Why not faster than light?

absolutezero · Oct 14, 2004

Now, before everyone jumps all over me, I want you to think about this and just think about it as a possibility. I want to know why can't we go faster than light and why we couldn't in the future? Now i am not looking for loop holes, such as wormholes, but actual speed, why cant we EVER get faster? I ask this because all throughout science and physics, what we originally believe is over turned with new findings. Everything from believing the world is flat, to newton and his ideas of gravity, to quantum mechanics and string theory! So I am curious, is this something that could be possible in the future? Regards, ~zero

Saiph · Oct 14, 2004

I don't have to much time explaining why the speed of light limit exists. But I would like to point out that your concept of "what we originally believe is over turned with new findings" Isn't entirely accurate in it's implications. Take a look at it closer, especially anything post Newtonian. You'll notice that new findings don't completely invalidate the old. They merely show that we didn't have the entire picture. Newton gave way to Relativity, but is still correct as long as we stay slow and "small". Newton's equations can be derived from relativity. Old fashioned optics still mesh with modern electromagnetic wave theory, things still fall down due to gravity (the greeks called that a property of matter, not a force) but we look at it differently. New findings, for the most part, merely expand upon the old. In that light, we may never find a way to exceed C. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> --------------------SaiphMOD@gmail.com -------------------"This is my Timey Wimey Detector. Goes "bing" when there's stuff. It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually. I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

fangsheath · Oct 14, 2004

Anything is possible, as long as it doesn't directly contradict what is incontrovertible. The problem with space and time is that we tend to look at them conventionally. If you leave your house on your bicycle and come back one minute later, your house is one minute older. Except - not really. And the "not really" becomes very noticeable as we accelerate to very high speeds. If we leave the earth, zoom around the sun and arrive back one minute later, the earth is one minute older, right? Wrong. The earth is about 17 minutes older. If we do it in 1 second, the earth is 17 minutes older. If we do it in a millisecond, the earth is 17 minutes older. No matter how fast we make the trip from our own perspective, we can't seem to get back to the earth less than 17 minutes later. In other words, relativity doesn't prevent you from traversing any distance you choose in any time interval you choose - FROM YOUR OWN POINT OF VIEW. You could, in principle, cross the galaxy in a millisecond. But from others' points of view, ah, that's the problem. I think there is a solution to the so-called speed of light limit. I do not, however, think it will be forthcoming without some sort of "loop hole," as you call it.

arcticfox · Oct 14, 2004

No human will ever be able to travel faster than sound. As one accelerates, there is a pressure wave that effectively pushes against the accelerating object. The closer the object gets to the speed of sound, the higher the pressure works against it, and more energy is needed to continue. Eventually the pressure becomes so high that no amount of energy will be able to acelerate further. It's called the sound Barrier for a reason. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> *broke that one... NEXT!

yruc · Oct 14, 2004

I am no means an expert in Relativity, but when we are able to solve this equation. v = velocity c = speed of light 1/ ((sqrt(1- (v^2/c^2))) If your velocity = speed of light you end up with a 0 in the denominator....so if you could go faster than the speed of light, you could never slow down to just the speed of light, you would always have to be faster than it (tachions if they exists). Conversly, if your velocity is slower than the speed of light, us, then you can never achieve the speed of light. The above formula is used for calculating the changes that occur when objects approach the speed of light. This was formulated by the German-American physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in his Special Theory of Relativity. Basically, an object in motion undergoes 3 relativistic changes: 1) An increase in mass 2) A contraction in the direction of travel (Lorentz Transformation) and 3) A "slowing down" of time. (Time Dilation) Velocities in ordinary life which to us might seem incredibly fast have only a miniscule relativistic effect. For example, orbital velocity (5 miles per second) produces a relativistic factor of change of only 1.000000000360219. Travelling at 93,141.1985 miles per second (half the speed of light) produces a factor of 1.1547005383792517. Here the velocity is incredibly fast and yet the change is still quite small. example: At .9 times the speed of light, the factor becomes 2.294157338705618. Finally, the effects of relativity become significant. What does this factor mean though? If you were in a spaceship travelling at .9 times the speed of light: 1)the ship's mass (and you) would increase by a factor of 2.294 2)the ship (and you) would contract in the direction of travel by 2.294, meaning a 300 foot ship would shrink to 130.77 feet. 3)Perhaps the most interesting change is that 1 year to you would seem to be 2.294 years for som

bobvanx · Oct 15, 2004

Warp drive works by compressing space time ahead of the nacelles and expanding it behind. The ship travels within the bubbles, at less than c. So in the warp bubble closest to the skin of the ship, the true speed is far less than c. The next larger bubble holds that bubble going less than c, and with some additional true speed as well. And so on. Compounding all the motion yields an apparent speed greater than the speed of light. It only works because space-time is a frothy vacuum which is pliable. The vacuum itself is very strong and resistant to these metrics, which is why it requires vast amounts of energy to travel this way.

