Space, heat and faster than light travel

[theridane]

(...) during the Big Bang that velocities might have exceeded faster that light speed.

So what? It's not like actual particles were moving FTL, just the space itself.

Also, you linked to the wrong video.

 

[MeteorWayne]

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... 00308.html

Warp Speed Will Kill You

"Edelstein's work showed that a starship traveling at just 99 percent of the speed of light would get a radiation dose from hydrogen of 61 sieverts per second, when just one tenth of that number of sieverts would deliver a fatal dose for humans. And that's not even the 99.999998 percent of light-speed necessary to make the journey to the center of the Milky Way in 10 years

At the higher speed, the human crew of a starship would experience something like getting struck by the high-energy proton beam from the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. On top of killing the crew, such powerful levels of energy would also likely destroy the starship electronics.

"I'm not claiming this is a brilliant new discovery or anything," Edelstein told SPACE.com. "I'm just saying that it's interesting

 

[dryson]

Sorry for the wrong link and I still do not believe that space itself is actually moving. If space itself was actually the thing that moving this would suggest that during the big bang that space also resulted from the big bang. I for one do not believe this as it allows dogma to be introduced. What I do believe in however is that we can never be for certain how space came to be and if we allow dogma to tell us that before the big bang there was nothing then how are supposed to leap beyond this type of logic?

And by space I mean the actuall nothingess that was around prior to any big bang. So if space resulted from the Big Bang then there had to be more space around which space was formed in. This leads into dogmatic paradoxes that are better suited for scienctific philosophers to ponder and run around in circles about.

 

[dryson]

At the higher speed, the human crew of a starship would experience something like getting struck by the high-energy proton beam from the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. On top of killing the crew, such powerful levels of energy would also likely destroy the starship electronics.

I am not disagreeing with this, however the LHC acclerates the protons forcefully. In space how would these atoms and protons be accelerated to the velocites that they are accelerated by CERN? They wouldn't because CERN is not present to acclerate the particles. The next question I have is are the particles like the proton present in space and do they behave in the same manner that they behave in the LHC?

The only problem that I think that we need to get around is being able to repel these particles in space. The faster that the ship travels the field that I have mentioned would repel the particles away from the hull including any that may penetrate the hull killing the humans and damaging the electronics.
Has a way been found yet to repel the types of particles that a ship traveling to light speed may encounter in space?

 

[origin]

Sorry for the wrong link and I still do not believe that space itself is actually moving. If space itself was actually the thing that moving this would suggest that during the big bang that space also resulted from the big bang. I for one do not believe this as it allows dogma to be introduced. What I do believe in however is that we can never be for certain how space came to be and if we allow dogma to tell us that before the big bang there was nothing then how are supposed to leap beyond this type of logic?

And by space I mean the actuall nothingess that was around prior to any big bang. So if space resulted from the Big Bang then there had to be more space around which space was formed in. This leads into dogmatic paradoxes that are better suited for scienctific philosophers to ponder and run around in circles about.

You have demonstrated several misconceptions about the big bang and the expasion of space. Read this article. It is easy to read and very informative.

 

[origin]

I am not disagreeing with this, however the LHC acclerates the protons forcefully. In space how would these atoms and protons be accelerated to the velocites that they are accelerated by CERN? They wouldn't because CERN is not present to acclerate the particles. The next question I have is are the particles like the proton present in space and do they behave in the same manner that they behave in the LHC?

Your confusion here comes from the fact that all that matters is the relative velocity. It does not matter if a proton is 'shot' through you at 95% the speed of light or you fly through a stationary proton at 95% the speed of light there will be the same amount of damage to your body.

Here is a more concrete example. Imagine getting hit with a 'bean ball' thrown by a major league pitcher at 90 mph. Ouch!
Now if the same baseball was hung on a string and motionless and you had a 'friend' driving you at 90 mph and you hung your head out of the window so that your head hits the motionless baseball it will hurt just as much as the thrown pitch.

Get it?

