Traveling the Speed of Light

[[46] pushit [2]]

I know this message doesn't belong here, but sense HL basically revovles aroudn physics, I think it' srather fitting. And I think that it would be a nice break from "1000001 Poses using Gary'smod" (no offense, they are pretty damn cool...) and "STEMA IS TEH SUX, I HATE HL2 NO STROY"

Anyway, I was searching through the forums for "quantum physics" and read an interesting thread on traveling the speed of light. Instead of bumping a 3-month old thread, I decided to create a new one...

First of all, let me say that I am not claiming to be an authority on ANY of this material, and most of the ideas were taken from books I've read and other people. I take no credit for these ideas, I'm just regurgitating them with some of my thoughts.

First of all, many people think it is impossible to travel the speed the light. This has not been proven. Many people bring up Einstein to argue this point, and his theory of relativity. Well, Einstein never actually said you couldn't travel the speed of light, he said you couldn't accelerate to the speed of light. This is because if you ever got going that fast your mass would bascially disentegrate into nothing (...I think, one of my friends said that your mass would have to increase nearly the size of the universe....I don't know which one is correct). In other words, there could be other ways to travel the speed of light that have not been discovered or that our human brains just cannot comprehend.

Also, since the early 90s the idea of quantum physics has been researched and experimented with. I know little about this area of physics, but am fascinated by the theory. Sadly, it basically contradicts Einstein's theory of relativity and our idea of the physical world, meaning there could be a whole new door out there that has yet to be opened. And think about this, in the end of the 19th century, many well-renowned scientists said that basically everythign about physics and our physical world had been discovered with a few holes yet to be found. The idea of fiber optics, computers, wireless applicances, microwaves, travelling to the moon, satellites, etc. etc. was impossible. My point is, think of what is yet to come in the next decades...we really cannot even begin to know what might happen and what might be discovered. I only hope I am aroudn to see it.

Please add any comments, and keep it to a mature level.

Mind-boggler: Our range of planets takes up about 1/trillonth of the space of our galaxy...This can give you an idea about how f--king huge our universe is (take into account that there are at least 50 billion visible galaxies...

 

[Dasparov]

Sorry, but this doesn't really belong in this topic.... Its pretty freaky to think how big and if space ever ends...

 

[Brian Damage]

The basic idea, as I understand it:

Mass rises with acceleration. As you get closer to the speed of light, your mass increases towards infinity, with the amount of energy required to accelerate you further also rising towards infinity.

Therefore, the above theory indicates that it is not possible to travel at the speed of light. I'm not certain, but I think the physics are a little fuzzy as to what level of energy would be required to accelerate at speeds above that of lightspeed, assuming you could somehow bypass it.

One way to accelerate beyond lightspeed (in spoken terminology only, because you wouldn't actually be moving at all), would be to hold yourself and your ship within a bubble of spacetime that was stationary relative to your ship but capable of moving throughout the universe. Since your ship is not actually moving relative to its own spacetime bubble, there is no increase in mass due to acceleration.

The problem with that, is that it would require negative energy to build part of the bubble (negative energy exists, but is currently terribly hard to create separately from positive energy). Also, I've heard things about the bubble being "Causally disconnected from the front of the ship", whatever the hell that means, so that's another stumbling block.

As to the shape of the universe, I personally believe it to be a sphere with at least four dimensions. To use a lie-to-children, it's "Infinite, but only on the inside". Ie, if you moved the entire length of the universe in a straight line, you'd end up exactly where you started. Or, to put it another way, if you could somehow make a steel rod the length of the universe, it'd technically be a ring, with both ends joined, but also perfectly straight at the same time (a 4-dimensional ring).

