[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Faster than light..... (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 11/19/2005 8:42:05 AM EDT
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Do you think we'll ever be able to break the FTL barrier, either physically or in terms of communications? If we don't, I'm afraid a large number of SF fans (like me) are going to be a might disappointed. 
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Phyiscally going faster than light involves the tricky part about having 0 mass. So, no. However, communications may be possible. Right now scientists can "teleport" the state of a particle, or something like that. Particles can effect each other at great distance and all that. If that works, you might be able to transmit information that way. Long distance travel is going to require something very radical. Wormholes, multidimensional physics, etc. Something weird. |
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For the record, I don't buy that either is impossible. Yeah, I know all about the proof that Einstein provided, and while the man was quite obviously brilliant, we must remember that he completely transformed a universe that had been described by others who were obviously brilliant. In other words, it may be possible, but it will take a breakthrough in physics that we simply cannot even imagine right now. |
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the solution is time travel. for example, say we want to send a mission to someplace a couple of light-years away, and we want to get it there today. step 1: mission planning. step 2: time travel the vehicle back to several years ago, and launch the mission. step 3: on board the vehicle, time travel forward to 19nov 2005. this gets around all the crap associated with the massive amounts of gravity needed to bend the spacetime continuum. in fact, it might already be in effect in the future, which would explain a number of UFO sightings. guess we need to work on those present/future tense formations, so we'll have the correct grammar to describe the whole thing. 
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| Wasn't there something about splitting electrons and whatever affected one part of the split electron also simultaneously and equally affected the other part, no matter where located? Seems to be a method of instant communications could be worked out from this. |
You just need a stargate. PS I justed wanted to use that cool smilie. www.thescifiworld.net/smilies_stargatesg1_maincast.htm |
That's what we need |
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But does gravity really travel at no less than 20 billion times the speed of light? Interesting reads. www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/speed_limit.asp |
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Here is a thought to chew on...if a human was capable of inventing a mechanism that was capable of motion or transmission faster than the speed of light, how could the results of testing be observed? Lets just assume that a radio transmission (or some other propagating signal) was able to breech the currently accepted value for c (c=speed of light)...in what way could we measure this? Before dismissing the thought, seriously consider what tools we have that could sample in time constants even approaching c. The first thing to come to my mind would be a capture scope that could display a transmission and recieve wave...more specifically, set a threshold to indicate the leading edge of the wave and then the trailing edge as it passes. Thing is, what do we have in our arsenal of measurement devices that could provide sampling at that speed? Think about it....if we are testing a equipment that is proposed to break c, it stands to reason that we have not yet broken c.....that being the case, we cannot possibly have any device that could sample that quickly, for if we did, we would already have broken through the c barrier. (the concept here being that a measurement device would need to detect a speed equal or greater than c by having circuitry capable of keeping pace with the experimental speeds) Maybe I am just hitting a wall on this one, but I still think that without a significant breakthrough that allows us to understand beyond that which is currently understood to be scientific law (or even widely accepted traditional theory) we cannot have tools to measure something that would have been requisite to developing the measuring device in the first place. |
They are called "complementary pairs". |
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I am sure we will someday. The quesiton is whether that day is 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years from now. One of the things about these physics models is that, while they aren't perfect, they tend to improve in evolutions, not revolutions. For example, Einstein's General Realitivity is the next advancement beyond Newton's Laws of Gravitation, but we still use Newton's law for most tasks. Einstein's theory more clarified some tricky details, rather then totally invalidated Newton's theory. From what I know, most space travel calculations still use Newton's laws, because applying General Realitivity is very complex, and doesn't get you much better accuracy. Now with that in mind, General Realitivity describes some really off-the wall things with regard to the behavior of time at extreme speeds and distances. Considering the above, how these theories have proven basically true as far as we can test things here on Earth, and how things like that don't usually get thrown out with future discoveries, I am doubtful whether it's practical to have the kind of interplanetary interaction that takes place in mist Sci-Fi. |
If FTL travel is possible will the onboard lights work? 
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Actually, faster than light travel is possible, it's transitioning through light speed that defies physics. If you define "faster-than-light" travel as getting from Point A to Point B faster than a photon can, then yes, I think we'll figure something out. If you mean "accelerating a ship from rest to faster than the speed of light" then no, I think we've pretty definitively proven that physics prohibits that. Others have mentioned quantum mechanics, and I'm sure we'll discover some other strange things, but I am quite convinced that there must be some way to travel interstellar distances in a reasonable period of time. We just have to figure out how. |
| I am fairly certain there's a technological workaround that will allow us to have apparent FTL travel at some point. I couldn't tell you how, but I think it will happen. We won't necessarily travel through 3-dimensional space FTL, but I think we'll figure something out, assuming we survive as a species. |
Its called "Quantum Entanglement" Very, VERY weird... It seems to point to the fact that there is some kind of super-luminal exchange of information... Other neat stuff possible with it...If you quantumly entangle your fuel, you can leave the engine at home, put half of your propellant on your spaceship...and it will function as reaction mass, without an engine onboard! Because what you do to one half will effect the other in the same manner...so, you can accelerate the half of the fuel at home, and the other half on the spaceship, no matter where in this universe it is, will also be accelerated... Mind-boggling... |
or a "correlated binary"--the basis for the idea of superluminal communication. the hypothesis is that information must be able to travel instantly, according to the HPR thought experiment. |
There already was a time when the FTL barrier was broken. Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Before that event, breaking the FTL "barrier" was a routine thing.  Maybe it will be again some day. 
