Faster than the speed of Light?

   The "Big Bang" discussion led to much discourse on infinity.  The "Dark Matter" discussion led to much disagreement. How about this:

    Can you travel faster than the speed of light?  I say yes and I can prove it. Simply.

   Anyone interested?

    Allow me a few more replies and I will be happy to explain how it is possible for even you to travel faster than the speed of light.  This is not a trick answer or play on words and certainly no joke.

   Not to knock Wikipedia here but some things transcend known science and boil down to simple common sense.  This is one such instance.  I wanted to get a few reactions here before I explained myself but I will post my reasoning as soon as I finish typing it up.

Hmmm, you go faster that light and there is a time dilation. Does this mean your next post will be read yesterday?

    Point taken.  Actually, I think it means I havn't actually posted it yet. However, since you and I are travelling at virtually the same rate, we share the same yesterday. For another world travelling toward us at a combined relative speed faster than the speed of light their yesterday may be our tomorrow!

    Faster than the speed of light?

        Absolutely and with ease.  Occasionally the greatest intellect can't see the forest for the trees.  Let us hop into Einstein's elevator of relatavism where he proved the very thing he called impossible. 

        The elevator is the simplest analogy for his theory of relativity.  If you were in a falling elevator you would believe yourself to be weightless and motionless relative to your environment.  Of course you would not be either weightless or motionless relative to the rest of the world as you fell at terminal velocity. 

         Now, let us consider our world in the light of that elevator as we travel through the cosmos at some high rate of speed.  Sitting there in your chair you appear to be still, relative to your surroundings.  You are in fact hurtling through space, racing around the sun as it in turn spirals around the galactic center, as it in turn races through the universe.  So how fast are you really moving?

         What would you measure that speed against? The emptyness of space? Some arbitrary universal center point? Or do we consider ourselves the center and measure everything else relative to ourselves?

         First, emptyness can not be measured.  Second, a point in space cannot be held.  And lastly, we have not been considered the center of the universe since the middle ages.

         What then does this leave as a means to measure our speed?  Nothing remains except for our relativity to other celestial objects so let us pick one.  Let us first assume that we are moving relative to actual space.  For the purposes of this argument that exact rate of speed is irrelevant.  Now, lets pick that object to be a particle moving at that glorious  299,792,458 metres per second  or "c" said to be the maximum attainable rate of speed in the cold dark vacuum of dead space.  Let us pick this object to be one traveling directly toward us as we are traveling directly toward it at our irrelevant rate of travel. 

         Relative to this object we are in fact moving faster than the speed of light.  Relative to many moving objects we are moving faster than the speed of light.  Relative to some we are moving slower than stillness.

         This raises a few new questions:

         Would time be the same for that object as for us?

         What creates this maximum speed "c" if space truly is a vacuum with no resistance? (A whole new topic as I believe space to be a substance)

         And, how would you see an object traveling toward you at "c" since its light would not reach you until impact?

         Just a few things to make you go hmmm.

Good points lehket. Further reading will help. Taodell, I suggest you look up Lorentz and his transformations. You are proposing an inertial reference frame, (it is not accelerating), that for the sake of argument, you believe is moving very fast. Furthermore, relative to other inertial reference frames that appear to be moving slower,  not only is time slowed down for you, (your clocks are slower) but all of your rulers and anything to measure space with, shrinks. The amount of time dilation and space shrink is exactly equal to make it look like the speed of light is constant everywhere. This is all accomplished through Maxwell's demons. These are demons that rush about shrinking things and slowing things down as we approach the speed of light. They are very closely related to the demons who are responsible for time and space dilation in a strong gravitational field. However, these are Einstein's demons who were conjured up by the great scientist while playing on a merry-go-round. The things closer to the centre of the merry-go-round move more slowly than the things at the outside. The centripidal acceleration near the centre is different than near the outside. The centripidal acceleration of a merry-go-round is equivalent to the acceleration due to a gravitational field. And Einstein's demons were born. 

Remember that the two particles traveling at the speed of light toward each other are still traveling at the speed of light. Only to a third party (someone standing in the middle of the two particles) would the closure speed add up to FTL...but that is math and not what each particle is experiencing.

Massless particles could (and do) travel FTL. Might be because the "M" in E=MC^2 is zero which brings up the interesting thought: energy required to go FTL is 0.

Remember, too, that it's all about the acceleration of the observer versus a another observer. Let's say Dick leaves Earth to go to the center of the Milky Way and back. Jane is Mission Control and watches him launch and accelerate at 1G. Say he accelerates at 1G to the halfway point, flips and does the decel, takes a peek at the black hole at o-o-o, and comes home in the same fashion.

Dick experiences approximately 42 years of travel time (if Prof Pogge is correct) while Jane (and all the Mission Controllers afterwards) experience 52,000 years of Earth time.

The Janes were unaccelerated, but Dick's clocks (mechanical and biological) slow down relative to Earth's as they accelerate. Imagine a tick of one second vs meters travelled. The faster you go, the more real estate that tick covers. Accelerating at 1G for 11 years will get you real close to C.

Anyway, you all know this.