fangsheath · Oct 15, 2004

I reiterate that relativity doesn't stop you, in principle, from reaching any speed you wish. The issue is not whether you can go faster than light. The issue is that time is not flowing at the same rate at your destination while you're doing it. We could come up with all kinds of possible solutions. Perhaps there are higher dimensions of space, so that 2 objects that seem far apart in our 3d space might actually be close together along another dimension. Perhaps we might somehow convert ourselves to tachyons and make the journey. But all such solutions would fall under the category of "loop holes," as opposed to solving the problem purely as an engineering exercise. It is not an engineering problem. It is a physics problem.

Saiph · Oct 15, 2004

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />No human will ever be able to travel faster than sound. As one accelerates, there is a pressure wave that effectively pushes against the accelerating object. The closer the object gets to the speed of sound, the higher the pressure works against it, and more energy is needed to continue. Eventually the pressure becomes so high that no amount of energy will be able to acelerate further. It's called the sound Barrier for a reason. <hr /></blockquote> Actually it was known to be possible to go faster than light. It was just though impossible for a practical human carrying vehicle to do so. The thought the stresses would be so high on a human sized vehicle as to cause structural failure. And they were right, for the most part. Avionics of hte day couldn't handle the stresses. It took a breakthrough in design and materials (and engines) to pull it off. However, iair drag was never thought to be an insurmountable force against faster than sound travel (bullets have traveled faster for a long time). It was thought that it imposed a practical limit for human speed. The light barrier, on the other hand, can't even theoretically be breached. This is no a practical limit, but a theoretical one. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> --------------------SaiphMOD@gmail.com -------------------"This is my Timey Wimey Detector. Goes "bing" when there's stuff. It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually. I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

Maddad · Oct 15, 2004

AbsoluteZero The problem with attaining the speed of light is that as you get closer to that speed your inertia increases. It takes ever more thrust to get you ever closer to the speed of light. Eventually you would need more energy than exists in the entire universe to close the speed gap by another zero, and you still would not have reached the speed of light. fangsheath "Anything is possible, as long as it doesn't directly contradict what is incontrovertible. You just said that anything is possible if it is not impossible. ArticFox "No human will ever be able to travel faster than sound. This is one of the classic examples that is incorrectly used to show that faster than light travel should be possible in the future. Back in World War II we could not go faster than the speed of sound because we lacked the technology to do so, even though there was no theoretical prohibition against it. There is such a theoretical prohibition against exceeding the speed of light. Interestingly, we currently possess the technology to exceed the speed of light should there be no relativistic barrier to doing so. It's the reverse of the situation with exceeding the speed of sound.

rogers_buck · Oct 15, 2004

Your made out of the wrong kind of quarks to achieve light speed. The principal of equivalence means that you would be cut off from this univese in a black hole and would likely emerge in your own universe out of real time. That would be an unhappy destination for you since the things that keep you going have a definite need for the entropy field that is part of this universe. Of course you would have long since been fried by the 3 degree K black body radiation that was blue shifted into the hardest of gamma rays. If you invented a technology that would allow your fermions to skim the surface of the higgs field like a boson, then you could travel at light speed. Given that their have been several experiments using a volume of Ce gas that have deomonstrated FTL effects for light (the Ce emits an identical wave front from its opposit side just prior to being impinged by the original wave front). No great distance to travel though (a few mm).

fangsheath · Oct 15, 2004

It's not quite as tautologous as you suggest. It is one thing to say that something is impossible because currently accepted theory says otherwise. It is another to say that it is impossible because if it were correct, we wouldn't observe what we already observe. I do not claim that relativity is correct. I merely claim that it is an observable fact that as an object accelerates, its rate of time flow changes. This has everything to do with the speed of light limit. Any solution to the speed of light limit must deal with this fact of life, regardless of whether relativity is ultimately correct.

bobvanx · Oct 15, 2004

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />we lacked the technology to do so,<hr /></blockquote> We'd already discovered that a rifle bullet exceeded the speed of sound, so there was a real-world example of a thing which did what we were trying to do. And although we probably didn't know it, a meteorite would make a sonic boom, too, so there was at least the potential to discovery faster-tahn-sound travel. [edit]In all the Universe, we see no example of anything traveling above the speed of light. Experiments are showing some sort of wave function that appears to travel faster than light, but results are open to many interpretations. It is a logical fallacy to compare the two "barriers."

