Wooo Hoo!!!

Einstein may have been wrong, and that traveling faster than the speed of light, just [i]might[/i] be possible.



I always had a feeling that this may have been the case since I first had to go over Einstein's equations (line by line) in High School and College. Don't know why, but it just felt like it was [i]to[/i] perfect. Nature loves chaos.

Many things from this age were wrong.
Light can be controled by gravity, faster, slower, Bent.
I don't belive humans will ever travel faster than the speed of light though, we will kill each other off first, some new discovery will end us yet.

Umm...I may be wrong, but I don't see how this is anything new.  Many people have suggested that various universal constants may have actually been something different in the past, and I don't understand how that has any effect on special relativity.  Even if the speed of light is gradually decreasing how does that invalidate TSR?  From my, possibly naive, understanding, a decreasing light speed constant just means that our theoretical maximum velocity is also decreasing.  The energy needed to approach the speed of light grows asymptotically regardless of what it is...right?  So if c decreases from 3x10^8 m/s to say 3x10^7 m/s, then I think all that means is the asymptote has shifted downward so we are limited even further.

I am very wary of these "breaking news" science articles.  A few weeks ago I read one about some people claiming to have found a problem with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  When dealing with a few particles at cool temperatures they observed a brief (I think on the order of nanoseconds) decrease in entropy.  Even from my brief encounter with thermodynamics in an introductory physics class, I already knew that that could happen.  The 2nd law is a statistical one.  If I have four particles bouncing around in a box, at any one time a particle has a probability of .5 of being in the left half.  At that same time, there is a probability of (.5)^4 = .0625 that all four particles are in the same half.  At any instant, that is the probability that the entropy would decrease due to the box shrinking to half its previous size....  Big deal.  I don't know who was funding the jokers but I think they could spend their money better elsewhere.  I am not as certain about these supposed findings, but I suspect something similar.

yeah, what he said [;)]

Don't tell M60nato308.

Sounds like Murphy's Law at work to me.

I think that we are slowing finding out, through experimental physics, that things are not as neat and pretty as we once thought it was.

The universe is still to huge and with all that is going on out there, we can't, and haven't, found the difinative equations that explain everything.

Our current equations are based on limited knowledge, hense they can't explain and define everything. As we learn and play around with more, things will [b]have[/b] to be rewritten.

We are coming to a new era of scientific enlightenment. And I think it is going to be fun!! We are going to find that if we can dream it, we will find away to create it. Warp bubbles, FTL, antigravity, etc are coming (whether you like it or not) [:D] Although it may not be in my life time... but you never know...

Not surprising.
It was only a few years ago when the speed of sound was adjusted because of a small mathematical error. It was ASSUMED to be correct all these years.
The difference isn't all that much.
But enough to prove that things shouldn't be so readily taken for granted.

186,000 miles persecond ...
It's not just a good idea ...
It's the law...

well that is until they started to have fuel shortages.. so now light can't travel as fast as it used to ...

What with... unleaded light ... not as much octane... too much ping ...

ohhhh .. the pain boss .. the pain...

Ted...

I don't agree that most will need to be rewritten--just adjusted for more general cases.  Take Newton's laws for example, written well over 300 years ago; after 200 years people finally figured out that they were only approximations, valid for speeds much less than the speed of light.  To be accurate in more general cases, Einstein and others said you need to use the lorentz transformations.  I am confident that more things will be discovered that need to be accounted for in various equations, but even now, Newton's laws are still valid for everyday life.  I don't see how they would ever need to be rewritten, as we see the truth of them in everything we do.


Hey, I'm all for FTL, I just don't believe it is possible in our familiar 3-dimensional (4 if you like) space.  I don't believe we can reach the speed of light by attaching larger and larger rockets to our ships--but I still believe it is possible through other means, just waiting to be discovered (i.e. some sort of dimensional travel).  I don't understand why so many people get disappointed (as I did) when they learn about TSR.  So what, we can't reach the speed of light in the traditional sense--we'll just have to do it some other way.  And I think we will.

How so?  The speed of sound was proven experimentally every time someone went supersonic.  Did the theoretical results not agree with the proven speeds?

New law from Gray Davis...All light rays must now be equipped with a speed governors. Too many people are getting skin cancer, need to slow it down a bit. It's the suns fault.

They are refering to the speed of light in a vacuum, which is constant. The speed of light does change when passing through a material of some sort. The difference is that sound always travels through a medium, but light can travel through either a medium or through a vacuum.