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+1 It is impossible to go AT light speed, not above it. As you approach the speed of light, it will take infinite energy to speed you up, as your mass increases infinently, thus you can never get to light speed if you have mass. If you could somehow figure out how to hop over the speed of light entirely, and get faster than it, it would take LESS energy to speed up. Basically, as you lose energy, you go faster and faster. The downside, it takes more and more energy to slow down, and the required energy to slow down would reach infinity as you approach light speed again. |
 We have successfully traveled eons across both space and time through the Fargate -- to get free cable. |
Light travels at 188,000 m/s in free space. If all that BS is true then how does light travel that fast? It is photons and has mass itself ya know. If your theory is true then light can't travel 188,000 m/s since it has mass. Shok |
Yes. Current theories are that gravity is a result of "mass" curving "space/time. Once they finally wrap their heads around the idea that m-brane space/time encompasses between 3 and 7 more dimensions than Einsteinian 4-D space/time, things oughta shake out pretty quickly. Especially since some of the new evidence is that the mass projection of gravity into our 4-D obsevable Universe is only one of the 4 dimensions Gravity works in. Why? Because then we start dealing with manipulating 7- or 11-D space/time which would allow for a Unified Field theory that would include a static inertial field that would allow hyperluminal movement in relation to the local reference frame. You could make it to Alpha Centuari in an afternoon, but you could not come back to your original starting point before you left. Your "relative" time would still be linear. edited for minor finger fumblage |
Photons have no mass. math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photon_mass.html That "BS" is Einstein's relativity, and has been experimentally verified time after time. |
All true, but just as photons have no mass, they do behave like particles, which do. Remember that gravity (which is a force between masses) can bend a light beam. That may be the chink in the armor where someone finds a workaround. 
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 Also, seriously: Everything that can be invented has been invented. - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899 Therefore, in my opinion, is FTL possible? Yes, you bet! |
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What happens when you hit things at greater than the speed of light? Just simple things like dust and other space junk. Will nuclear reactions occure? I beleive even if light speed or faster than light travel becomes realised it likely shouldn't be done. Just how much force is imparted on objects at that speed? Like blackholes, they have so much force that the molecules that make up whatever is being consumed are strecthed from each other. Would the ship be compressed as it accelerated to and past the speed of light? As earlier said, "transporting" from on place to another seems to be the best way to travel great distances. Who want's to try some "spooky action at a distance" with me 
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FWIW, the terms "Warp Drive" and "Hyperdrive" will most likely be a reality one day, simply because the drive will have to make nature as we know it go and take a coffee break while we skitter across the universe in reckless disregard for her rules. Don't like the rules in this universe? Warp it into the shape you need and BINGO! You go first.
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If we did figure out how to travel faster than light, how are we going to maneuver and navigate? We don't have the slightest clue where every rock in the universe is located and who's to say we don't FTL the ship right into a large asteroid or unknown planetary body? A whole lot of things will have to come together before FTL travel will be possible without killing the crew. |
Big deal. I drove to work faster than the speed of light.  Read this:"An experiment by Danish physicist Dr. Lene Vestergaard Hau has reportedly slowed down light to a speed of 38 miles per hour. The technique may have numerous technological applications." Link to story Faster then light? No problem. It is slowing down anyway. From CBS News today: Speed of light is slowing down |
Cracking Gravity is the key. You crack that property of mass and you not only can kill inertia, but you can find any other piece of mass out there in real time. Contrast this to finding things via light/EM spectrum that only shows where far away stuff was millions of years ago. |
Gravity travels at....you guessed it the speed of light. We may find a way around it all some day but something actually shooting through space at lightspeed I do not believe possible. If we can open doors into other dimensions then perhaps. MO on gravity FWIW(not much), is that it is simply a property of matter to distort time space around it and lead to what we perceive to be gravity. I do not believe that anything such as a graviton exists. |
186,282.397 miles/second or 299,792,458 meters/second to be a bit more accurate.  ETA: I believe the reason is that photons are massless or nearly massless particles of energy that are propagated (created) at c. Since it is never accelerated to c, it does not violate the rule. |
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Gravity is faster than light. Gravity, and its effects, are nearly instantaneous. If you could 'remove' the moon, its loss would propagate almost instantaneously. Therefore, if you could build a device that could detect differences in the gravity effect from a known object, and then move the object, its motion would be transmitted measurably instantaneously. The trick is not the object, or moving it. The trick is detecting the effect at great distances. And, also, detecting/effecting it motion in a manner that could transmit information. TRG PS. some articles about the speed of gravity and its effect. www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html |