bobvanx · Oct 15, 2004

bobvanx · Oct 15, 2004

Steve, As I was working through the geomtries, I realized that I did make a mistake. In effect, I got the sign wrong. I wrote it up the way it's done in sci-fi, and you are right, that is wrong. Really, the warp bubbles are generated in extreme distances from the ship and they collapse down upon it. This compresses and amplifies the vacuum energy, and provides most of the power needed to generate the subsequent bubbles. Also, the bubbles are stretched in the front and compressed in the back, so that schematically it looks like they are pulling the craft along. Because none of the bubbles are traveling at relativistic speeds in relation to each other, there are no time-dilation effects. I have an animation of it, but I can't post SWF files to the board.

preon · Oct 15, 2004

AbsoluteZero, If mankind is to travel to the ends of the universe, one cannot travel through space, one must sidestep space. The speed of light through space is equal to 3 x 10^10 centimeters per second. We are traveling through space at a velocity of 2 x10^7 centimeters per second relative to the speed of light through space. Through space is the key word. Space itself is expanding at a velocity of C in all directions. 3 x10^10 centimeters of expansion spread out over a volume of space of 3.6 x 10^28 centimeters means a centimeter of space only expands 9 x 10^-17 centimeters every second. One must understand that velocity is relative to a rest point which is also in motion. If you increase your velocity relative to Earth, which will increase your mass slightly, you are decreasing your velocity through space relative to the speed of light through space. You are not accelerating towards the speed of light. You are actually decreasing your velocity through space relative to the speed of light through space, even though you are increasing your velocity relative to Earth. The only way one can achieve the speed of light is by giving up one's rest mass. With zero mass you will be at the speed of light. As for traveling faster than the speed of light, once your rest mass is zero, like a particle of light, that is it !!! There is no negative side to motion. Since space is an expanding fabric, which expands in all directions (3-diminsional), our only hope for universal space travel is sidestepping space. The volume of space existing today (radius in any direction) is 3.6 x10^28 cm., however space is going to continue to expand out to 1.359 x 10^47 centimeters. One centimeter of space existing today will expand out to about 10^18 centimeters of space. Therefore, this one centimeter of space has an enormous depth to it. This depth has no dimensions associated with it. Entering this depth of dimensiona

pizzaguy · Oct 15, 2004

I have an animation of it, I have an animation of a duck talking, and it's no more real than 'warp drive'. This is sounding like a SETI thread. <img src="/images/icons/crazy.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Note to Dr. Henry: The testosterone shots are working! </div>

absolutezero · Oct 15, 2004

Thanks everyone for the great information! Very interesting information!!

zenith · Oct 17, 2004

just one last question.. if the mass of an object traveling at close to C is infinite, how can light waves/photons be massless?

spacechump · Oct 17, 2004

just one last question.. if the mass of an object traveling at close to C is infinite, how can light waves/photons be massless? It's because photons are massless that they can travel at c...that is they never speed up or slow down from c. It is a constant velocity for them. Objects with mass can only travel near light speed and can never actually reach it because of the increase in energy to the system to an outside observer (sometimes called relativistic mass but that term is too loosely used these days).

zenith · Oct 17, 2004

but doesnt the refraction of light slow it down?

fangsheath · Oct 17, 2004

Not exactly. The speed of a photon changes as it moves from one medium to another, but unlike a particle with mass, the change is instantaneous. Photons are incapable of moving at any speed other than whatever the speed of light is for a particular medium. When a photon is created it zooms away at light speed, no acceleration. When it is absorbed, it winks away, no deceleration.

siarad · Oct 17, 2004

Preon said:
The speed of light through space is equal to 3 x 10^10 centimeters per second. We are traveling through space at a velocity of 2 x10^7 centimeters per second relative to the speed of light through space. <hr /> I can't understand that. We always travel at -C so how have you measured our speed relative to C. The famous M&M experiment, surely, proved we couldn't do such a thing for they set out to determine our position in space by such means & failed.

fangsheath · Oct 17, 2004

One of the first mistakes many people make about relativity is thinking that a particular object has "a" speed. An object doesn't have one speed. It has any number of different speeds, depending on what you are measuring in relation to. For example, I have a speed of zero in relation to the computer I am typing on. I have a speed of about 800 mph in relation to the center of the earth. I have a speed of about 33,000 mph in relation to the sun. In relation to distant quasars, my speed is a large fraction of c. This last sentence brings up something very important. Many laymen think is is impossible for a human to even get close to c. We don't have to wonder about it. We are all moving at a large fraction of c right now! IN RELATION TO DISTANT QUASARS. Speed is relative. The speed of light, of course, is the same in all reference frames.

absolutezero · Oct 17, 2004

I have another general layman question, so try to explain in layman's terms. Say my body or a ship is traveling and the faster it goes or the closer it goes to the speed of light is it correct our mass increases or weight or something? If that is correct, our mass increases WHY is that? Why do I get heavier the faster I travel?

bobvanx · Oct 17, 2004

Thanks! You emboldened me to post the warp bubble animation to one of my directories: http://pixelrangers.com/blogpics/warp.swf

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