 

[kirovman]

May I mention that it is your relative mass that increases. If you accelerate towards the speed of light, from your point of view your velocity is still zero, everything else is zero. Your mass remains unchanged from your point of view, but from an outside observer, your mass increases.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a bubble of spacetime. You still need to satisfy the laws of physics from ANY reference frame, not just this 'bubble'.
I think space-time is considered in 4 dimensions, and in Advanced Maths you get to learn about 4 dimensional spheres with 3 dimensional surfaces.
The 4 dimensional sphere could be space time, with the 3-D surface being spatial dimension.
Learn General Relativity and all it's crazy equations about tensors and stuff. :x

 

[Maxi]

As to the shape of the universe, I personally believe it to be a sphere with at least four dimensions. To use a lie-to-children, it's "Infinite, but only on the inside". Ie, if you moved the entire length of the universe in a straight line, you'd end up exactly where you started. Or, to put it another way, if you could somehow make a steel rod the length of the universe, it'd technically be a ring, with both ends joined, but also perfectly straight at the same time (a 4-dimensional ring).

Exactly. That is almost how I persive the universe myself. Except I look at it as a donut shaped thing. When you travel to an edge, you end up on the other side of the donut, so to say, but you yourself never notice this. And IMO, that is infinity. One way to kinda prove this is to take a video camera and plug it into your tv/monitor, and now stand infront of the tv/monitor and film it. What are you looking at? you yourself infinate times. What are you filming? you yourself standing infront of the tv filming the tv. When a child asks his parents how many times he is there, he gets the answer, infinite. But he really is only filming himself. So basicly you could think of it this way that infinity is nothing more than a "circle" so to say, with no begining or end, ie you filming the tv, but you see yourself infinite times. But what you are filiming is yourself standing infront of the tv. If anyone understood what I ment, i'd be greatfull if you could explain it better

 

[kirovman]

Exactly. That is almost how I persive the universe myself. Except I look at it as a donut shaped thing. When you travel to an edge, you end up on the other side of the donut, so to say, but you yourself never notice this. And IMO, that is infinity. One way to kinda prove this is to take a video camera and plug it into your tv/monitor, and now stand infront of the tv/monitor and film it. What are you looking at? you yourself infinate times. What are you filming? you yourself standing infront of the tv filming the tv. When a child asks his parents how many times he is there, he gets the answer, infinite. But he really is only filming himself. So basicly you could think of it this way that infinity is nothing more than a "circle" so to say, with no begining or end, ie you filming the tv, but you see yourself infinite times. But what you are filiming is yourself standing infront of the tv. If anyone understood what I ment, i'd be greatfull if you could explain it better

That's good, but you are limited by the resolution of the television screen in this case.

 

[sfc_hoot]

I remember hearing somewhere that quantum mechanics scientists have discovered that there are in fact 11 dimentions, each made up of a countless amount of universes. Is that true?

 

[kirovman]

I remember hearing somewhere that quantum mechanics scientists have discovered that there are in fact 11 dimentions, each made up of a countless amount of universes. Is that true?

That's the theory, string theory it's called (11 dimesional one is M-theory). These other dimensions are supposed to be really small.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

Also try looking up "Quantum Suicide" or "Schrodinger's Cat"

They are interesting reads, about physists' theories or philiosophies, involving life and quantum physics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodinger's_cat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide

 

[Maxi]

That's good, but you are limited by the resolution of the television screen in this case.

Yeah, but I was simply implying that if you had a television with infinate resolution, you would see yourself standing there infront of the tv, nothing else. So basicly infinity is a circle And that's why I think the universe is a circle. And if you look closely at nature, alot of things are circles/spheres. So it might really be true. And if it is, travel at faster than the speed of light really is possible, since if the universe is a circle, it would be possible to "bend it" and then you would only have to travel a millionth of the way instead then around the whole circle... if anyone follows me.

But actually, the travellers wouldn't percieve themselfs as travelling faster than the speed of light, only the onlookers would percieve the travellers travelling faster than the speed of light. When they actually aren't.

EDIT: That cat thing is really cool and wierd. I've read about it before.

 

[TigerRei]

I'm surprised those who look up this type of science havent heard anything about the Higgs Boson. But before I explain that, let me do a bit of back explaining.

