Why you can't go the speed of light ( for some people who asked)

[Neutrino]

If all this is true, how come everything works perfectly in Star Trek (w8 I'm serious)? AFAIK, their warp drive is actually based on "working" theories that "would" work if we simply had the technology to back it up. At least that's what I've from their offical forums etc. Same goes for all their little experiments they have in their episodes.

Same goes for physicians who says that it's IMPOSSIBLE to go beyond light speed. Since the difference between Star Trek Warp 1 (pure light speed) & Warp 2 is NOT light speed times 2 (more like ^10 or something). I wonder how they reason when it is said that ST is based (based on is such a loose expression) on current theories on space travel? They should really say, that it's impossible with our current level of development but noooo

I wonder why ST Warp is not the same as SW Warp? Strange. Either their galaxy is 1/10 of ours or their Warp is based on some other theory.

Yeah I know. I'm a sci-fi freak :E

Edit:
Hmm maybe that explains why SW & ST ships gets stretched when they go to Warp speed. Have no idea what direction longitude references to though.

I think most scifi shows that use "warp" speed base it off the idea that you could actually move a pocket of space/time itself or something along those lines. If that is done then you really are not traveling faster than light. The ship itself would actually have zero velecity.

Physicists don't say FTL travel is impossible. They say any object with mass cannot reach light speed within space/time. This doesn't mean that there might be ways around it in the future.

 

[Phisionary]

Light speed is not surpassed by warp dirves. Rather, space is bent. I don't rember the exact explanation.

Don't consider star trek to be physics 'theories'. Well, maybe they are, but they're more physically centered speculations. 'What if we wanted to do this? How would that be possible without violating the laws of physics?' kinda questions. And star trek does violate real physicals laws, and even the ones they made up (in TOS, enterprise travels faster than warp 10, which, according to TNG, is the fastest anything can travel [until they 'invented' hyperspeed or whatever in voyager]).

I think I have 'physics of star trek' at home. Havent read it, but if I can find it I'll see what it says...

 

[Gorgon]

Hmmm, DIDn't get that

/me reading the nice littile article again

 

[Razor]

Warp Drive works by compressing space behind the starship and stretching space in the front of it, this will create a spacial wave that the starship would ride on i.e. like a surfer. The surfer isn't moving very quickly compared to the wave he is surfing on, but from an observer on the beach, he is travelling towards, or away from them.

There was a physics professor in Cardiff, Wales, that originally theorised that warp drive was possible, but it would take a huge amount of research to come up with anything close to it and said it would take us hundreds of years to reach that point of advancement. He also theorised that to activate the drive and create the spacial wave, it would require more energy then the sun has given out in it's life time.

There are other ways to get from point a - point b using faster then light travel.

Star Trek uses Warp Drives

Star Wars uses hyperspace (spacial dimensions where the laws of physics are different). I think how Star Wars explains it is that Hyper Space is backwards, so that in Hyperspace you are travelling faster then the speed of light and it takes more energy to decellerate towards the speed of light then vice versa. So the Hyperdrive would work by moving a ship from sub-light speeds to super light speeds by bypassing light speed altogether i.e. you don't accelerate through the speed of light, you just "jump" to a dimension where it's backwards.
Some sci-fi shows/games, also use what is called Lagrange or jump points, where a jump drive can jump from one point of the universe to the other by creating an artificial wormhole/using an existing one already there.

Could i ask the inforum physicists, what are your opinions on Tachyons? For anyone who doesn't know, a Tachyon is a particle that travels at a speed greater then the speed of light.

 

[clarky003]

(spacial dimensions where the laws of physics are different).

and thats very much the case in the quantum realm, randomly.. there's Zero point which exist's in subspace at absolute zero -276 Celsius.

but with this method, i totally cant see why you couldnt go faster than the speed of light, light is just a medium, like sound, it's NOT a universal speed limit, although going faster than the speed of light may confuse us visually (may seem like things are going back in time), but through that sustained period you could be travelling 2 X the speed of light, be totally confused, and slow down to 1/2 the speed of light , and realise through measurement of distance travelled , that you didnt actually go back in time. It only seemed like you did... (we use light as a form of anaylsis, so its the main medium we use to measure time, however it doesnt mean it has anything to do with time, and is more likely as I said, just a medium.

we just get confused because it's the only wave our eyes through our brains are tuned into.

