genghislegacy
Member
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Traveling faster then the speed of light?
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watdahel
Golden Member
I don't want to read 100+ posts so I'll just blabbe something out. Everytime an astronomy topic pops up I always turn into a genius. I like to think so anyway.
Now I refuse to be compliant and say that travelling at the speed of light is impossbile. I'm even willing to say that our entire knowledge-base of Science is riddled with errors if not altogether garbage. If we continue to be compliant we may simply reach a dead end.
Regarding the light speed limit, our intuition would say that if a car travelling forward with headlights on, then the speed of the photons emitting from the headlights equals the light speed + car speed, but the accepted science tells us this is wrong. Are we really?
As history has shown it takes a special mind, someone willing to go beyond the realms of accepted facts and to think abstractly and convolutedly.
Recall, that Einstein swerved himself away from the rest of the science community during his quest to find a unified field theory. I would guess he did so in order to avoid tarnishing his thinking and ideas and come up with his own original concepts.
Now I refuse to be compliant and say that travelling at the speed of light is impossbile. I'm even willing to say that our entire knowledge-base of Science is riddled with errors if not altogether garbage. If we continue to be compliant we may simply reach a dead end.
Regarding the light speed limit, our intuition would say that if a car travelling forward with headlights on, then the speed of the photons emitting from the headlights equals the light speed + car speed, but the accepted science tells us this is wrong. Are we really?
As history has shown it takes a special mind, someone willing to go beyond the realms of accepted facts and to think abstractly and convolutedly.
Recall, that Einstein swerved himself away from the rest of the science community during his quest to find a unified field theory. I would guess he did so in order to avoid tarnishing his thinking and ideas and come up with his own original concepts.
Gibsons
Lifer
If you'd read the thread, there was at least one physics Ph.D speculating - in a fairly positive manner - about FTL travel. Of one sort or another.
Anyways, I don't think there's a lack of people looking for imaginitive and unconventional things. It's just that at the moment, for now, there doesn't seem a way around the speed of light. I don't think most physicists are very happy with the "standard model" for instance, but it's what we've got (cquark or others, please feel free to correct me here).
I believe that it is the imagination that is what wants us to overcome limitations. There is
nothing inherently wrong with that. How else do new ideas come about. We could go on
the whole zen approach and say that reality is defined by our perceptions of it. I am not
against that approach, but sometimes the logical portion of our mind requires some
concrete facts. Jist because I can imagine sonething does not make it something will be
proven correct (or vice versa).
Lets take gravity as an example, we know what effects can be experienced, jump up
while on the earth and you will come back down to the surface. When you accelerate
really fast you feel "heavier". Accelerate too fast and you could be crushed. Do we truly
know what makes gravity work and how to explain it. I would say no here. This does not
imply that there are not restrictions in how gravity works. The same could be said for
travelling faster than the speed of light. Just because we want to believe in speeds FTL
does not necessarily mean it will happen, perhaps there are limits in this universe.
Perhaps there are not. But as the old saying goes, if it looks like a duck, it smells like a
duck, and it quakes like a duck, it is probably a duck.
We perform this type of experiment daily in particle accelerators around the world. When you accelerate charged particles, they emit high-frequency light. No matter at what speed the charged particles are travelling, we always find that the light has a constant velocity.
However, there may be more subtle ways to travel faster than the speed of light. See my post on the previous page about the "warp drive" concept. It's a theoretical possibility.
exdeath
Lifer
Travel faster than light? No not really...
But by taking 'short cuts' by compressing the space in front of you and expanding it behind of you, you could get from point A to point B before a light beam starting at the same time could. Think of space as water, and instead of riding linearly through the water surface you skip across the peaks of the waves while light has to ?follow? the waves along the surface. Any given wave ?hop? your relative distance traveled and absolute speed would be very small, maybe just a few feet per second, but from wave peak to wave peak you only travel a few feet, versus having to ride the surface of the water between the peaks as light would have to in un-warped space. What would determine your ?velocity? then would be how much compression and expansion, or the frequency and amplitude of these distorted ?space waves.? Going 2c or 9c you are still moving at the same absolute speed of a few feet per second but the amount of ?skipped? space is increased, and is ultimately regulated by your ability to bend space around you (i.e. how powerful of a gravitational field can you develop to make the 'waves')
Extremely oversimplified explanation, but this is the idea behind space warping, space folding, field propulsion, etc.