For those that dont know what E=MC^2 means is, it stands for:

Energy Equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared

How does this equate to lightspeed? Well I'd explain but it's a lot of mathematics and math was never my strong point.
To put it in plain english, the faster you go, the more massive (not bigger) you get, the more energy you absorb, and the slower time goes. This means that at the speed of light, you are infinitely massive, pure energy, and stopped dead in the fourth dimension, time. This is why it is impossible to move an object with mass to the speed of light.

To equate it to a down home example, imagine an empty wheelbarrow, standing still. It's light, and requires little energy to move. Now, imagine that the faster you push it, the more bricks are loaded into the wheelbarrow. Pushing a spacecraft into lightspeed means increasing the energy exponentially as mass increases. Impossible to reach the speed of light with.

Now, for the Higgs Boson. Scientists have discovered a sub-atomic particle (more like sub-sub-atomic particle really) that they theorize gives matter it's mass. It's called the Higgs Boson. Photons have no Higgs Bosons. Quarks have hundreds of millions.

Now, imagine if you were able to manipulate those bosons, either remove or add them at will. You can essentially produce a massless object that is not pure energy (which has not been done, and if done would invalidate a lot of current physic theories). Now, if an object has no mass, Einstein's theory would be this:

Energy = 0 x 186,000 (in mph) ^ 2

We know that anything times 0 is 0, and 0 squared is 0. So therefore, Energy = 0. I could say a few things that would bring up debate, but to cut it short, matter that has 0 energy would be moving at the speed of light.

This means that all we need to do is changed the amount of Higgs Bosons to move a ship to lightspeed. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Now, the question is, how do you get something OUT of lightspeed? The worst possible thing to do is add the Higgs Boson back in. Remember what I said about an object moving at the speed of light is infinitely massive? That's correct. But also think of what exists in our universe that is really massive? Black holes.

Before any states, "Well, black holes are infinitely massive? It cant be too bad." Black holes are in fact NOT infinitely massive. They are very massive yes, but not infinitely so. Black Holes can have varying degrees of mass, from very small Black Holes that can only sustain themselves for a few years, to supermassive black holes that can cover something the size of a few solar systems. But they arent infinitely massive.

Now think, what would an infinitely massive black hole be like? Nobody knows, and I'm not saying my viewpoint is absolutely right. But my postulation is that we are holding the key to one of the biggest destructive forces upon this planet.


Oh, and interesting read is the scientific study done on lightspeed, on TheForce.net: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/hyperspace.html

It goes even further, explaining tachyons and their nature as objects FASTER than the speed of light, and the interesting time paradox of traveling at faster than light speeds.


One more thing, I'd like to close this out with a question. Why do we want to move at lightspeed when even the nearest star system is 4.13 years away, as light travels?

 

[Sid Burn]

I just hope that someday we may reach the once unreachable stars.

 

[Brian Damage]

May I mention that it is your relative mass that increases. If you accelerate towards the speed of light, from your point of view your velocity is still zero, everything else is zero. Your mass remains unchanged from your point of view, but from an outside observer, your mass increases.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a bubble of spacetime. You still need to satisfy the laws of physics from ANY reference frame, not just this 'bubble'.
I think space-time is considered in 4 dimensions, and in Advanced Maths you get to learn about 4 dimensional spheres with 3 dimensional surfaces.
The 4 dimensional sphere could be space time, with the 3-D surface being spatial dimension.
Learn General Relativity and all it's crazy equations about tensors and stuff. :x

"Bubble" is just a descriptive term. What it technically is, is an area of spacetime which kind of... slides through the universe. Space is compressed in front, stretched out the back, transitioning around the sides, leaving a "safe zone" in the middle, which would be a nice place to put a spaceship.

I'm surprised those who look up this type of science havent heard anything about the Higgs Boson. But before I explain that, let me do a bit of back explaining.