As you can see there is plenty of grounding that suggest's there are ways to break the speed of light..

theorising is one thing, actually doing it.. is another, and that applies to people who dont agree we can break it, and people who do .

 

[dream431ca]

When your talking about Tachyons you are talking about nuclear reactions and not really the speed of light. If we could talk about tachyons as a "speed" then tachyons would be infinitely fast...here is the theory on how it works:

For example, let's say that there were electrically charged tachyons. Since they would move faster than the speed of light in the vacuum, they should produce Cherenkov radiation. This would lower their energy, causing them to accelerate more! In other words, charged tachyons would probably lead to a runaway reaction releasing an arbitrarily large amount of energy.

Light does go faster in water than a vacuum so you could say that light goes faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. When this happens, a type of radiation called Cherenkov radiation is produced.

What produces the Cherenkov radiation are beta particles, which is a product of fission (nuclear reaction) inside the water.

So you could say that the Cherenkov radiation is the "Sonic boom" for light. One thing you have to realize is that a sonic boom for sound is non-linear and a "sonic boom" for light is always linear and the two waves are produced very differently.

Bear in mind that Tachyons only come from nuclear reactions and it really hasn't been proven that they go faster than the speed of light.

Hope this Helps

 

[clarky003]

Bear in mind that Tachyons only come from nuclear reactions and it really hasn't been proven that they go faster than the speed of light.

Hope this Helps

:O, only the Tachyons know.

 

[Neutrino]

and thats very much the case in the quantum realm, randomly.. there's Zero point which exist's in subspace at absolute zero -276 Celsius.

-273.15 Celsius.

(Sorry, that just got drilled into me in thermodynamics class.)

 

[clarky003]

man Neutrino, I read it different, I must of got a dodgy physic's book.

 

[dream431ca]

:O, only the Tachyons know.

If they could know..they would never tells us

 

[dream431ca]

and thats very much the case in the quantum realm, randomly.. there's Zero point which exist's in subspace at absolute zero -276 Celsius.

but with this method, i totally cant see why you couldnt go faster than the speed of light, light is just a medium, like sound, it's NOT a universal speed limit, although going faster than the speed of light may confuse us visually (may seem like things are going back in time), but through that sustained period you could be travelling 2 X the speed of light, be totally confused, and slow down to 1/2 the speed of light , and realise through measurement of distance travelled , that you didnt actually go back in time. It only seemed like you did... (we use light as a form of anaylsis, so its the main medium we use to measure time, however it doesnt mean it has anything to do with time, and is more likely as I said, just a medium.

we just get confused because it's the only wave our eyes through our brains are tuned into.

As you can see there is plenty of grounding that suggest's there are ways to break the speed of light..

theorising is one thing, actually doing it.. is another, and that applies to people who dont agree we can break it, and people who do .

You are certainly right about light being a medium..it's the speed itself that "slows" time. It doesn't really slow time..it slows the rate of change around you..which gives the illusion that time has gone slower.

When your talking about going faster than the speed of light and time going backwards is kind of far fetched for me. Think if you were going faster than the speed of light and someone was standing still (going no speed) and watching you...what would he see?? Would he see you disappear from the space time continuem?? of course not. I believe you would have to warp space around you to make it "seem" like your going faster than light but your not. The rate of change or time will not change if you do this.

But lets say you could go faster than light by just sheer acceleration. what would happen (theoretically) is just as you passed the speed of light time (or rate of change) would begin to speed up again (relative to you) and begin to speed up REALLY fast for someone standing still.


Example: if your ship goes at 200% of the speed of light and you take a one year journey, when you return to Earth only about 7 months have gone by.

Of course this is entirely theorectical and past the physical limits of matter.

 

[Vigilante]

I still think you can. A light photon has mass, therefore any mass should be able to go that fast, it will just require a larger amount of energy. How else would these solar sails that Nasa is looking to start using work?