AND kids don't try this at home....

 

[dryson]

The two points are not the same relevance as you suggest. One has you getting hit by a pitcher most likey on a calf or part of the arm, aiming for the head is illegal. The experiment should have been phrased like so:

You are standing still and a MLP throws a fastball 90 mph and strikes you in the leg just above the knee.
A baseball is strung to a pole and you are accelerated to 90 mph and you strike the ball on your leg just above the knee.

This is the only way to achieve a similar result to test the theory as you state, otherwise the results are corrupted and not able to be used in a matching system of results as getting hit one place would cause a different event then getting hit in the other. trust me I know this for a fact as the only way i could get on base when playing little league baseball was getting hit by the pitch, I had a slight depth perception problem or was it the fact that I liked watching the thread on the ball spin around after it left the pitchers hand, who knows.

 

[MeteorWayne]

The two points are not the same relevance as you suggest. One has you getting hit by a pitcher most likey on a calf or part of the arm, aiming for the head is illegal. The experiment should have been phrased like so:

You are standing still and a MLP throws a fastball 90 mph and strikes you in the leg just above the knee.
A baseball is strung to a pole and you are accelerated to 90 mph and you strike the ball on your leg just above the knee.

.

Again, not understanding physics. The results on the impact point would be the same. It's not a theory, it's 5th grade physics.

 

[dryson]

I do not believe that whooey about the Universe expanding either. If the Universe is expanding and a majority of the Universe is space where only energetic reactions take place where space can neither be affected upon or affect upon an energetic reaction then the Universe cannot be expanding like in the balloon theory as this would suggest as this would suggest space is an energetic body that can affect upon and be affected upon by other energetic reactions.

If the Universe is expanding which includes space then what is on the edge of space? Do we fall off into more space of exacting properties of our space? If space , which is the Universe, is expanding and the Universe itself is infinite then what would happen if our leading edge of space encountered another exotic form of space from a different space that was not ours? If both of these leading edges are traveling at 100 times the speed of light would their interactions be a cataclysmic end to both Universes or would it create a tear in the fabric of space itself?

That's why i believe that the Universe is infinite and space itself is not expanding but only our knowledge of what is contained in space and the strings of space at the quantum levels. If space was expanding then the leading edge could be likened to how the electron from a hydrogen atom and it's nucleus function.

The researchers believed the differing results were because of how the hydrogen moves. They speculated that the hydrogen diffused via a two-step process. A hydrogen atom has two parts: a positive nucleus and a negative electron. In diffusion, the lone electron nimbly hops over to the new location first. Then, the larger nucleus hefts itself to the new location.

 

[dryson]

So the edge of the Universe or our space could actually be acting like a hydrogen atom where the electron is being forcedto move to a new location and the remaining nucleus then follows suite behind the electron thus explaining the universe expanding outwards or maybe the result is because of the outward release of energy that sent all of the atoms out into space at very high rates of speed. One of these theories is correct which one is can only be discovered by leaping past what we already know by using what we already know about how atoms move to apply it to how the Universe expands.

...and no the results would not be the same as getting hit in the head with a fastball traveling 90 mph would most likely kill the batter whereas getting hit in the leg or arm might see the pitcher get his butt whooped on by 8 other team members. Still want to throw that pitch?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Your beliefs are entertaining, but do not correlate with the physics of our universe.

 

[MeteorWayne]

...and no the results would not be the same as getting hit in the head with a fastball traveling 90 mph would most likely kill the batter whereas getting hit in the leg or arm might see the pitcher get his butt whooped on by 8 other team members. Still want to throw that pitch?

Great sports speculation, but as usual, has nothing to do with physics.

 

[dryson]

Your beliefs are entertaining, but do not correlate with the physics of our universe.

You mean the physics that you grew up with? Physics will change ever two years now because transistors double every two years allowing faster production of transistors are well as creating new and better transistors. I would say in maybe 10 to 15 years we could possibly be accelerating to almost 3/4 times the speed of light. This is 2010 not the turn of the 19th century.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Your beliefs are entertaining, but do not correlate with the physics of our universe.

