Faster Than Light?

Is there anything faster then light? Read Stephen Hawking or guess some and I'll tell ya.

According to the special theory of Relativity...No.

Yes: enzo at a Ferrari giveaway. ;)

My "real" answer: Yes, I think so. I read A Brief History of Time once, and don't remember it well, but I thought there was something about isolating quarks or whatever they decided photons are made of.

The speed of thought. Yeah, they can measure the speed synapses fire, but nobody know how fast people think. Of course, there are some people I know who never think. But thats a different story.

For the religous among us. The will of God.

Originally posted by Silver S2000
Yes: enzo at a Ferrari giveaway. ;)


This guy's got it right!

Also, a Ferrari!
w00t!
Me running to the dealership tomorrow!

In a Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking there are things called Singularites, in which all theroies are broken down and are irrelevent. There is a singularities to everything. In black holes, nothing can escape it even light, right? But how would we measure something if nothing can escape it? In a singularity when light curves back around into the black hole form trying to escape, tiny tiny tiny tiny particles of radiation are flung off the curve, when objects are flung around curves they get acelerated by gravity, they use this principle to sling shot satilites with enough velocity so they don't get caught up in the gravity of Jupiter and other planets.

So yes, for a extremley small amount of time extremley small radiation particles go faster then light, but just barely.

The answer is no. If some object would go as fast as light it would go back in time.

V12: Why do you say it would travel back in time; why not forward in time?

No, the singularty for the Theroy Of Realitivity is that it doesn't apply to Astrophysics. The Theroy of Realitivity only applies to large things such as people, planets, spacecraft, metor's, asteriods, stuff like that, not microscpic barely measurable particles of light radiation.

But it's Einsteins special theory that deals with speed of light. However, no matter how minute, according to einstein, anything traveling at the speed of light would have infinite length (due to infinite length due to other stuff).

Remember, einstein's theories have been justified by two very good clocks, one on earth, one flying in a supersonic jet.

Hmmmm....it's all theoretical anyways, so who knows?

Yea it deals with light, remember that light is a wave and also matter at the same time. What about the particles smaller then light, such as the radiation of it. Still, Any of einsteins theroy doesn't deal with astrophysics, I think he once said that he doesn't belive in it or something. But still, read stephen hawking's book, it'll tell ya.

if you are going faster than light then you are just going really really fast nothing more nothing less no time trave crap :) if you ask me :)

I don't really know too much about the whole Faster than the Speed of Light=Time travel thing but, It would be true that you would just be going really, really, fast if you broke the light barrier. Why is time based on light anyways?

aren't we, by just being, all traveling through time?



Here's a question about infinity:

From high school math, I was taught that there are an infinite number of points between any two given points.
(remember, a point is a dimensionless geometric object having no properties except location)

This being assumed, you would then have to touch an infinite number of points in order to travel the distance between the two points. If you had to touch an infinite number of points from point one to point two, how could you ever reach the second point?

You couldn't, but that's stating the obvious.

but we go from point to point all the time.
From home to work, is point A to point B.
but, we shouldn't be able to make it to work (B), right?

Or, maybe we have to be aware of this, for it to affect us.
(Sort of like the Coyote doesn't fall till he realizes he is off the side of a cliff.)
So, if you are at work now, you can never get home!
Oh No!...don't read this until you get home.

...but even though there are an infinite number of distances to travel, each of those distances are infinitesimally small. This makes them cancel each other out.

Let's say you had to travel one meter.
Thats:
1 * 1m
10 * .1m
100 * .01m
1000 * .001m
1000000 * .000001m
ad infinitum...

Actually there has already been a light accellerator made. A physicist has found a chemical that actually speeds up light as it travels through it...

He took two beams of light...
Beam 1 was sent through air.
Beam 2 was sent through the chemica.

Beam 2 reached the target before beam 1 did.....

Sorry I don't remember all the details, it was about a year ago that this was done.

I remember that, I made a topic about it on another board. I don't think it counts as truely breaking the speed of light. I'm not sure though...

It's simple. The velocities that space/the universe is expanding at are faster than the speed of light. :) It's in a National Geographic. I'll try to find the issue later today and share it will all of you. :D :)

What happens if you are cruising through space, at the speed of light, and you turn your headlights on? :eek:

:rolleyes: Come on guys everyone knows that this was solved in Star Trek years ago. It's call Warp! :rolleyes: Geez.

Also anyone whos watched Superman knows that if you fly around the world fast enough and make it spin the other way you can reverse the effects of time! :rolleyes: You guys think you're all so smart!


:D :D :D

The rebirth of a 5 month old thread. Time warp.

Relativity does not say nothing can travel faster than light. It is simply a conclusion from the function of the total energy of a mass that no mass can be accelerated above the speed of light. To be accelerated that fast would require (not infinite energy, like some think, but) more than infinite energy.

But there might be some as-of-yett-undiscovered way of getting past the barrier, jumping past the lightspeed without passing the energy mountain, cause on the other side the function flattens out again, and the total energy lessens the faster you go. This of course would render normal chemical bonds, and plenty of other principles our bodies relies on, effectless to the automatic acceleration that proceeds, not to mention that we'd be turned to plasma (if you can even call it that) by the energy released in this tachyonic state.

yea, I think that eventually humans will find a way to break the light barrier as we did the sound barrier.

How about this one. The speed of light is slowing down. From what I've read its by one billionth of a second every one or two years.

Originally posted by AEstud
How about this one. The speed of light is slowing down. From what I've read its by one billionth of a second every one or two years.


seconds are not a measure of speed.

the speed of light is not 186,000 miles per hour its hours pers second. If you don't believe me look it up.

Originally posted by V.S.
seconds are not a measure of speed.
True, but v_avg = delta_x/delta_t. If delta_x remains the same and delta_t gets larger, then v_avg gets smaller.

Btw, does any one know how to get delta to show up?

what does all of that mean?

Originally posted by AEstud
How about this one. The speed of light is slowing down. From what I've read its by one billionth of a second every one or two years.
I suggest you speak more of what you know, and less of what you've heard. The first one stand a small chance of being correct, the second is guaranteed to be lacking of any truth.

What is your problem, do you have some kind of chip on your shoulder or some type of grudge? Besides that, its not like your opinion matters to anyone excpet the person you are supporting, then again that means thier using you. Don't put too much value on what you know.

Originally posted by AEstud
what does all of that mean?
Average velocity is:

    v_avg = delta_x/delta_t = (x2 - x1)/(t2 - t1).

If you've taken calculus, then you know that instantaneous velocity is v = dx/dt--but this isn't important for argument. Also, speed is the numerical value of velocity, is represents how fast you are travling from x1 to x2 in a given time interval (t2 - t1).

So... if delta_t = t2 - t1 and delta_t gets larger, then v_avg will get smaller if delta_x remains the same. This makes sense intuitively because if it takes you longer than before to get from x1 to x2, then that means you must be traveling at a slower speed.

And back to VS's comment. Yes, seconds isn't a measurement of speed. But since you quoted that delta_t changes each year by a certain number, then we know that this will affect the velocity of light.

Now, did that make sense?

No I haven't taken calculus yet but your explanation does make to me. It's strange how I don't understand algerbra but do understand precal and physics.