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Author Topic:   Is Faster Than Light travel the wrong question?
Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 3 of 81 (533229)
10-29-2009 12:19 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Michamus
10-29-2009 10:43 AM


I think the problem comes from time dilation, meaning we'll see your headlights travelling at c as well, you'll just appear to be moving about your car very slowly.
But before I step to deeply over my head, I'll defer to Son Goku or cavediver if they happen to swing by on their less than FTL speed trip through the forum.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 8 of 81 (533362)
10-30-2009 10:58 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by CosmicChimp
10-30-2009 10:06 AM


the speed of light barrier is a limit and then a limit forever.
But, what if we could bypass the limit. If we shorten the distance between point A and point B, we can make the trip very quickly, yet still travel significantly less than c.
This could either be done by wormholes, or by some sort of space warp technology. You expand space behind you, contract space in front of you, and voila.
Of course, we have no idea how to do this yet, but crazy ideas that inspire imagination are the keys to advancement.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 13 of 81 (533379)
10-30-2009 1:20 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Aware Wolf
10-30-2009 12:25 PM


Don't ask me what it means to continue tipping the stick so it starts to point down, or if this is even possible.
IF it were possible, that would indicate moving backwards through time...or so I would imagine.
Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 15 of 81 (533387)
10-30-2009 2:09 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by kbertsche
10-30-2009 2:03 PM


Re: fantasy
Transporting matter at relativistic velocities requires energy. Transporting matter is the topic of the OP and the thread.
The science at one time said breaking the sound barrier was impossible, so it's also possible (though I would admit unlikely) that the light speed limit is not quite as absolute as we think it is.
There's also the fact that we can get the same results as FTL travel without the actuality of it. As I said earlier in the thread, wormholes, space warping, etc may get us great distances in short times by altering the fabric of space itself to make the trip shorter. While this may seem "far-out" and "fantasy" there are physicists working on this sort of thing. So, what you're stuck in, is the mentality that to get from point A to point B, you necessarily have to travel through all the points in between...that's a 20/21 Century way of seeing it.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 34 of 81 (533714)
11-02-2009 1:29 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by kbertsche
10-30-2009 7:45 PM


Re: fantasy
Stephen Hawking, in a famous exchange when he guest-starred on Star Trek The Next Generation, pointed at the Warp Drive and said "I'm working on that."
I have a book by Michio Kaku, I'm not sure which one, I'm at work right now, that talks about warping space by contracting it in front of you while expanding it behind you to generate the illusion of faster than light travel.
In a book called "The Physics of Star Trek" they say much the same thing, and reference a few scientists who have said this is a possibility, but currently beyond our ability.
So, when I said, there are scientists working on this, I meant only in the theoretical sense, since it would be very costly to build a device before we have a sound theory in place. But by claiming that we must travel through space the same way we do now is short-sighted and mired in the thinking of the past/present without considering new advances and discoveries that may be just over the horizon.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 35 of 81 (533715)
11-02-2009 1:32 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by onifre
10-31-2009 2:20 AM


Re: fantasy
Agreeing as we always do (on most things) it pains me to have to interject - lol. Actually, the speed of light as a constant is a fact of nature; in fact, one could say a law of physics.
I agree, it probably is a constant and an absolute barrier on speed in "future direction" though it may hint at being able to travel in the "past direction", i.e. time travel. But I'm always loathe to say we understand it completely and can say with 100% certainty that there is absolutely no way at all possible to over come this.
Beyond that, my main thrust is that we might be to get the illusion of faster than light travel without actually doing it, perhaps by a space warping technology or a wormhole.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 36 of 81 (533720)
11-02-2009 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Michamus
11-02-2009 10:33 AM


You know, that would work. The only issue though is the sheer mass of that neutron matter would be quite a burden to propel. With enough energy at our disposal though, it would indeed be possible.
That's the crux. Anything, even neutronium, that would gravitationally attract you at 1G would have the mass of the earth. Anything that gravitationally attracts you at 7Gs would have 7 earth masses. Trying to accelerate anything with that much mass to any significant speed would require an immense amount of power. Even assuming that we can overcome the power limitations, I think we could use that amount of power in a better way than actual linear travel...space warping or wormholes.
Besides, anything with the mass to gravitationally attract you at any multiple Gs would also attract everything else around it at the same amount, making it something that would have to be built, used, and left, in interstellar space, lest you destroy the Earth and/or the planet/space station/etc you are attempting to get to.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 39 of 81 (533743)
11-02-2009 4:15 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by onifre
11-02-2009 3:41 PM