You mean the physics that you grew up with? Physics will change ever two years now because transistors double every two years allowing faster production of transistors are well as creating new and better transistors. I would say in maybe 10 to 15 years we could possibly be accelerating to almost 3/4 times the speed of light. This is 2010 not the turn of the 19th century.

What the heck does Moore's law have to do with breakthroughs in Physics.

 

[yevaud]

What the heck does Moore's law have to do with breakthroughs in Physics.

Yes, I'd like to know too. Well, at least you got the modified time period for Moore's Law right.

And btw, it is fairly well-known that scientific development and breakthrough has followed a very different scenario than yours since about the latter 1940s. That is consists of steep rises, followed by periods (level plateaus) of almost no real development (while the next series of crucial breakthroughs are discovered or developed) - and then another slope.

Finally, as to your rosy scenario of such scientific heights in, and I quote, "ten to fifteen years," that is extraordinarily unlikely.

 

[origin]

He didn't actually state Moores law. He simply said that transitors double every 2 years. I am not sure if transistors get twice as large every 2 years or the number doubles every 2 years. It will be easy to know however, if in 2 years your computer gets much faster it means the number of transistors is increasing, if on the other hand your computer stops working and you find your CPU has burst open then the size doubled.

Oops, if the size of the transistors is constant then a doubling in the number will also burst open the CPU. Darn this science stuff is really hard.

 

[halman]

I have always wondered what happens to mass which falls into a black hole. If the mass were already traveling at many kilometers per second, straight towards the hole, it would not be swung around the event horizon, but would simply fall straight in.

So the mass is being accelerated by the gravity of the black hole. What happens if the mass exceeds the speed of light? This must be possible, unless some policeman were to pull it over and write it a ticket.

Does the mass jump out of this universe, to re-enter somewhere else? Could this explain the jets shooting out of the cores of some galaxies? It just seems to me that the gravity well of a black hole is so steep that things falling straight down it are likely to be accelerated beyond relativistic speeds. Would the mass be converted to energy? Would it be converted in space/time?

 

[origin]

I have always wondered what happens to mass which falls into a black hole. If the mass were already traveling at many kilometers per second, straight towards the hole, it would not be swung around the event horizon, but would simply fall straight in.

So the mass is being accelerated by the gravity of the black hole. What happens if the mass exceeds the speed of light? This must be possible, unless some policeman were to pull it over and write it a ticket.

Does the mass jump out of this universe, to re-enter somewhere else? Could this explain the jets shooting out of the cores of some galaxies? It just seems to me that the gravity well of a black hole is so steep that things falling straight down it are likely to be accelerated beyond relativistic speeds. Would the mass be converted to energy? Would it be converted in space/time?

That is an interesting point to consider, but fortunately we do not have to worry about it. Mass never exceeds the speed of light. Once anything crosses the event horizon it is gone. We can no longer get any information from it. Problem solved.

But it would intuitively seem that if the event horizon of a black hole was say 5 km in diameter then if there was a mass that entered the event horizon it would continue to accelerate towards the center of the black hole. But lets not forget that at the event horizon the gravity is so strong that time essentially stands still. Maybe at the intense of a gravity field maybe quantum affects come into play and the difference between mass and energy breakdown - I don't know. Mass and event horizons are very confusing to me, I mean if time essentially stops for a mass at the event horizon then how does anything enter the black hole?

Well that should completely clear up the question for you. :?

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Once anything crosses the event horizon it is gone. We can no longer get any information from it. Problem solved.

This made me think of something I hadn't thought of before. Take an entangled pair of particles ... ahh crap, nvm , already see the problem :lol:

Well, here's what I was gonna say anyhow. Take an entangled pair of particles where normally, once you measure the spin on one, you instantly know the spin on the other, whether they're 2 feet apart or 2 million light years apart. I was just thinking what if one of the particles fell into a Black Hole? Afterwards you measure the other and get spin up. Does that mean the one inside the Balck Hole is spin down, and therefore you succesfully obtained information about mass that was inside a Black Hole.