 

[Gray Fox]

In star Trek going faster than warp 10 is called transwarp, and they don't brake any law, cause they dn't travel in normal space, they travel in subspace, they open a trans warp corridor.

As far as photons go they don't have any mass, cause as far as I know they don't exist, scientist just use them to make it easier to explain certain things. Like gravity doesn't exist, its actually just a wrap in space. At least I think.

As far as what Sprafa said that light speed wasn't always the same, well thats what a young brazzilian scientist says, because with the relativity theory you can't explain how the universe could have been created, this is one theory that tries to explain it the other one is the cosmological constant that einstein created and then disregarded and called his biggest mistake, but now people think it might have some truth to it.

Oh yeah, hier is a narticle about traveling fatser than the speed of light, its offcource never achievable cause one electron in the wrong place would totally **** it up. http://www.blachford.info/quantum/fastlight.html

Here another one that is interesting http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

 

[Neutrino]

I still think you can. A light photon has mass, therefore any mass should be able to go that fast, it will just require a larger amount of energy. How else would these solar sails that Nasa is looking to start using work?

Like I said in the other thread, that's not really true.

Photons have a rest mass of exactly zero.

 

[Phisionary]

Example: if your ship goes at 200% of the speed of light and you take a one year journey, when you return to Earth only about 7 months have gone by.

If you could go faster than the speed of light, you would go backward in time. If you took a one year journey (ships time) you might come back before you left... were that possible.

Edit: I'm not so sure about the photon mass thing. I'm sure you could research it, but light does have energy that may not be through mass. It has frequency, and the frequency of light can impart energy to another particle without the photon losing mass. Ont the other hand, they are affected by gravity. (demonstrated by the 'event horizon' of black holes)

 

[Gray Fox]

Hey but we say a black hole wraps space infinatly, but isn't infinity just like omnipotenci impossible,( I remember that omnipotency is impossible from a does god exist thread here on these forums).

But my question is, can something be infinite.

 

[dream431ca]

I still think you can. A light photon has mass, therefore any mass should be able to go that fast, it will just require a larger amount of energy. How else would these solar sails that Nasa is looking to start using work?

Actually, light photons don't have mass but they have momentum. :O What the Hell?? In order to get momentum you need mass right??

This discussion has been going on for many years amongst scientists and researches. Think of a photon as a "packet" of energy. When that energy hits an electron the energy gets transfered to the electron causing the electron to move. That is what Nasa scientists are hoping to acheieve.

 

[dream431ca]

Hey but we say a black hole wraps space infinatly, but isn't infinity just like omnipotenci impossible,( I remember that omnipotency is impossible from a does god exist thread here on these forums).

But my question is, can something be infinite.

To REALLY get you confused...think about this:

Between the numbers 1 and 2 there are an infinite amount of numbers (Math wise). With space and time and black holes, what the theory is :

A black hole is a star that has shrunk to a "singularity" which means a infintily small point. That's what the theory is anyway.

 

[Gray Fox]

thank you very much, now by the time i get to play hl2 I'll be a vegetable.
Hopefully I'll recover by the time snake eater gets released on pc.

 

[Kristafon]

My theroy
Light is ONE thing and travels at ONE speed
Im sure one day we can go faster

 

[Alec_85]

In star Trek going faster than warp 10 is called transwarp, and they don't brake any law, cause they dn't travel in normal space, they travel in subspace, they open a trans warp corridor.

In one Voy episode they reached the Warp 10 limit. With normal Warp. And then they started evolving into new lifeforms. They also said that by reaching that velocity, they existed EVERYWHERE in the universe at the same time & they could see everything that was happening all around them. I wonder how they explain that? :rolling:

If you could go faster than the speed of light, you would go backward in time. If you took a one year journey (ships time) you might come back before you left... were that possible.

Going backwards in time is already possible. It's called timezones :E

Physicists don't say FTL travel is impossible. They say any object with mass cannot reach light speed within space/time. This doesn't mean that there might be ways around it in the future.

Tell that to my Physics teacher. I hate her That's how I came up with Star Trek in the first place.

Futurama has a weird solution to this as well. The ships do not move at all. They force the Universe to move around them. I don't understand how multiple crafts can move the Universe in different directions at the same time though.