For those that dont know what E=MC^2 means is, it stands for:

Energy Equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared

How does this equate to lightspeed? Well I'd explain but it's a lot of mathematics and math was never my strong point.
To put it in plain english, the faster you go, the more massive (not bigger) you get, the more energy you absorb, and the slower time goes. This means that at the speed of light, you are infinitely massive, pure energy, and stopped dead in the fourth dimension, time. This is why it is impossible to move an object with mass to the speed of light.

To equate it to a down home example, imagine an empty wheelbarrow, standing still. It's light, and requires little energy to move. Now, imagine that the faster you push it, the more bricks are loaded into the wheelbarrow. Pushing a spacecraft into lightspeed means increasing the energy exponentially as mass increases. Impossible to reach the speed of light with.

Now, for the Higgs Boson. Scientists have discovered a sub-atomic particle (more like sub-sub-atomic particle really) that they theorize gives matter it's mass. It's called the Higgs Boson. Photons have no Higgs Bosons. Quarks have hundreds of millions.

Now, imagine if you were able to manipulate those bosons, either remove or add them at will. You can essentially produce a massless object that is not pure energy (which has not been done, and if done would invalidate a lot of current physic theories). Now, if an object has no mass, Einstein's theory would be this:

Energy = 0 x 186,000 (in mph) ^ 2

We know that anything times 0 is 0, and 0 squared is 0. So therefore, Energy = 0. I could say a few things that would bring up debate, but to cut it short, matter that has 0 energy would be moving at the speed of light.

This means that all we need to do is changed the amount of Higgs Bosons to move a ship to lightspeed. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Now, the question is, how do you get something OUT of lightspeed? The worst possible thing to do is add the Higgs Boson back in. Remember what I said about an object moving at the speed of light is infinitely massive? That's correct. But also think of what exists in our universe that is really massive? Black holes.

Before any states, "Well, black holes are infinitely massive? It cant be too bad." Black holes are in fact NOT infinitely massive. They are very massive yes, but not infinitely so. Black Holes can have varying degrees of mass, from very small Black Holes that can only sustain themselves for a few years, to supermassive black holes that can cover something the size of a few solar systems. But they arent infinitely massive.

Now think, what would an infinitely massive black hole be like? Nobody knows, and I'm not saying my viewpoint is absolutely right. But my postulation is that we are holding the key to one of the biggest destructive forces upon this planet.


Oh, and interesting read is the scientific study done on lightspeed, on TheForce.net: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/hyperspace.html

It goes even further, explaining tachyons and their nature as objects FASTER than the speed of light, and the interesting time paradox of traveling at faster than light speeds.


One more thing, I'd like to close this out with a question. Why do we want to move at lightspeed when even the nearest star system is 4.13 years away, as light travels?

I thought E=MC^2 was the formula to figure out how much energy you could get from turning mass into energy. Such as in the reactions at the heart of a star or an atomic explosion.

And aren't there also theoretically very small black holes that last only a few seconds? Such as might be created by the collision of two super-high-energy particles?

And we don't want to move at the speed of light. Though the good ol' warp bubble could move you at 3000C, which is sufficient to go 4.13 lightyears in less than a day...

 

[TigerRei]

You're right, E=MC^2 is the formula to show how much mass can be converted into energy and vice versa, but it is also an equation to show relativity.

As for the very small black holes, correct. But they're made by particle accelerators that smash very small particles at extremely high speeds (near the speed of light) into each other. These black holes however decay within a billionth of a second. This was first done in 2003 in Switzerland. Basically it just proves my point about black holes having mass, not all of them being infinitely massive.

And as for the warp bubble theory, it doesnt have any substantial evidence to show how quick it can move objects, or any real evidence that itll work yet. It's just that, theory. The Higgs Boson right now is just a theory. It's what I was explaining.