But mass falling into a Black Hole would be an example of decoherence - they're no longer entangled, so the whole point is moot.

Still makes one wonder if there isn't a way around this. I guess that's why there is the information paradox, which I believe is still unsolved?

 

[darkmatter4brains]

I mean if time essentially stops for a mass at the event horizon then how does anything enter the black hole?

Hi origin,

That's because time would only stop relative to an observer on the outside of the Black Hole. For the mass (hopefully not a person) passing through the event horizon of a black hole, time would seem like it's going by at it's normal pace and nothing special would seem to happen at any event horizion either. It's just like in Special Relativity and time dilation there, it's just that now the time dilation is due to gravity, not velocity

 

[yevaud]

He didn't actually state Moores law. He simply said that transitors double every 2 years. I am not sure if transistors get twice as large every 2 years or the number doubles every 2 years.

Nah. Moore's Law states that each time-period, the number of transistors that can be etched onto the same area IC will double. It used to be 18 months, but several years ago, Moore increased it to every 24 months - reflecting physical limits of etching technologies and simple physical limitations, period.

 

[darkmatter4brains]

He didn't actually state Moores law. He simply said that transitors double every 2 years. I am not sure if transistors get twice as large every 2 years or the number doubles every 2 years.

Nah. Moore's Law states that each time-period, the number of transistors that can be etched onto the same area IC will double. It used to be 18 months, but several years ago, Moore increased it to every 24 months - reflecting physical limits of etching technologies and simple physical limitations, period.

I also thought they are just starting to hit a wall period on this as far physical limitations. Pretty sure most CPU advances as of lately have been due to improved architecture as opposed to number of transistors, etc.

 

[halman]

Intel announced a couple of years ago that they were going to build a factory to manufacture 45 nanometer chips, but the advance was not going to be used to increase processor speeds, but to try to reduce problems with heating. I believe that the current technology at that time was about 120 nanometers.

Regarding the problem of mass falling into black hole at near relativistic speed, the energy which would result might be the source of dark matter, because it is energy which has been accelerated to speed higher than light. (Just kidding! But it sounds kind of cool, don't ya think?)

I have heard it said that Einstein never claimed that nothing can travel FASTER than the speed of light, just that nothing can travel AT the speed of light. The people who have made that distinction have usually been writing science-fiction, so I don't know whether to believe them or not. But E=Mc squared implies that matter is somehow created by energy being shoved around at very high, post-relativistic speed. Such as occurs during a supernova, for instance.

 

[halman]

In Clarke's novel "Songs of Distant Earth", a relativistic sub-light starship had a large ice shield at the bow of the ship for that very purpose. To plow a hole through the interstellar medium and protect the ship. The ice had slowly worn down over the light years, and the ship was in orbit over a planet, using it's space elevator to bring up water to refuel and replenish the shield.

Really the ship would refuel at an ice moon and avoid the gravity well, but the planet was inhabited.

I was hoping that someone had brought that up. Clarke was well aware of the problems involved in radiation cascades, and sought a way to avoid them when dealing with interstellar transportation. (He tended to avoid the specifics, which is a good thing.) However, the method the people from the ship used to lift the water they needed to replace the shield which had been destroyed by hitting a much larger amount of mass than it had been designed for was by gravity inversion, not a space elevator.

Clarke dealt with the concept of the space elevator in "The Fountains of Paradise".

 

[dryson]

What the heck does Moore's law have to do with breakthroughs in Physics

When the transistors in a computer increase every two years the ability of the computer to computate also increases every two years which allows us to achieve faster results that might have been lost because the agency that was paying for the project shut the project down because the information that they had sought was not found within the alotted time of the project's budget meaning that the next set of variables needed to prove a theory might have been lost forever because of the computational speed of the computer.