 

[[Matt]]

Light speed hasn't always been the same.

True. It was discovered about 5 years ago that the speed of light was much faster during the infancy of the universe and that it is gradually slowing down.

 

[[Matt]]

Futurama has a weird solution to this as well. The ships do not move at all. They force the Universe to move around them. I don't understand how multiple crafts can move the Universe in different directions at the same time though.

Space distortion.

 

[Jakeic]

True. It was discovered about 5 years ago that the speed of light was much faster during the infancy of the universe and that it is gradually slowing down.

how does that work?

 

[Alec_85]

True. It was discovered about 5 years ago that the speed of light was much faster during the infancy of the universe and that it is gradually slowing down.

The answer to that might be that the light sources out there are getting weaker over time. IT happens to everything. Must be that since there's nothing out there that can slow the light down that we know of in the vacuum of space.

 

[Jackal hit]

actually, it's the energy requirements that become infinite. that is why you cannot get to the speed of light, or beyond. has little to do with mass, in fact. this misconception of the mass problem stems from a misunderstanding of the mass units in Einstein's FULL equation. e=mc^2 is incomplete, but somehow became famous.

light wasn't faster at the beginning of the universe. space expanded faster. light, per unit of measure along the space/time grid went... you guessed it, the speed of light, only in a hyper inflating universe, so the EFFECT is that it light seemed to be going faster than 3.0 x 10^8 ms...

it's possible to travel great distances over short amounts of time. but not by going faster than the speed of light. but by warping points of space closer to eachother so that the net effect is like getting to alpha (or proxima) centauri in a very short time(it takes light 4.2 years to travel that distance). answer is worm holes. but these take ENORMOUS amounts of energy to open.

another misconception is that light actually slows down when going through a medium. the light waves/photons still travel at the speed of light, but in a medium, that's only between the actual atoms. there are energy changes in and around the atoms that the light essentially wraps around, making the travel distance a bit longer. once again, it's the net effect... light seeming to go slower. people keep confusing the NET effect of something as the true nature of what's going on. hope this clarifies some things

 

[Jackal hit]

existed EVERYWHERE in the universe at the same time & they could see everything that was happening all around them. I wonder how they explain that? :rolling:

this isn't entirely too far fetched.... if you were to survive inside a blackhole, and look out on the universe, all time would be happening. future, past present, all existing at once.

 

[Jackal hit]

A black hole is a star that has shrunk to a "singularity" which means a infintily small point. That's what the theory is anyway.

it's not a singularity. another misconception. a black hole can be created from any 3 solar mass star(and up) that goes supernova, and collapses past the schwarzchild radius(event horizon). the singularity is a gravitational singularity, not a physical one, if you could represent 5th dimensional space (with space/time grid) in 3D you'd see the gravity warping space/time to a point.

 

[hasan]

funny quote:

The moon revolves round my head faster than light!
Stand up in a clear space and spin round. It is not too difficult to turn at one revolution each two seconds. Suppose the moon is on the horizon. How fast is it spinning round your head? It is about 385,000 km away so the answer is 1.21 million km/s, which is more than four times the speed of light!

 

[Parrot of doom]

Aren't the centres of spiral galaxies meant to be giant black holes? I saw a Horizon documentary on this a few years ago, it was really interesting. The theory helps explain how spiral galaxies are formed.

 

[Phisionary]

light wasn't faster at the beginning of the universe. space expanded faster. light, per unit of measure along the space/time grid went... you guessed it, the speed of light, only in a hyper inflating universe, so the EFFECT is that it light seemed to be going faster than 3.0 x 10^8 ms...

There ya go. One theory of the big bang is that there wasn't actually a explosion like we usually picture it, but a massive expansion of space time, which radically altered the physical laws till they resemble what we have now. One idea is that this was caused by a collision between our diminsion and an alternate one. It's part of string theory, but I can't explain it very well.

it's not a singularity. another misconception. a black hole can be created from any 3 solar mass star(and up) that goes supernova, and collapses past the schwarzchild radius(event horizon). the singularity is a gravitational singularity, not a physical one, if you could represent 5th dimensional space (with space/time grid) in 3D you'd see the gravity warping space/time to a point.

