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

[Reaktor4]

this is the most head melting thread ive ever read in my life

 

[Lil' Timmy]

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.

technically it's part of an extension of super-string theory called brane theory. i'm sure some google research will reveal more on that.

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).

you don't need a singularity to make a black hole. all you need is a certain amount of mass within a certain volume of space. in fact, theoretically you could have a black hole that's just slightly denser than normal space, if it's large enough (something like several light years in diameter probably). these would be very dangerous black holes because they'd be hard to detect until you're right on top of them. in fact one description of the universe is a super low-density black hole. the warping of space-time is just too small on the scales we can measure to notice. (think about it, light can't escape from our universe can it?)

any singularity implies infinite density (infinitely curved space, infinite gravity, etc.), so i think a singularity must be a black hole by definition. it could be a very small black hole, with an event horizon of just a mm in diameter, for example. but it'd be a black hole none-the-less.

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

i think we all are :rolling:

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.

lol yeah, everyone's talking about warp and FTL travel.. it's just getting silly.

i wanted to note, asking questions like "what would i see if i went faster than light" is absurd. i don't mean it's a dumb question, just that it's literally absurdist to answer within the framework of modern physics. there is no answer to the above question, it's entirely non-sensical.

 

[dream431ca]

Wow..I never expected this thread to grow so large..it seems everyone has a particular interest in things that cannot be explained or proven. But there are lots of interesting things that go farther than this...like how math goes beyond our physical knowledge and into a whole new dimension.

For example: Math can show you that a 4 dimentional shadow exists..TRY to imagine what a 4 dimentional shadow would look like cause I bet you can't imagine that. That is why I find math and physics so interesting cause it can show you stuff that we can never think up.

 

[Reaktor4]

Im having enough trouble imagining a 3 dimensional shadow

 

[Jackal hit]

i think it's only the supermassive blackholes at the centers of galaxies (especially the ultra super duper massive ones in the center of the large CD elliptical galaxies) that overcome the atomic forces... assuming that even happens...although i have heard of this SOMEWHERE, can't think of the source...

well a 3D shadow... would be cast by a 4th dimensional object. just as 2D shadows are cast by things in our everyday world. so if you want some conceptual framework... hrmm 3rd dimensional shadows could be something like how we FEEL the effects of gravity(even though gravity IS more of a 4th dimensional thing... but then again, our every day world is 4D ... we have height, width, depth, time... 4 right there. so okay how you would think of a 4d shadow would be like the 5th dimension(spatial dimension) casts a shadow of gravity, which we see as a force(when it's not really a force). another way to think of 4D shadows... here's a "for instance" ... what if we humans were higher dimensional beings? our souls would be visible in 5th dimension, and we'd just be these cloudy "light beings" ... what you see in our world is flesh and bone... point is, you gotta really change how you think about what constitutes a shadow. a cube is a shadow of a tesseract, for instance.

 

[Jakeic]

if we live in 4 dimensions right now, then our shadows would be 3D shadows.

 

[Jackal hit]

if we live in 4 dimensions right now, then our shadows would be 3D shadows.

we live in 4 dimensions because we have a time element associated with how we live. however in any one INSTANT of time, it is merely 3rd dimension. differently put: our nature as objects are only 3D and as such, we cast 2D shadows, it is a property of the physical world. however, unlike random objects(such as a ball) we live, and time is a part of our state of being. therefore we live in and USE 4 dimensions.

hope this cleared up my previous post, which does a pretty bad job of explaining anything hehe

 

[Lil' Timmy]

actually, shadows aren't 2D, they're 4D, like everything else we can perceive. think of a building casting a shadow from the sun. the shadow has length and width on the ground, but it also has depth, whether you are flat against the ground, or 50 feet in the air (assuming the building is that tall) you can still be inside the shadow. shadows have volume. the 4th dimension is time just like for us. everything that we can perceive exists in 3-space + time. a 2d or 3d object is not percept able to us (unless you want to invoke metaphysical effects, but that's a different discussion.

it is unlikely that a "higher dimensional" object could interact with lower dimension. there are probably mathematical models that show how it could be done given certain specific realities, but that's just conceptual.

i think it's only the supermassive blackholes at the centers of galaxies (especially the ultra super duper massive ones in the center of the large CD elliptical galaxies) that overcome the atomic forces... assuming that even happens...although i have heard of this SOMEWHERE, can't think of the source...

by definition, within a singularity gravity has overcome the strong nuclear force, and matter has become degenerate. in fact, it's uncertain whether matter exists at all inside a singularity. no one really has a good idea, but it maybe a form of very dense energy and not matter at all. the laws of physics are different inside a blackhole b/c the em force, gravity and strong and weak nuclear forces are unified.