I don't get it. I keep lookin in my vacuum and I don't see any light. Does it have to be on? I turned it on and almost sucked my eye out. I still don't think I saw any light. What gives?

Light is something like 800 miles per second faster in space than in Earth's atmosphere. NOT VERY CONSTANT CONSTANT.....

Scott

Sorry, I forgot the disclaimer: Physics experiments are done by highly trained scientists under carefully controlled conditions. Do not try them at home, you'll suck your eye out.

Did somebody call me?

Sounds typical...every couple of years physicists need to 'invent' some new particle and or theory that bridges the gap between their current 'equations' and reality [whacko]

I believe there was an experiment a few years ago involving lasers, supercooling, and other gizmos in which photons (light) were slowed to a propagation speed of a couple of miles per hour.  So much for a constant c. [rolleyes]

we will never travel faster than light. we will cheat and beat light to the destination. startrek's warpdrive "Bends" space so 2 far points are closer. the faster the warp speed the more significant the "bend". star wars /Bab5's Hyperspace is a subdimension that they travel through which is smaller than the normal space dimension.

i belive we will one day make a FTL drive that cheats. its human nature to cheat.

Of course the speed of light isn't constant through different mediums, that's how prisms work.  But it is constant through the same medium, and the standard reference is in a vacuum.

Or the new model of Porsche is out and they need another infusion of research fund. [:)]

Does this mean we will all be ruled by damn, dirty apes!

It isn't, in the same way the speed of sound isn't.  The speed of sound depends on the density and temperature of the media, just as the speed of light depends on the properties of its media.  The speed of light isn't constant--that's why lenses work (refraction).  The point of this article is that the speed of light [b]in vacuum[/b] may have previously been more than what it currently is, as has been suggested for quite some time, AFAIK.

Certain theories say there are.  The problem is, as a result of special relativity, there is no way for us to ever detect them.

Actually it is, considering that the actual different is something like a hundredth of a percent.  If A moves 20 m/s faster than B, there isn't much difference if B is moving at 100 million meters per second.

Again, the light speed constant refers to the speed of light in vacuum.

[:D]


See SNorman's post.  Obviously the speed of light is different in different media, otherwise people with glasses would have to do without.



Unfortunately, yes.  There is no avoiding it.

Why all this hoopla about the speed of light when everyone knows that fastest obtainable speed in the universe is Ludicrous Speed.

Light is said to move in 'waves' kinda like solar wind. Solar wind is said to be able to 'move' objects which are set-up to 'catch' this solar wind like a sail. This to me would mean that light may have properties alomost like that of a gaseous state.

What happens when the lightwaves hit each other head-on from two different sources? Do they slow each other down a bit?...

LMAO

That was in NO way a scientific hypothesis.

If a black hole can suck light into it, then the velocity of the gravitational pull from the hole must be faster than the speed of light,...er,,, I think....

I sometimes use fiber optic (OTDR) test equipment which has settings to compensate for the speed of light through different densities of glass.

Did anyone ever find Schroedinger's cat?

I think his cat was killed on an Arizona highway a couple of years ago, by some guy who attached a rocket to the roof of his car.

Good thinking, but the stronger the gravitational field of the luminous object the less visible light it will produce. Only those higher energy waves will escape, and the bluer the star will appear. In other words all stars produce white light. Some are red or blue or something in between because of the differing degrees of energy the stars themselves are expending. Red is low energy, blue is high. Near a black hole the only light that will have the energy to escape is in the very high wavelengths- blue, UV, Xrays. If a star has a high gravitational field, it won't matter how energetic it is, only the higher wavelengths will escape, and it will appear blue to your eyes. The average speed of the wavelengths, light speed,  remains the same, but the energy levels of the photon "packets/wavicles" is greather in Hertz. Get it?

hahahahahaha

Again, the light speed constant refers to the speed of light in vacuum.

Zonan has his stuff together on this topic.

Almost all of the time dilation arguments as of late have been associated with quasars. I find it funny that red shift calculations due to regression velocities apply to an phenomenon that supposedly feeds energy from a gravitational rift.
Although I am not a supporter of Einstein, I would not be so apt to change modern physics based off of second hand observations from a distant object yet not understood.

If you're livin in a bubble and have'nt got a care..... well your gonna be in trouble cuz we're gonna steal your air.  cuz what you got is what we need, and all we do is dirty deeds.. WE'RE THE SPACEBALLS!

Outstanding! Well said. I have said things similar to this before and been given much grief for it among some condensed matter heads and a few guys who don't know condensed matter but beilieve everything begins and ends with quantam theory. Of course it does, but you get my drift.