For all intents and purposes, yes, you could say that you ?beat? light from point A to point B, and would technically be ?faster than light? in terms of travel time.
If only we could understand gravity and somehow unify it's phenomenon with the nuclear and electromagnetic forces we know (comparatively) so much about, because as we know it takes gravity to warp space.
For the TV people, grand unification is essentially what 'warp coils' are all about; using electromagnetic tools to manipulate gravitational fields by discovering if and how gravity and electromagnetism are related. The stuff in the movies is theoretically possibly, but movies cheat on two grounds: 1) assume gravity and electromagnetism are unified, 2) some exotic black boxed energy source that is deliberately vague or out of reach of current science.
But by taking 'short cuts' by compressing the space in front of you and expanding it behind of you, you could get from point A to point B before a light beam starting at the same time could. Think of space as water, and instead of riding linearly through the water surface you skip across the peaks of the waves while light has to ?follow? the waves along the surface. Any given wave ?hop? your relative distance traveled and absolute speed would be very small, maybe just a few feet per second, but from wave peak to wave peak you only travel a few feet, versus having to ride the surface of the water between the peaks as light would have to in un-warped space. What would determine your ?velocity? then would be how much compression and expansion, or the frequency and amplitude of these distorted ?space waves.? Going 2c or 9c you are still moving at the same absolute speed of a few feet per second but the amount of ?skipped? space is increased, and is ultimately regulated by your ability to bend space around you (i.e. how powerful of a gravitational field can you develop to make the 'waves')
Extremely oversimplified explanation, but this is the idea behind space warping, space folding, field propulsion, etc.
For all intents and purposes, yes, you could say that you ?beat? light from point A to point B, and would technically be ?faster than light? in terms of travel time.
If only we could understand gravity and somehow unify it's phenomenon with the nuclear and electromagnetic forces we know (comparatively) so much about, because as we know it takes gravity to warp space.
For the TV people, grand unification is essentially what 'warp coils' are all about; using electromagnetic tools to manipulate gravitational fields by discovering if and how gravity and electromagnetism are related. The stuff in the movies is theoretically possibly, but movies cheat on two grounds: 1) assume gravity and electromagnetism are unified, 2) some exotic black boxed energy source that is deliberately vague or out of reach of current science.
SonicIce
Diamond Member
ok so you say it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. what do you mean by travel? what is the point of reference? if space was empty and you were foating there, how do you measure how fast you are moving and how would you measure the speed of anything like light?
That's just the point, it does not matter what reference you are using; you can never go faster than c. If you are floating around in space you can for example use 3 stars as your frame of reference, or if you are on a ship you could use the ship itself as a frame of reference (to check at what speed everying else in universe is moving)
Measuring the speed of light is simple. Send a pulse down a long corridor, let it be reflected from a mirror and then detect the pulse as it gets back, measure the time.
It is actually quite easy and it is used sometimes done as a demonstration in school.
If the corridor is 50m long it will take 3e8/(2*50)=3 microseconds for the pulse to get back, that is easy to measure using an electronic timmer or an oscilloscope. You can easily perform the same experiment on a spaceship.
If you are in a train (at any speed) and you take a step forward you are only moving at the speed of that step relative to the train.