 

[PvtRyan]

But do you want to travel at lightspeed? Because the faster you go, the more time slows down for you, stopping completely at lightspeed. For the observer, a photon still has travelling time (8 minutes from the sun, 4 years alpha centauri etc) but the photon arrives as soon as it leaves, actually, it arrives everywhere as soon as its created, literally being everywhere and nowhere in the universe, where an infinite amount of time passes for the observer but none for you. So how do you expect to steer within 0 seconds?

Not to mention that our universe probbaly has a finite life, and will be 'dead' as soon as you leave. I'll take the bus

 

[Maxi]

But do you want to travel at lightspeed? Because the faster you go, the more time slows down for you, stopping completely at lightspeed. For the observer, a photon still has travelling time (8 minutes from the sun, 4 years alpha centauri etc) but the photon arrives as soon as it leaves, actually, it arrives everywhere as soon as its created, literally being everywhere and nowhere in the universe, where an infinite amount of time passes for the observer but none for you. So how do you expect to steer within 0 seconds?

Not to mention that our universe probbaly has a finite life, and will be 'dead' as soon as you leave. I'll take the bus

But remember, that time is very much so relevant. When you are going at or near the speed of light, time appears as normal to you, when it infact is slower outside, but you don't notice it. Also, if you bend space, and use wormholes, from earths viewpoint you would be travelling faster than the speed of light, but from your point you would only be going as fast as your ship would be able to travel at.

 

[Sid Burn]

well, some say you can travel through time using a wormhole... cool.

 

[EatChildren]

Sorry to crush all your dreams but we wont be travelling anywhere near the speed of light in our life times, your childrens life times, or your grand childrens life times.

Not to mention taveling at the speed of light, or close to it, would cause many problems that humans would no-doubt not concider at all.

Before humans ever concider going anywhere near that speeds they should probably try and understand the universe and demensions a little better.

 

[Dead-Inside]

Sorry to crush all your dreams but we wont be travelling anywhere near the speed of light in our life times, your childrens life times, or your grand childrens life times.

Not to mention taveling at the speed of light, or close to it, would cause many problems that humans would no-doubt not concider at all.

Before humans ever concider going anywhere near that speeds they should probably try and understand the universe and demensions a little better.

Oh, and this won't happen in the next century because... what, you say so?

Interesting reads guys. I'd be glad to read some more on these theories (Actually I'm being inspired to write a book with a story around this right now, so don't stop, let it flow ).

 

[CREMATOR666]

I always failed in Physics/Math.

 

[Varsity]

Now think, what would an infinitely massive black hole be like? Nobody knows, and I'm not saying my viewpoint is absolutely right. But my postulation is that we are holding the key to one of the biggest destructive forces upon this planet.

Planet?

 

[NJspeed]

I once read about how exceeding the speed of light IS possible.. and once you do so.. you can actually look back through time. The faster you go, the farther back you can look.

Picture it like this. As your rocketship takes off of earth, your going slower than light. The light from your initial rocket blast is way ahead of you in space. But as you catch up to that light and pass it, you can actually look back and see your own spaceship taking off. Go even farther past that light, you can see them prepping your ship for takeoff, etc etc. Get it? It's like looking at the stars.. when you look at stars, your actually looking back through time.. the light you see actually left those stars way in the past.. But it "looks" like you are seeing them in the present.

I also disagree with those who said if your traveling the speed of light, everything looks normal.
-Picture a lightbulb in your spaceship. If your traveling the speed of light, light leaving that bulb would never reach you. It wouldn't look like it does now. Actions you perform.. the light bouncing off you, that allows you to see your actions, would never catch up into your eyeballs. Light would be going the same speed as your ship, thus going nowhere. Thus going the speed of light you probably see nothing.

I also remember reading that time is but an illussion.. the present is but a meeting of the future and past light, giving the illussion of time. If that adds anything to what the guys above us have said, that light arrives everywhere the same instant it left.

 

[Mecha01]

This is why I love halflife2.net, its a forum based on a video game, and here we are talking about quantam(however you spell it) physics. thats some pretty hardcore shit for a video game forum. AWESOME!!!