 

[DoctorGordon]

"Mass" comes from the Higgs-Bosom particle, btw. You see, "mass" as it were, does not actually exist...instead "mass" is a particle's resistance to motion.

 

[Phisionary]

i think it's only the supermassive blackholes at the centers of galaxies (especially the ultra super duper massive ones in the center of the large CD elliptical galaxies) that overcome the atomic forces... assuming that even happens...although i have heard of this SOMEWHERE, can't think of the source...

well a 3D shadow... would be cast by a 4th dimensional object. just as 2D shadows are cast by things in our everyday world. so if you want some conceptual framework... hrmm 3rd dimensional shadows could be something like how we FEEL the effects of gravity(even though gravity IS more of a 4th dimensional thing... but then again, our every day world is 4D ... we have height, width, depth, time... 4 right there. so okay how you would think of a 4d shadow would be like the 5th dimension(spatial dimension) casts a shadow of gravity, which we see as a force(when it's not really a force). another way to think of 4D shadows... here's a "for instance" ... what if we humans were higher dimensional beings? our souls would be visible in 5th dimension, and we'd just be these cloudy "light beings" ... what you see in our world is flesh and bone... point is, you gotta really change how you think about what constitutes a shadow. a cube is a shadow of a tesseract, for instance.

yeah... that kinda melted my brain. I admit it.

our shadows are at least 3d (depending on how you look at it). Even if it was cast on a two dimensional plane, it still exists within the time deminsion as well. when you move, and see your shadow move, it is the 3rd dimension of your shadow.

Actually that's all kind of silly. It's just a shadow.

Did anyone hear that Hawking admitted that there is probably nothing on the other side of black holes? He was convinced there was, but with increasing support for the theory about, what was it called. Feinman (sp) radiation? That if this phenominon exists, then there does not need to be an 'outlet' for the infermation in a black hole to be released from, since it will radiate back out...

If anyone understands this 'information theory' stuff and can explain it/point to a good explanation, please do so :E

Edit:

"Mass" comes from the Higgs-Bosom particle, btw. You see, "mass" as it were, does not actually exist...instead "mass" is a particle's resistance to motion.

ooh. neat. hadn't heard this. my particle physics knowledge isn't as good.

 

[Lil' Timmy]

Did anyone hear that Hawking admitted that there is probably nothing on the other side of black holes? He was convinced there was, but with increasing support for the theory about, what was it called. Feinman (sp) radiation? That if this phenominon exists, then there does not need to be an 'outlet' for the infermation in a black hole to be released from, since it will radiate back out...

If anyone understands this 'information theory' stuff and can explain it/point to a good explanation, please do so :E

yeah, hawking wanted there to be a way to conserve the "information" of matter-energy that fell into a black hole (so they obeyed the 2nd law of thermodynamics). so he theorized that black holes may create their own separate 'daughter' universes to our own into which they dump the 'stolen' information. feynman theorized that you could have radiation out of black holes b/c of quantum electrodynamic particle pair production, which re-released the information back into our universe. hawking decided he liked feynman's idea better

edit:

"Mass" comes from the Higgs-Bosom particle, btw. You see, "mass" as it were, does not actually exist...instead "mass" is a particle's resistance to motion.

but the higgs boson is still just a mathematical potential. they haven't actually found it yet, have they? i know they were planning on looking for it with the LHC at cern next year; did fermilab already find it or something?

 

[Tr0n]

Travelling the speed of light is most likely a far off target, but hopefully it isn't needed ... bending space to make something move faster than light whilst relative to space (because space is being shrank infront of and expanded behind the vehicle) is not travelling fast at all.

It's called Warp, people... and it's theoretically possible.

Like from the movie "Event Horizon"?

 

[Lil' Timmy]

Like from the movie "Event Horizon"?

yup. the spacing guild did the same thing in dune. it's the same idea as wormholes, creating a tear, warp, bend, fold, etc. in space-time and hopping across it.

 

[Phisionary]

Wow. I'd always written you off as a psychopath and a loonie, Lil' Timmy.
I see you know your physics, too! :E

 

[Lil' Timmy]

most of my lesser foes make the mistake of underestimating my powers before i destroy them with the Koushu Hagan Ken!!