Alternatively, if you were to step outside the "lightspeed train" the energy required to move you at light speed would destroy you. you would never be able to make that step or even a train capable of it.
even if you placed a 5000 megaton nuke in your pants and assuming you could survive it you still would not travel at the speed of light.
firstimeposter
Junior Member
I don't know if this has been pointed out, but if you're in a train going at light-speed and you take a step forward, you are not going faster than light. Why? Because you're IN the object that is travelling at the speed of light. For example, while going on a train (a normal one), take an apple and throw it in the air. What happens? It falls in your hand. How come? Why didn't the apple travel backward and hit the guy behind you in the head? Because even though the apple is stationary to you in your hand, it is actually travelling. Following the same analogy, you will not travel faster than light if you take a step or jog inside the train.
imported_jb
Member
i want to file a complaint about the apple in SOL train or headlights on SOL car.
if you are driving down the road @ the Speed Of Light, and you Throw an apple at a roadsign ahead of you, the apple would have to be travelling faster than the speed of light. stick your hand out the window of a moving car, move it towards the front of the car. is it not moving faster than the car itself during that time?
if you are driving down the road @ the Speed Of Light, and you Throw an apple at a roadsign ahead of you, the apple would have to be travelling faster than the speed of light. stick your hand out the window of a moving car, move it towards the front of the car. is it not moving faster than the car itself during that time?
MetalStorm
Member
Someone please close this thread, everything that can be said has already been said and it's clear all the new posts are just saying the same things albeit in less detail than things that have already been said previously in the thread.
dude get ur facts rite...
Definitions of instant on the Web:
blink of an eye: a very short time (as the time it takes the eye blink or the heart to beat); "if I had the chance I'd do it in a flash"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
moment: a particular point in time; "the moment he arrived the party began"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
instantaneous: occurring with no delay; "relief was instantaneous"; "instant gratification"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
in or of the present month; "your letter of the 10th inst"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
clamant: demanding attention; "clamant needs"; "a crying need"; "regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous"- H.L.Mencken; "insistent hunger"; "an instant need"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
of this month.
www.genealogy.com/genealogy/Glossary/NEWGLO_I.html
[Legal] of this month, eg. "on the first instant"
freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~randyj2222/gendicti.html
This month. When used with dates "inst." or "instant" indicates the date occurred in the current month. Thus, the 5th instant indicates the 5th day of the current month. See Also: Ultimo.
www.city-net.com/~markd/dictionary/dictionary_i.htm
This is a spell Duration. Spells with a Instant duration are only momentarily magical, but leave a permanent non-magical effects. This has the same difficulty as casting at Permanent duration, but is a different Duration. (A formulaic spell will have one or other Duration; not a choice.) In many instances, even the designer of the spell will not have a choice as to whether to make a spell Instant or Permanent. Some types of effect can only be Permanent and never Instant.
www.quantal.demon.co.uk/saga/ooc/glossary.html
Latin word meaning ?current month?
www.ngsgenealogy.org/Resources/courseone/glossary/i.htm
A specific time.
www.kriss.re.kr/time/English/glossary.html
One of the basic spell types. Unless otherwise specified, instants where off at the end of your turn. Special abilities are also considered instants for purposes of timing.
www.com-www.com/mtg/glossary.html
To state it in simpler words, vector addition isn't exact, it's an approximation.
If you have a train going .9 * the speed of light and you throw a baseball at .9 * the speed of light, you can't directly add the two speeds to get 1.8 * the speed of light. This is where the Lorentz transform mentioned before comes in to play.
Simply put, a train going .9 * the speed of light that has a man that throws a baseball at .9 * the speed of light that has a flea on it that throws a pebble at .9 * the speed of light, that pebble still isn't going the speed of light. It will instead be .99999999999999999 * the speed of light because you can't simply use vector addition to find the final velocity.
If you have a train going .9 * the speed of light and you throw a baseball at .9 * the speed of light, you can't directly add the two speeds to get 1.8 * the speed of light. This is where the Lorentz transform mentioned before comes in to play.
Simply put, a train going .9 * the speed of light that has a man that throws a baseball at .9 * the speed of light that has a flea on it that throws a pebble at .9 * the speed of light, that pebble still isn't going the speed of light. It will instead be .99999999999999999 * the speed of light because you can't simply use vector addition to find the final velocity.
I think it is interesting that all of the consequences of special relativity (time dialation, length contraction, the lorentz transforms etc...) are based on the obersvation that light travels the same speed in every reference frame. Nothing predicts that this will happen, but many predictions are made based on this observation.
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