 

[kirovman]

I once read about how exceeding the speed of light IS possible.. and once you do so.. you can actually look back through time. The faster you go, the farther back you can look.

Picture it like this. As your rocketship takes off of earth, your going slower than light. The light from your initial rocket blast is way ahead of you in space. But as you catch up to that light and pass it, you can actually look back and see your own spaceship taking off. Go even farther past that light, you can see them prepping your ship for takeoff, etc etc. Get it? It's like looking at the stars.. when you look at stars, your actually looking back through time.. the light you see actually left those stars way in the past.. But it "looks" like you are seeing them in the present.

I also disagree with those who said if your traveling the speed of light, everything looks normal.
-Picture a lightbulb in your spaceship. If your traveling the speed of light, light leaving that bulb would never reach you. It wouldn't look like it does now. Actions you perform.. the light bouncing off you, that allows you to see your actions, would never catch up into your eyeballs. Light would be going the same speed as your ship, thus going nowhere. Thus going the speed of light you probably see nothing.

I also remember reading that time is but an illussion.. the present is but a meeting of the future and past light, giving the illussion of time. If that adds anything to what the guys above us have said, that light arrives everywhere the same instant it left.

For phonons of energy (basically lattice vibrations described in terms of particles) moving through a high refractive index crystal, the light can travel slower than the phonons. I heard when something travels faster than light in a medium, radiation is emitted, in the same way a sonic boom is emitted when you travel faster than sound.

Bleurgh anyway this discussion makes a nice break from revising the Quantum states of Magnetisation :x

 

[Driftlight]

I also disagree with those who said if your traveling the speed of light, everything looks normal.
-Picture a lightbulb in your spaceship. If your traveling the speed of light, light leaving that bulb would never reach you. It wouldn't look like it does now. Actions you perform.. the light bouncing off you, that allows you to see your actions, would never catch up into your eyeballs. Light would be going the same speed as your ship, thus going nowhere. Thus going the speed of light you probably see nothing.

Actually, that's completely wrong. Say you accelerate up to 99.99% of light speed. According to our natural instincts regarding physics, that photon over there should be at about a dead stop, right? WRONG. Light always moves at light speed, no matter what. This is a basic principle of relativity. Light always moves at the same speed, no matter how fast you're going. So everything would look normal.

Theoretically, if you could somehow accelerate past light speed, then yes your little timetravel thing would work. But you can't. It might be possible to bypass lightspeed using wormholes and such, but it's not possible to accelerate faster than light.

 

[Maxi]

It might be possible to bypass lightspeed using wormholes and such, but it's not possible to accelerate faster than light.

I think so too.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

All awesome stuff here, my physics teacher talked to me about this once, and i dont think we are gonna find any kind of thrust thats gonna be able to travel at or past the speed of light, unless we find some radical new technology in the next 100/1000 years. What i always thought was amazing was being able to teleport basically, if you travel past the speed of light you would be able to teleport across a room and scare people. Well thats something fun i thought of, or we could do something constructive like visit other galaxies

Actually im not sure if that would lead to you teleporting (it would look like, but you are just moving too quick to see) or if there would be two of you? one in normal time the other travelling past the speed of light. I dunno this stuff blows my mind, but its really interesting.

Btw string theory i thought was very good, but it it ever going to be possible to find out what electrons and stuff are made of?

 

[xcellerate]

according to string theory nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Looking back in time, is strictly theory, and hard to believe because with the potential to look back comes the fact that the universe must record, simply, everything that has happened.

 

[xcellerate]

light is cool because when you think about it, if anything else in the universe hit us traveling 182,000 miles a second that would be the end of us. However, light does it constantly and its warming and comfortable

 

[lammmbda]

and we will be in our 60s when HL 10 come out..... lol

 

[satch919]

We are but a young civilization trying to make sense of its surroundings. Einsteins theories, while brilliant, will change over time. Our universe is filled with abstract physics concepts and unknowns. I believe that there is a way to travel faster than the speed of light. Its just a matter of time.