 

[Razor]

Some scientists actually say that a black hole does only have a limited life span, a very long one, but still limited. Well, how can something of infinite mass die?

 

[Lil' Timmy]

Some scientists actually say that a black hole does only have a limited life span, a very long one, but still limited. Well, how can something of infinite mass die?

they can evaporate (google feynman radiation).

btw, a black hole doesn't have infinite mass, the whole universe doesn't have infinite mass. point singularities are supposedly infinitely dense because they are dimensionless, but that doesn't imply infinitely massive. density = mass/volume, as V --> 0, D --> ∞ whether M is a gabillion solar masses or a nanogram.

 

[clarky003]

lets 'theorise'

imagine the speed of light instead of being 3 million meters per second is now infact 3 m per second.

you are watching a football match that is 10 seconds away from finishing.

the normal applies to the speed of sound... you hear the whistle blow after exactley 10 seconds. light in that time has travelled 30 m ...

what would you see? despite the fact that you know you just heard the match end.

1. a delayed image of their action's.

2. them being back in time in relation to the sound

pointer ( think about what the referee's visual experiance would of been like at the exact same time, because of his position on the pitch he would see a more up to date visual of what was happening. e.g he would see himself blow the whistle, way before you did. )

thinking along these lines, light has nothing to do with the essence of time, just it's perception.

the one thing science neglect's, is our mind, and perception, they are probably the most valid part of the outward universe, because its what we experiance it through.

 

[Lil' Timmy]

imagine the speed of light instead of being 3 million meters per second is now infact 3 m per second.

actually c is three-hundred millon m per sec (3x10^8) but yeah, inventing potential (if incoherent) realities is fun :cheers:

 

[The Monkey]

You can NEVER reach the speed of light. The faster you move, the slower the time goes. If you reach the speed of light, the time has stopped in the ship(or what thing you are driving), and that can't happen.

 

[clarky003]

actually c is three-hundred millon m per sec (3x10^8) but yeah, inventing potential (if incoherent) realities is fun :cheers:

oopsie, my bad *shoots himself in his relative head* but i dont consider it incoherent, because you just expand that thought onto the normal laws of the speed of light, and even though over a larger distance, it's possible to prove that light has no real correlation to time, in its essence, it only seems to correlate through our perception.. it takes intuitive thought to see past the illusion.

You can NEVER reach the speed of light. The faster you move, the slower the time goes. If you reach the speed of light, the time has stopped in the ship(or what thing you are driving), and that can't happen.

wrong, the faster you go,.. the slower your 'perception' of time seems. the essence of time doesnt actually slow down, just your visual perception of it.

we make this mistake because we think light is a medium that is linked to time, but its just a paradox of perceptual limitation.

 

[Phisionary]

imagine the speed of light instead of being 3 million meters per second is now infact 3 m per second.

well, football would be an interesting game in those circumstances. When you tried to throw the football, it would get incredibly heavy. I imagine spin characteristics would be affected by the temporal difference. Also, the signal from the stadium would travel, at maximum, 3 meters per second. If you were watching a game in Florida, and you lived in Washington state, it would take almost 29 days for the TV signal to reach you.

Of course, since physics says that nothing can travel faster than light, information (namely sound waves) would not be able to travel any faster than 3 meters per second either.

Other strange effects: Guns would explode if you fired them, becuase the bullet would exponetially increase in mass the faster it went, until the pressure was too high for the barrel to contain.
We'd all be rather slow-witted, since our neural impulses travel at several hundred miles per hour.
Computers would be several million times slower.
Airplanes would be very different machines. Since both the plane and the air it travels through would increase in mass as the plane sped up, the resistance to motion would increase also.
Other forms of transportaion, although still very slow,would seem faster. For a vehicle travelling at 15 milles per hour, the occupants would experiance time compression, making their transit seem shorter.
Walking would cause a noticable effect of blue-shift. Everything you walk toward turns blue, everything behind turns red.
Similarly, anything that travels quickly would need radiation shielding, since the doppler effect would turn visible light into gamma rays.
Light would take 2500 years to reach earth from the sun. You would see the moon as it was 6.6 years ago.
Of course, since the rotation of the earth would not be able to spin at it's current rate, the day would last at least 5,500 hours.
And since the earth could not revolve around the sun fast enough to stay in orbit, we would either need to be millions of times farther away than we are, or we would fall into the sun and incinerate.