Though matter may exist within a black hole, isn't there supposed to be a point at which the gravitational forces exceed the repulsive atomic forces, essentially crushing matter down to a singular point (of un-certain composition)? You may know more than I, but I thought one could have a singularity without having a mass large enough to capture light (not enough to have an event horizon).

I dunno. maybe I'm getting confused on that point.

Oh, and ppl, please stop talking about stuff from star trek as physics (or futurama even :O). That show is not physics, it's storytelling. Ther are few physical principles that the star trek writers wouldn't (and haven't) violated to tell a story.

 

[Alec_85]

OMFG! Is this standard knowledge among "kids" in American schools? Or is it some form of High School / University information? My mind is practically boiling from this information already. Combined with the fact that it's not in Swedish...

Or maybe you're all super mutant freaks... Yeah that's probably it :E

Edit: Yeah that... Or some sort of Internet-bot.

 

[hasan]

how about dbz? you can form energy in your hand, this energy can destroy the entire solar system. that mean e = mc^2 is not accurate because apparently you release all this energy without losing any of oyur mass.

it must be e = m ^ 20 or something =P

 

[Alec_85]

Through serious evolution, then perhaps. We can only dream :thumbs:

 

[Phisionary]

I'm a layman, but an enthusiast. I'm past high school, but before any uni phys classes. I watch NOVA and read on the internet, and tried to read Einsteins book on relativity, but only got to chapter 4.
I do hope to take at least 3 semesters of phys, but the stuff I'm really interested in is probably years in...

Trust me, most american high school students don't know a whit about theoretical physics, and don't care either.

 

[Alec_85]

Oh well that's a damn shame. I find it interesting but I suck at it :E Born in the wrong century ;(

 

[Phisionary]

that shouldn't stop you. I've seen some resonably good resources with dumbed down representations. That's not a bad thing either. There's probably like, 100 people who don't need any of this stuff dumbed down for them.

Me, I have very little advanced math, so I can't get real technical. But I can figure out the concepts, and I really like trying to understand how the universe works. so it's good enough for now.

 

[MFL]

in response to something said earlier, IF you suddenly were travelling faster than light, you would instantly (relatively: all light that had just bounced off you would still appear to the viewers) dissapear from view to all
people observing you, because light would not be able to bounce off you correctly, since as said before, you are travelling faster than light...

 

[clarky003]

we are limited by the fact that we are human, sure we can search for the truth... but it seems bizarre, cause when you think about it, the truth already exist's all around us... we just have to have to have material comprehension to satisfy and justify our existence,, or else for some reason.. we find our human existance pointless get depressed and want to commit suicide or something (so in a sketchy way its all psycologically linked into our basic survival instinct,... pretty crazy ).

If you can image the universe and all energy formats as a stream of conciousness, then it know's the truth (we are part of the universe.. so we are the truth, but our human mind fail's to grasp it because of our instinctual, physical, flatlander like programming primarily keeping our survival at the forfront of our mind. because in this reality the physical condition is what our basic mind cares about, but is also our achiles heel).. enough said .. but we can keep trying till our balls drop off, one day the answer will just be there, similar to the way we found electricity...

...we will stumble across it sooner than we think, and use it... without actually understanding what it is atall (scientist's ) .

 

[hasan]

EDIT:
is "howstuffworks" trustable?
http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item6.htm

/EDIT

well, I think if a person exceeds the speed of light, he will go back in time. is he going to just disappear? I think so. it's like going into a wormhole, you will disappear.
I don't know if I've got this right, but basically, there is a reason C is a limit, this reason probably has to do with the time dimension, if time is a forth dimension, then for some reason you can't travel in space-time at a speed faster than C, but if you do, you will kinda move backwards in time, so it's like entering another dimension, or an unseeable dimension (from our point of view).

If a person goes back in time, lets say, 3 seconds back, then an observer would see two copies of him, a second copy will emerge (come from the future) 3 second before the first copy reaches the speed of light! then the first copy will disappear once it reaches the speed of light. (go to the past)

probably just my idea/theory