Take dark matter as an example. We know that it has a huge effect on most, if not all, large celestial bodies in the Universe. However, we can't really explain what it is or why its there. And only recently did we discover it. There are things out there that we haven't seen or even dreamt of.

As time goes on, I think most will realize that it won't be our powerful engines alone that will get us up to the speed of light. It'll be a combination of using the infinite natural energy around us with highly advanced engines.

 

[corkscru74]

Really interesting discussions guys, us seeing back in time because of stars - always heard that being said but never twigged what it meant until now!

One thing I have to say is.....it doesn't really matter whether we can travel at the speed of light or not. In the future we're likely to cease living as physical beings - instead converting our thoughts to computer. Therefore we would be energy - therefore Speed of Light here we come!!!

My theory on the infinite nature of the universe goes something like this: Existence is a state of mind. We only know something exists because we have the mental ability to perceive it's existence. A rock doesn't know it exists as it has no brain, the planets don't know they exist as they have no brain, we know they exist because we can see them, touch them, smell them, taste them - we can perceive them - therefore believe they exist. Got that? Good - let's continue.

The Universe is everything. Everything exists within the universe, nothing exists outside. (Here comes the science bit...concentrate). If we go outside the universe we cease to exist (as nothing exists outside). If we don't exist then we can't perceive existence, therefore nothing exists.

This also goes with my theory that something only exists because we believe it does. My favourite way to explain it thus:
Turn on a water tap. Water pours out. Is it hot or cold? Technically it is neither yet is both. By putting our hand in the water we have the sensation it is hot, we perceive it is hot - therefore we believe it is hot (It exists hot). If we put our hand in and it didn't feel hot then we wouldn't perceive it as hot - therefore we don't believe it is hot (It exists cold). It's only through our perceiving it's heat that we believe in it's heat. If we perceive something then we believe it and it's only our belief in something that makes it exist.

NB: Makes more sense after smoking mind-opening narcotics. Or, if you don't want to break the law, try buddhism - it works in pretty much the same way.

 

[[46] pushit [2]]

As time goes on, I think most will realize that it won't be our powerful engines alone that will get us up to the speed of light. It'll be a combination of using the infinite natural energy around us with highly advanced engines.

exactly my thoughts, i serisouly doubt that if we ever do find a way to travel the speed of light (or close to it) it will be due to engines and thrusters alone. With our most poweful engines today, in theory it would take 10,000 years just to get to the edge of our galaxy...which woudl be the Oort celestial body if I'm not mistaken....?

just think about the past 100 years, how much technology and science has been developed and discovered. No one can guess as to where the next 50-100 years will take us.

 

[[46] pushit [2]]

The Universe is everything. Everything exists within the universe, nothing exists outside. (Here comes the science bit...concentrate). If we go outside the universe we cease to exist (as nothing exists outside). If we don't exist then we can't perceive existence, therefore nothing exists.

Careful there using the word "outisde" when describing our Universe. Because,technically there is NO outside. You can't even say it doesnt exist, because that would be supposing there is something outside to exist.

 

[Maxi]

Careful there using the word "outisde" when describing our Universe. Because,technically there is NO outside. You can't even say it doesnt exist, because that would be supposing there is something outside to exist.

The universe is infinte, there is no outside, all there is, is the universe. Technicly, if that is true(which I belive). You would be able to see into the past the same way we look at galaxies that are billions of years old.

 

[MajorPayne]

I DO agree that we will most likely NEVER be able to accelerate ANYTHING to the speed of light. Think of matter with mass as being on a hyperbolic graph approaching the speed of light -- no matter how much energy you put into increasing your speed, you can only approach the speed of light -- and definitely never exceed it. One interesting thing is that I remember reading somewhere that scientist found a way last year to "slow" light (I believe that this was done with a combination of low temperatures and exotic materials), and theorize that someday they may be able to "stop" light (although I think this is unlikely, and a parabolic situation would result here as well).