Speculation is fun

 

[Phisionary]

wrong, the faster you go,.. the slower your 'perception' of time seems. the essence of time doesnt actually slow down, just your visual perception of it.

No. If you move, time slows down for you. If you went into space and trvelled at just under the speed of light for what seems (to you, the traveler) like five years, then when you came back, centuries could have passed.

 

[clarky003]

all of that, and time wouldnt of changed a bit, only through human eyes, it would seem to of changed. because again.. of our restricted correlation on the thought that somehow light actually affect's the essence of time.

which is not the case.

now i dont know physic's, cause i only did GCSE physic's, but for object's to displace, and expand and distort, they have to be gaining energy from something/ somewhere.

and in theory it sounds bizarre, in reality you may very well beable to accelerate an object past a limited perceptual medium's speed. even though visual effectuality 'to us' would probably distort our perception of time, in theory you could still travel faster than light .

 

[Phisionary]

all of that, and time wouldnt of changed a bit, only through human eyes, it would seem to of changed. because again.. of our restricted correlation on the thought that somehow light actually affect's the essence of time.

which is not the case.

huh?

if you travelled fast enough, time, for you, was different. Perception be damned. In fact, you would not 'percieve' anything different from normal, until you got back and found out everyone you knew had died.

 

[The Monkey]

wrong, the faster you go,.. the slower your 'perception' of time seems. the essence of time doesnt actually slow down, just your visual perception of it.

we make this mistake because we think light is a medium that is linked to time, but its just a paradox of perceptual limitation.

So you mean that Albert Einstein and every respected scientist on this planet is wrong?

 

[clarky003]

we dont know that would happen.... the essence of time doesnt change just because you move faster than light, the speed is just the speed of the wave frequency we percieve, that is all, it just effect's perception in that time, thats all.. it doesnt effect time itself.

Albert Einstein is human, what can I say.

you have to think outside of the human box here. if you want understand what im talking about. Its why we have a brain, the brain doesnt just exist in the physical it exists where the physical is grounded... so we should beable to look past our physical perceptual limitation and use our intuition to find out the true nature of the universe. because we are not going to find it by looking on the surface all the time.

 

[The Monkey]

but matter is dependant of matter, and time is dependant of matter. Without matter there is no time and without time there is no matter. And when athoms reach the speed of photons, it goes out of tim's control.

I maybe am wrong, but this is at least what I've learned.

 

[Parrot of doom]

Perception has nothing to do with it. Objects don't perceive time, yet put a clock on a skyscaper roof and a duplicate on the ground floor, and after a few years they'll be out of sync.

 

[clarky003]

well that sort of suggests, that without light .... matter ceases to exist somehow...?

but that theory again is created by the limitations of our human mind, unable to see beyond the wave form of visual light and the correlations we try to make with it.

Perception has nothing to do with it. Objects don't perceive time, yet put a clock on a skyscaper roof and a duplicate on the ground floor, and after a few years they'll be out of sync.

how can perception have nothing to do with it...? think about our envolvement in our reality...

our eyes detect light, they are programmed to do so.. we know light is just a wave form... but without our perception the world wouldnt be as it is to us. an object may not perceive anything... but its 'key' as to the way we percieve an object. as for the clock, its just a physical tool... that represents time (again just a perception of time using light). just because one displays differently, doesnt mean that the actual essence of time has actually gone faster or slower in different location's.

our very perception is a key element in everything that is physical and non physical, it's the bridge into reality. its the answer to alot more than what our human perception has to offer. and if you think this universe operates on a purely physical level, then you cant solve some of the key questions of reality,, .. like what is gravity...? how is it linked to magnetism and electricity. the answer's dont exist in the physical domain,, there effect's are manifested into our reality.

but there origin comes from elsewhere. beyond technological and perceptual understanding... which is why we struggle to figure out the answer to it on the physical level.

 

[Razor]

Clarky, i think he means the fact that Einstein's prediction that light travels slower the faster you go, has been scientifically proved by something outside of human perception, i.e. the atomic clock experiment.

 

[clarky003]

Clarky, i think he means the fact that Einstein's prediction that light travels slower the faster you go, has been scientifically proved by something outside of human perception, i.e. the atomic clock experiment.

I wasnt disputing weither light travels slower the faster you go. I was saying that just because light then slows down, doesnt mean time is slowing down... only your perception of time through the medium of light makes it seem like its slowing down.

