Breaking the light barrier

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Well E=MC2 is what Einstein said but he also claimed it was impossible to travel faster than light. Because the closer you approach the speed of light, the more energy is required to speed you up. Is it possible to ever travel faster than light and what kind of crack pot solutions would there be around this if it holds true. Warp - Drive and Black Holes??/

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Re: Breaking the light barrier

Milfmaster9 wrote:

Well E=MC2 is what Einstein said but he also claimed it was impossible to travel faster than light. Because the closer you approach the speed of light, the more energy is required to speed you up. Is it possible to ever travel faster than light and what kind of crack pot solutions would there be around this if it holds true. Warp - Drive and Black Holes??/

Matter and Energy can not be accelerated to, or beyond, the speed of light. However, if you if you can find a way to travel from place to place without moving through space, then you could essentially "work around" the light speed barrier.

Unfortunatly, it is not within the realm of our current technology or science to travel without moving through space. So for the moment, we are limited to sublight travel speeds.

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Yes - in any non-relativistic framework the laws of relativity don't apply.

So in an ultra hot or heavy area of spacetime - such as inside the event horizon of a black hole, or near a cosmic string, or next to any big bang you simply play with the rules of quantum gravity - not relativity. So it stands to reason a different speed limit applies!

Also spacetime itself on scales much larger than galactic superclusters may not be relativistically bound, so simply by being inside spacetime at one point - a remote area of the universe's spacetime can be inflating - not a recession velocity - beyond c away from you. Lightspeed only affects particles with mass and force carriers - not the dimensions of spacetime inflating in themselves - wierd huh?

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yep id agree.. but if we cant travel faster than light then are we not doomed as a civilisation?

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Milfmaster9 wrote:

yep id agree.. but if we cant travel faster than light then are we not doomed as a civilisation?

Not at all. Our galaxy is only 100k light years across (average galactic size), so even a sublight crawl would allow us to travel to a fair number of planets and moons in our vicinity if we construct multi-generational ships. Even our present technology is capable of this (if not our economic strategies). And 100k years is nothing in the scheme of things when it comes to cosmic scales. The dinosaurs existed on a single planet for over a hundred million years. In a mere 1 million years, we could colonize the entire galaxy, and our machines might even surpass us in intellect and survival and dispersal.

The real question is not can we do it, but why haven't we seen it done already by others. Either we're the first, or something is preventing dispersal.

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well i doubt the borg is causing it now... imagine spending your whole life on a ship... doesnt appeal to me one bit... human nature needs room and openspace... on a ship may limit this as a habitable planet may be generations away and how many generations will have to pass before the planet is suitibly adapted for our needs..

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Energy and mass are equivalent and somehow related to the dimensional structure of spacetime itself. So perhaps one day our understanding of the truest nature of reality will allow us to manipulate it in ways we can't today. Perhaps distance in an aspect of spacetime that is an abstract illusion to our perception of reality - not the reality itself...

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g__day wrote:

Energy and mass are equivalent and somehow related to the dimensional structure of spacetime itself. So perhaps one day our understanding of the truest nature of reality will allow us to manipulate it in ways we can't today. Perhaps distance in an aspect of spacetime that is an abstract illusion to our perception of reality - not the reality itself...

Exactly. Even though I understand the challenges, I'm not ready to give up on our future yet either. Smile

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rosborne979 wrote:

Milfmaster9 wrote:
yep id agree.. but if we cant travel faster than light then are we not doomed as a civilisation?

Not at all. Our galaxy is only 100k light years across (average galactic size), so even a sublight crawl would allow us to travel to a fair number of planets and moons in our vicinity if we construct multi-generational ships. Even our present technology is capable of this (if not our economic strategies). And 100k years is nothing in the scheme of things when it comes to cosmic scales. The dinosaurs existed on a single planet for over a hundred million years. In a mere 1 million years, we could colonize the entire galaxy, and our machines might even surpass us in intellect and survival and dispersal.

The real question is not can we do it, but why haven't we seen it done already by others. Either we're the first, or something is preventing dispersal.

Or it has been done by others, but they only get to Sol every 5,000 years or so.

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well doesnt it take an infinate amount of energy to send matter at the speed of light??? ive read that in certain readings it shows that the speed of light may change over time.. Alpha or something is shown to be not a constant, wait ill find the relevent source...

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn6092/dn6092-1_205.jpg

Hmmmm...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092 read that... it seems to back up my claims.. there is more at http://www.newscientist.com/search.ns?doSearch=true&query=light+changing+speed...

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Milfmaster9 wrote:

well doesnt it take an infinate amount of energy to send matter at the speed of light??? ive read that in certain readings it shows that the speed of light may change over time.. Alpha or something is shown to be not a constant, wait ill find the relevent source...

Hmmmm...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092 read that... it seems to back up my claims.. there is more at http://www.newscientist.com/search.ns?doSearch=true&query=light+changing+speed...

Yes, but with relativistic time dilation you can get yourself anywhere you want in a reasonable amount of time, even though more time will have passed back at your point of origin.

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hmm.. well would you age if you travelled at the speed of light for say 20 years..

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Milfmaster9 wrote:

hmm.. well would you age if you travelled at the speed of light for say 20 years..

You can't travel at the speed of light, but let's say you travelled from the Earth to an interstellar colony 12 light years away at 99% the speed of light. From the point of view of an observer on the Earth or your destination, the trip would take 12.1 years. From your point of view on the ship, it would take 1.7 years.

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rough...

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If in your point of view you traveled 12 light years in 1.7 years, doesnt that mean in your point of view you were traveling faster than the speed of light?

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yes it does in the way u wont age as quickly as gravity makes u.. wat other ways would there be for travelling great distances.. wormholes.. warp speed??

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Aren't frames of reference fun? And this doesn't take into account spacetime's dimensional expansion which in itself doesn't have to obey relativity - so it only gets harder the more you study it!

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id say so... so how would all these strings and stuff tie into this..

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Earthbjorn wrote:

If in your point of view you traveled 12 light years in 1.7 years, doesnt that mean in your point of view you were traveling faster than the speed of light?

No, from your point of view, your distance was less.

No observer will ever see any object travelling faster than light, as far as we know, nor any material object travelling even as fast as light.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

Earthbjorn wrote:
If in your point of view you traveled 12 light years in 1.7 years, doesnt that mean in your point of view you were traveling faster than the speed of light?

No, from your point of view, your distance was less.

No observer will ever see any object travelling faster than light, as far as we know, nor any material object travelling even as fast as light.

Two people separated by many light years can recieve the same information instantaneously.

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Breaking the light barrier

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