Also, to the person above who mentioned being able to look back in time by looking back at the information the universe encoded -- this is theoretically possible, since the information in the universe can be changed, but never destroyed, but it is not practicle, because the information is constantly changing.

 

[MajorPayne]

On another note, when it comes to the dilemmas of quantum physics behavior, I personally like the branching universe theory, which the dilemma of Schroedinger's Kitten fits -- the universe would branch at the point where you chose which box to look for the cat in, therefor there is no paradox, you just cemented which of the 2 paralell universes you wound up on by choosing 1 possible outcome). Although the idea of multiple me's out there running around in my geekiness fills me (and probably my wife) with horrer!

 

[The Monkey]

As far as we know, if you get close to the speed of light the time will move slower, and if you reach the speed of light, it will stop. This has actually been proven, and is just not a theory. When the cosmonaut Sergej Avdejev came home after 747 days in space, his body has travelled 1/50 second.

 

[|SaD|Kuji]

http://www.hawking.org.uk/text/public/warps.html

A public lecture by Dr. Stephen Hawking. An Excellent read for those interested in space and time travel. It also deals with traveling at the speed of light.

 

[kenyo]

traveling the speed of light is nothing to what researchers have done with actual light!
some researchers have successfully teleported a beam of light from a building in astrailya (i don't now how to spell it) to somewere in america
, they splint the things that make up light sending it's parts forward in time, backwards in time, and two threw space, not time,
making the beam apear somewere else INSTINTLY.
don't take my mis spelled word for it!
i saw it in a popular magazine (popular science i think)
but you can also google search the stuff!
(i found lots of info on it threw google searchin!)

EDIT: they saw there not even close to teleporting mass yet,
atoms are much hard to teleport then light,
and when they figure out how to teleport an atom,
teleporting a human would be impossible with out killing him!

 

[xcellerate]

we didn't discover dark matter. Its a theory to explain why galaxies act the way they do. You see, galaxies like spiral galaxies don't contain enough mass (that we can see) to explain why they stay together and not spin out.

In the Inflationary theory, average density of matter is equal to exactly the amount required to create a closed universe. Most matter we see is only 10% of the critical density.

The shape of the universe could be explained by einstein theory of relativity which says that the gravity curves space into 3 dimensions, much like placing a bowling ball on a spring mattress which has ball bearings on it. The bowling ball depresses the mattress and the ball bearings come to the bowling ball. So according to einstein the shape of the universe is determined by the average density of the matter.

Now, if the average density of the universe is greater than the critical density then the universe will be pulled back together by gravity. Omega > 1

However, on the other end if the average density of mattrer in the universe is less than the critical density then the universe will expand foreever, and eventually fly apart. Omega < 1

NOW, if the Omega = 1, then the universe will expand untill the average density equals the critical density and will remain there forever. This means the universe has a curvature of 0.

Universes that have a negative curvature or are flat extend forever, and therefore explain why we have only been able to see such a infinitly small % of the universe.

NOW, if you follow inflationary theory then omega = ~1, which means the average density almost equals the critical density, however when we add up all the visible matter it only equals between 5 and at most 10% of the universe. SO this theory of dark matter was created to explain where the other 90% of the density comes from.

Just to clarify some more, the big bang is pretty widley accepted as how the universe began right? I mean i cant think of better reason, but there are some problems with it.

Having the entire universe compressed into a single point singularity 3*10^-24 cm across. At the level of compression the universe was at the equations we have don't work, so it creates problems for solving.

The big bang is basically when the universe doubles from 3*10^-24 every 10^-33 second, following a doubling acceleration curve. If the average density of the universe had been greater than the critical density during the big bang, omega would have either shot to infinity or dropped, and the universe would have quickly expanded, too fast for anything to form, or collapsed on itself. However, since we are still here it must not have happened. Inflation says that the rapid expansion of the universe forced the universe to flatten out.

woo.