Re: fantasy
I think what Einstein's theory does, is do away with absolute time and space - which does away with the -->human --> notion of forward and backwrads in "time".
I may be wrong in my understanding though.
As I understand it, there's no absolute speed at which time passes, however, there is an absolute direction. And based on the ruler explanation that cavediver has given, and you've also repeated, it would appear that if the ruler kept rotating so that it pointed diagonally downward, you would be moving in space and in time, however, you would be moving backwards in time.
Positrons and anti-protons behave the same way as electrons and protons that are travelling backwards in time.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 41 of 81 (533754)
11-02-2009 4:55 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by onifre
11-02-2009 4:41 PM


Re: fantasy
Yes, but that's just an analogy. What must be remembered in that analogy is that the speed of light is the constant (or limit) that prevents the ruler from pointing downward.
I thought the speed of light was the length of the ruler, and it's angle indicated it's "time movement" and it's "space movement" showing that as you increase one, you decrease the other. WHen you reach the limit of all space movement and no time movement, it would seem that decreasing speed should bring you back to experiencing time, but the analogy doesn't show that the time movement has to be in the same direction as we currently experience it. I'm not sure if this is just an artifact of the analogy and not a real problem at all...but I have often heard that antimatter is the same as normal matter that is travelling backwards in time.
But how could that be if they don't experience time past at all?
I don't know...perhaps I should wait until cavediver sets me straight before I dig myself any deeper.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 43 of 81 (533761)
11-02-2009 5:27 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by onifre
11-02-2009 5:20 PM


Re: fantasy
So the speed of light limit is both temporal and spacial.
I know. When the ruler is straight up, you're experiencing time at light speed, and no spatial movement. WHen it's flat, you're experiencing space at light speed (actual spatial movement) and no time. If you keep rotating the ruler, however, you bring time back into the equation and make your speed less, however, the time is now on the negative axis rather than the positive one...backwards time travel.
Well, if I could attempt to explain - my point was that backward and forward in time are only relevant concepts to things that have mass, and its only an intuative concept to us at that.
And protons, electrons, positrons and anti-protons have mass, so they experience time.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 46 of 81 (533766)
11-02-2009 5:56 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by onifre
11-02-2009 5:47 PM


Re: fantasy
That's just the thing, you cannot. Conceptually it seems like you can, but once you reach the spacial constant of (c) you don't experience time anymore (hypothetically if you could reach "c").
So, you're saying that once you reach the point of no time, there is no time in which to keep rotating the ruler?
Yes, but think about it - backwards in time relative to what?
To what we currently experience. Our past becomes the future. People walk backwards...a episode of Red Dwarf actually kind of shows what this might be experienced like.
Time is a dimension - past, present, future, has always existed.
True, but in all other dimensions, you can reverse course. Time, it would seem, is the only exception, and I'm just positing that this exception doesn't exist, and "rotating the ruler" is a way this may be possible.
All moments in "time" exist.
And yet, it seems in a temporal sense, we can only travel to miami, but we can't decide, halfway there, that we need to go back where we started from. In all other spacetime dimensions we can, but in this one we can't?

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 48 of 81 (533771)
11-02-2009 6:19 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by onifre
11-02-2009 6:11 PM


Re: fantasy
But let me ask you, relative to the Sun, if you walk to Miami, are you going North or South?
You're not moving north or south, but you are definitely moving in a direction, and can then reverse direction, regardless of the reference frame.

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 58 of 81 (533938)
11-03-2009 5:07 PM
Reply to: Message 57 by onifre
11-03-2009 4:52 PM


Re: Spacetime
Also: Have I understood it correctly, that all moments in "time" already exist, and and since there's no universal time (just as there's no universal space) there is no point in time from where one could go back from?
While we wait for Son Goku, doesn't this imply determinism or even fatalism?

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Perdition
Member (Idle past 3228 days)
Posts: 1593
From: Wisconsin
Joined: 05-15-2003


Message 69 of 81 (534014)
11-04-2009 11:12 AM
Reply to: Message 68 by cavediver
11-04-2009 10:54 AM


Sitting Patiently
And no, I didn't leave the apple on the desk for you...seriously...I wouldn't do that...no sir.
{AbE}But I think I saw that Onifre kid leave a tack on your chair. {/AbE}
I'm looking forward to learning more here, as you saw, I'm probably way off the mark.
Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

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