One last thought: everything we've ever learned in science has eventually been proven wrong. I predict FTL is not only possible, but likely given enough space/time to figure it out. If it is possible, why haven't we been visited by a culture that does this on a regular basis?

I think it's because the Universe is a HUGE place and we are just a little rock around a G star, in a galaxy of 100,000,000,000 stars in a visible group of about 100,000,000,000 galaxies or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars where surely there must be some interesting things to go look at.

Um, Capcloud ... no. Please read Lorenz. About the universe being really, really big, maybe infinite? ...  yes. About not really having a clue what it is all about? ... yes. FTL? ... No. Nice thing to look at? The Trapezium through a 24" scope at about 600x power on a clear cold winter night at a dark site. 

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/B_WINTER/TRAPEZ.HTM

Thanks. Having the discussion helps me figure it out. Still learning relativity and its remarkably complicated workings.

And, OK, perhaps not FTL: but working beyong space/time where the rules are different (some string theory variant), moving between the space/times may be possible.

I don't think we are close to discovering all the answers much less the questions that science has in store for us. So even if C is a barrier to travel with mass, moving information at the quantum level so that the end result appears to be FTL is within the realm of possibility.

I'll go read Lorenz to help my process.

Thank you Capcloud. If you ever get a chance to read Einstein's original papers, I highly reccomend it. They are very clear and fairly easy to understand. Reality travels at the speed of light. Think locally, in local terms, it makes it much more clear. There seem to be two boundaries on physical existence. One is the speed of light and the other is absolute zero. In quantum mechanics there are things that seem to defy this boundary condition, however, quantum mechanics uses a different differential equation. Um, start with Lorenz and if you have trouble, try some of Einstein's papers where he tries to explain his theory. He wrote papers for people on this subject most of his life. There's some pretty good stuff in there.

    Ok, a great beginning.  I'm always amazed at how many spin-off topics a single idea can generate.  What I was basically after here was that relative to each other two objects can be moving faster than the speed of light, (Relative to each other).   Capcloud, let's take your two particles but this time make one of them you.  They are travelling toward each other at a combined rate of faster than the speed of light.  (Relative to each other) they are indeed travelling FTL.  Now, how could you detect the approaching object which, relative to space is moving at the speed of light?  Light could not outrace it to arrive to you sooner than the object.  So now you collide.  The collision is incidental, not a direct collision.  Like two pool balls on a table the result will be that one will gain speed while the other loses some.  This will accelerate one FTL.  Or result in a nuclear explosion?

    Anyway, it is a question of relativety.  How do you measure something against the cold hard vacuum of space if space truly has no substance?  And if space has no substance what is to limit anything to any maximum speed?  Space must have substance. it must be composed of something we have not yet learned to detect.  Once detected we can learn to overcome its limits as almost without doubt someone (or some "thing") out there has done.  There has been too much time, and there is too much space out there for this not to have been achieved.

Yo taodell, the medium of space used to be thought of as aether, which could carry light waves. michelson morley  did a cute little experiment that proved there could be no aether since light, the nasty little devil, kept travelling at the same speed in every direction. Big Al said that the measuring devices were altering according to the direction of their travel. This is because of the Lorenz/Maxwell demons. The aether is actually spacetime. Space time is the coordinate system of measuring the time and space between events. The coordinate system is formed from the presence of mass and/or charge. And, of course, mass and charge are formed from the coordinate system. It is a truly elegent theory. The structure of spacetime with the Einstein equations is what makes the world go round. (That and a large number of demons).

   I'm sorry but that system is flawed.  it helps us to understand the reactions we can expect from set situations.  unfortunately it is still full of holes and won't explain many observed phenomenon.  Space must have substance, call it ether, dark matter, or what have you.  No other explanation can cover all the bases.  There is no shortage of conjecture and theory put forth attempting to explain the holes but in my view, as long as there are holes, the theory falls through them.  As long as we are not looking for something we will never find it.  Space time is a theoretical model and not a physical system.  Until there is an all-encompassing physical model explaining everything we must continue to probe with open minds.  the true answers will seem like fantasy when we find them.  I was really looking forward to the results of the Hadron Super collider tests but alas they are still some time away.  the only sure thing is that time will tell.

    But still there is that other issue.  how do you detect a speed of light object moving toward you before it hits you?

To answer your question, you can't. A speed of light object is a photon or, perhaps, a neutrino. The Einstein Field equations cover it all but for quantum effects. Quantum efects are covered by Schroedinger. There is no dark matter. There are two differential equations that seem to cover just about everything. String theory shows promise. Space-time is real. It's a part of reality. As a matter of fact, it is reality. Spacetime is a physical system. That's the whole point of the field equations. 

Hi guys, can I post here or do I have to be a member?

Red

Hi Red. Consider yourself a member. Member of what we don't really know, but if you want to be a member you are one. If you're not, you can post anyway and maybe become a member later. Welcome. 

i think the time warp junk is just sci-fi no one has been able to achibe the speed of light much less faster. the reason light is the fastest is it has no mass. the mass of objects cause friction causes them to slow down it's acceration. the massless photon isn't effected by friction making it fast. in order to become as fast as light you have to have no mass. in order to achieve speed faster than light you would therefore need negative mass which i believe is impossible for this dimension if any dimensions.