 

[Lil' Timmy]

but i dont consider it incoherent, because you just expand that thought onto the normal laws of the speed of light, and even though over a larger distance, it's possible to prove that light has no real correlation to time, in its essence, it only seems to correlate through our perception.. it takes intuitive thought to see past the illusion.

your consent is not required it is incoherent b/c, in your described reality, you have disaccociated time from c. according to modern physics, this is nonsensical. there is a reason why c is a constant in all reference frames; there is a fundamental connection betwen spacetime and c.

your new reality only has the semblance of plausibility. it is, within the framework of qm and relativistic understanding, absurd. perception has nothing to do with the matter. changing c would change the fabric of spacetime. none of the "effects" you mentioned are coherent b/c they assume that the rules (laws) of the new universe be the same while it's elementary character be wholely different. you can't have your c and eat it too :E

i think he means the fact that Einstein's prediction that light travels slower the faster you go, has been scientifically proved by something outside of human perception, i.e. the atomic clock experiment.

quite the opposite, relativity states that light travels at the same speed in all reference frames, whether you're stationary or traveling at 99.99..% c.

 

[Edge]

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.

Ack... my brain hurts trying to wrap around that concept!

Kick ass thread!

 

[clarky003]

absurd. perception has nothing to do with the matter

if you want to see matter the way we see it, then yes it does, its not obsurb, light isnt the defining factor of why everything exist's it's just our visual perceptual range,

even without light everything would still exist, because of our ability to detect through feel and sound... but it is our very mind that is formulative and has a direct impact on our reality... because without it.. there most likely would be no reality for you in the way it is. or atleast not this one. so our perception is very much part of the equation.

again this is why scientist are at a dead end with answering , the 'whys' about gravity , and the electron. and magnetism, its because even though we think everything is making itself apparent in our perceivable universe, it is not... the answer to the percievable lies in the unpercievable universe, that has a direct impact on why our physical universe is how it is.

I mean,, its not like many people actually truely question the essence of everything.. like why does gravity exist, or why does the electron spin indefinately, or why do we percieve matter in the way that we do.

they cant be answered by science, because science is missing the point, that point being the universe's essence operates on a humanly unpercievable level, and using purely physical science wont give us the answer's, although combining physical science and our experiances, mystically or otherwise. may clarify the reason's for why our universe is what it is.

the problem is, people see things as seperate through their human mind, when it really is not, its just one vast sea of energy that gives rise to the physical universe., like a background layer of space, that has direct influence on the physical percievable reality.

and isnt anywhere near as complicated as we make it out to be, it only seems complicated on the surface, in thought through human perception.

 

[Edge]

Lil' Timmy

that avatar is soooo cute

 

[Jackal hit]

actually time is perceived as completely normal if you're travelling at relativistic speeds. you cannot discern any time dilation from your reference frame except for that of an external reference frame. time does not slow down for you any more than it does when you're sitting around at your computer reading this.

we dont know that would happen.... the essence of time doesnt change just because you move faster than light, the speed is just the speed of the wave frequency we percieve, that is all, it just effect's perception in that time, thats all.. it doesnt effect time itself.

this statement is incorrect, first, you can't move faster than light. second, are going relativistic speeds you're travelling in a separate reference frame

 

[clarky003]

now jackal is getting it

or already had got it

 

[Jackal hit]

shit, 15 min edit window is over... i should also explain that your own perceived time doesn't change, HOWEVER in the outside reference frames, time is INDEED different

now jackal is getting it

or already had got it

i understand what you're trying to say, though.

 

[clarky003]

this statement is incorrect, first, you can't move faster than light. second, are going relativistic speeds you're travelling in a separate reference frame

lol, unless you test it out by going the speed of light, you cant blatantly call my statement incorrect, for all we know , if you did go C for a year, and ended up 54 billion miles away, then did C on the way back, making a 2 year earth time journey for you, when you got back , the same amount of time would of passed on earth, its just from a 54 billion mile distance the earth would be seen a year ago, but when you get up close you see it a present day, because there's no 'delay in the perception of light at that distance,

if you think of light as just being a delayed medium it all makes sense, time doesnt change in essence ever.. only the light medium is delayed or distorted to create illusionary perception that the earth is a year in the past if your 54 billion miles away, but on earth at that same time everthing would infact be at present day, of the same percievable moment for those two view points.