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Author Topic:   Speed of Light Barrier
jdodger
Junior Member (Idle past 5797 days)
Posts: 2
From: Florida
Joined: 05-13-2008


Message 69 of 178 (466153)
05-13-2008 9:52 AM
Reply to: Message 67 by cavediver
08-13-2005 7:22 AM


worldline implications
quote:
But space-like travel is possible. This is not a "speed" beyond light, but really a different concept all together. Two events are space-like seperated if light cannot travel from one event to the other... e.g. here on earth "now", and on a planet around Alpha Centauri "now" (or "now" plus any amount of time <4.3 yrs as it is 4.3 lyrs away) If I can teleport somehow from earth now to Alpha C now, that is synonymous with time travel. One way to do this is with a convenient wormhole. Unfortunately, we have the Chronology Protection Conjecture (CPC) that dictates that this will not be possible... sadly the physics seems to suggest that this is the case.
Ok, I know this is an old topic, but it's the only one that seemed appropriate. All this got me thinking about the worldline model in relativity. I'm an electrical engineer, not a physicist, so let me state a few of my assumptions as follows:
1. The worldline is specific to an observer.
2. The observer is located at the origin of the worldline.
3. The origin of the worldline is a dimensionless point that represents the "here and now".
Ok, so if my assumptions are correct, then doesn't that mean that no matter where you define the 'origin' to be, that every point in the observer's body is space-like separated from every other point in their body? -- If the origin had any width to it, then wouldn't the light-speed boundary necessarily be violated? -- If the exact location of the origin cannot be defined beyond the uncertainty principle, then doesn't the light-speed boundary become 'fuzzy'?
Now, I have quite an elaborate theory about all this, but I don't want to ramble on, so I'll let someone else share their thoughts.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 67 by cavediver, posted 08-13-2005 7:22 AM cavediver has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 70 by cavediver, posted 05-13-2008 10:17 AM jdodger has replied

  
jdodger
Junior Member (Idle past 5797 days)
Posts: 2
From: Florida
Joined: 05-13-2008


Message 71 of 178 (466178)
05-13-2008 11:47 AM
Reply to: Message 70 by cavediver
05-13-2008 10:17 AM


Re: worldline implications
Ok, well, I'll take the first answer. With or without uncertainty shouldn't make too much difference. I'm thinking of the worldline origin as the 'primary' location of observation... I won't go so far as to say it is the location of 'consciousness'. Everything else is secondary and SEPARATE from that point, just information streaming into and out of that dimensionless point at the origin. Your arms, your legs, your memories, your age right down to the second, even the information that you HAVE a body is information streaming into that point NO FASTER than the speed of light.
Ok, so what this says to me is that if you were to go from rest up to light-speed, all that information would have to come with you. Basically, As you travel through space at the speed of light, all that information that makes up your body would propagate outward from your start-point at the same speed. You would experience a freeze-frame of yourself until you stop, the same with your perceived spaceship... in other words, you would not experience any time! I feel like this is the *fundamental reason for time-dilation, unless there's a flaw in my logic.
quote:
The speed-of-light is a maximum simply becuase it is THE ONLY SPEED. It just depends in which direction of four-dimensional space it is pointing! You are always travelling at the speed-of-light, just not always spatially.
This makes a lot of sense to me, but again, it gives me some very strange[r?] ideas... When you say you are always travelling at the speed-of-light, just not always spatially, I assume you mean that the origin of our worldline is what's doing the 'travelling' relative to everything else? If that's true and what I say is true then NOTHING ELSE is doing the travelling besides the dimensionless point at the origin of your worldline... not even your body!!! (if your bodily information was on the same vector through time as the worldline origin, then as above, you would experience a freeze-frame of yourself, which clearly we don't) So if the universe simply 'exists' in time, but doesn't move 'through' time, and it's US (not including bodily information) moving through it in the time direction at the speed of light, I almost feel like this movement is the result of some higher-dimensional biology, as if the path we carve through time by whatever lies at the origin of our worldline is akin to a root growing upwards through the soil... the root can only make minor deviations from it's innevitable "upward" vector. It's a *fundamental* property, but an internal one, not an external one. I don't mean this in just a philosophical way, because the difference does affect current and future theories in at least biology if not physics.
Now let me try to wrap this up before I start losing an audience.. Because of my limited knowledge of physics, to go any farther than this puts me at risk of crossing into philosophical territory without even realizing I'm doing it.
So I guess I'm just wondering if I'm missing something, or if this is all plausable.
Edited by jdodger, : clarification

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by cavediver, posted 05-13-2008 10:17 AM cavediver has not replied

  
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