine this might be conceived as teleportation.

They achieved this by projecting the beam through a special high density sodium gas of some type. They stated that while they don't forsee ever being able to do this with solid matter, it could revolutionize communications and even computer hardware. Interesting thoughts... :shocked:

Link?

 

[zugzoog]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: zugzoog

Originally posted by: 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.

In all this you must remember that the measurement of the speed must be RELATIVE to an observer.

The space ship that you are referring to will be travelling at c-5 mph relative to someone measuring the speed of the space ship (a huge assumption, (looking at length contractions and time dilations of least 10 or more orders of magnitude, i.e 1 second to the observer is the same as 300 or more YEARS to you), but I will run with it).

When you jog forward at 5mph, you are jogging forward RELATIVE to the spaceship you are on, not to the observer. Because of the length contraction and time dilation at this speed, relative to the observer, the increase in speed (relative to the observer) due to your jogging will be infinitesimal and will not carry you over the speed of light.

Yup. I just wanted to mess with some people's minds a little bit.

Study relativity and/or Quantum physics for a while, your mind will be messed up all right...

 

[f95toli]

Originally posted by: Pohemi420

Originally posted by: 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.

I think it was about 2 yrs ago now, a couple of European scientists actually accelerated a beam of light (carrying data none the less) past the known and accepted speed of light. The way I understood the explanation, the beam actually finished being received at point B before it had completely left the point of origin, or point A. I would imagine this might be conceived as teleportation.

They achieved this by projecting the beam through a special high density sodium gas of some type. They stated that while they don't forsee ever being able to do this with solid matter, it could revolutionize communications and even computer hardware. Interesting thoughts... :shocked:

I read about that experiment, the "sodium gas" wsa actually prepared so that it was in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BE coondensates have very peculiar optical properties). However, they did NOT transfer INFORMATION faster than the speed of light, quantum tunneling is a very interesting phenomena but you can not use it to transfer informstion FTL.

 

[Pohemi]

It was quite a while ago when I originally read about the experiment, and I'm still trying to find a link to information about it. I could've sworn that the beam was carrying data of some type, but I may be mistaken. Maybe I'll try to Google Bose-Einstein. In any case, thanks for the correction.

I just did a search on BEC's, and after reading a little about it, I'm not entirely sure it's the same medium they had used in the experiment. BEC's have been used to extremely slow or even freeze a beam of light in transition, but this experiment had been used to accelerate the beam past the speed of light. Any comments?

 

[zugzoog]

Originally posted by: flawlssdistortn
Actually, math is the only absolute we have, as decendents from western thought. It's like an extension of human logic.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (1917) ch. 4
English author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)

 

[Pohemi]

OK...dig in:

Teleportation


After reading some more, I've come to conclude that this teleportation was acheived by quantum entanglement, and not by accelerating a laser beam beyond the speed of light as I previously believed.
Sorry for the confusion.

 

[f95toli]

No, they did not teleport matter; they teleported the quantum STATE of the atom. not the atom itself.
And no, you can not use this to transfer information FTL.

 

[zugzoog]

Originally posted by: kotss

Originally posted by: 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.

Actually Farmer it is not a matter of mirrors. How do we actually see anything at all, we see the
reflections of light waves off of objects. If it were possible somehow to travel faster than the speed of
light you would be able to outrace the light waves and they would not "bounce off of you" to form the
image that others would see. While this is a similar idea to mirrors, I do not know where you came
up with a reference to mirrors in regards to what I said.

As per the World is not round, I am quite capable of fantasizing, but when you come back to the plane of
reality, you would find oh so much in physics utilizes the speed of light in many various calculations.
Plus the fact that even in particle accelerators, they cannot even get small particles to go the speed of
light, they can never supply enough energy. So when you come up with a theorey for traveling faster
than the speed of light for other than a tachyon, let me know. Once it has been rigourously verified I will
be the first to say "Gee, I was wrong in beleiving that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.".

I also am aware that even Einstein questioned things that were considered absolute and he saw things
differently. Is there a possibility that the speed of light might be exceeded someday, I guess it has a
probability, but I beleive it to be near zero. Too many observations verify that the speed of light is
constant in a vacuum. When dealing with quantum entanglement you might be seeing things that are
dealt with by string theorey. There could be organized and valid explanations without requiring the speed
of light to be "broken". Remember that event the atom is still a theorey. It is a good explanation for
observations but no one truly knows what lurks in the domain of "atoms".

I agree that eventually there may be some way of sending matter faster than the speed of light. There is so much that we do not understand about the universe.

But getting back to the OP's question, I am sure that we will not acheive it by trying to make normal matter go faster. It might occur by changing the matter into something else and then sending it, or by "encapsulating" the matter in an altered space, or something else that has not been thought of before.

 

[phr0m]

Well i see i have gottne a lot of people to read this, which i am really glad some poeple have the same questions about this thing as i do, but here is something
what if you bent the light rays around something so it didnt reflect off of the object..... would that object be invisible?

 

[Pohemi]

Originally posted by: f95toli
No, they did not teleport matter; they teleported the quantum STATE of the atom. not the atom itself.
And no, you can not use this to transfer information FTL.

As opposed to data, what they transfered was information about the quantum state of an ion. If you measure or analyze the quantum state of one atom and then replicate it in another atom, is that atom then an exact duplicate of the original? How the hell did they do it? :shocked:

 

[zugzoog]

Originally posted by: phr0m
Well i see i have gottne a lot of people to read this, which i am really glad some poeple have the same questions about this thing as i do, but here is something
what if you bent the light rays around something so it didnt reflect off of the object..... would that object be invisible?

If the object was at 0deg Kelvin you wouldn't be able to see the object directly. You might be able to infer that an object existed (e.g. the discovery of objects by gravitational lensing link1 link2)

At any other temperature the object would be emitting radiation (refer Black body theory link1 link2 )

If the body is emitting raditation you will be able to "see" (or detect, if you will) the object. You might need an infra red or other dectector to do so, however as the eye only picks up the visible spectrum.

 

[zugzoog]

Note that black body radiation is one of the core concepts that lead to the development of Quantam physics.