Faster Than Light Travel? Thinking caps please

[LocalSeer 0]

The way I see it is if the universe is flat, you will only travel up to the speed of light, but our universe it assumed to be very close to flat but not quite there, I speculate caused by random quantom flauctuations. Lately with all the talk about string theory and extra dimensions you can make a parallel to our world that allows of faster travel. Say we have a plane that goes speed of light, and it goes from Mexico to Poland, now traveling in a striaght path it will take longer then flying North and then back South to Poland. Imagine that this fourth dimension does exactly the same thing, but that would require our universe to be curved. These quantom flauctuations could be simulated one day and possibly result in squashing a fourth dimension to allow us to explore the stars. Isn't that what star trek does or do they just fold space?

[frederick.ding 0]

[edit: removed content]

Edited January 16, 2011 by frederick.ding (see edit history)

[Erwin_X 0]

I think that some things in Star Trek are just not possible, if you look to physics.It is not possible to contact earth, but traveling in lightspeed (or more). When you get close to the speed of light, time is going much slower for you, than the time for the people on earth. So when they talk to someone on earth on the ship, while already travelled a few lightyears, the people you now on earth don't exist anymore. It's a very complex theory to explain this, but it is explainable. There is a formula that the speed is equal to distance divided by the time. When the distance is the same for both the observer and the person that is moving, but the speed is for the moving person much greater, the time must be a lot slower. This is only for the person that is moving so fast. But he himself will never notice. Till he contact earth and sees everyone that you first knew, are dead. This is a very complex theory, and it possible that not everyone understands. But if you have ever reed a book of Einsteins theory's; you will .

[reatum 0]

Another possibility would be to transmit large enough pieces of information at light speed that we could reconstruct that information into mass with existing energy at the other end of the information line. Kind of like a transporter on star trek I would assume.

You would need a 4 dimensional type of 4 dimensional printer/scanner more or less. It would scan the 4 dimensions of spacetime in the local area, digitize it, and send it over a laser or some other light based techonology, and at the other end, you would have to have a second one that could "print" your existence to that space/time with matter/energy that already exists in the local area.

Right now we are able, with pigments, to only recreate refractions of light. We need to focus on smell, taste, texture, etc, and create a device that can recreate all of these things.

 

This is kindof a joke, but wouldn't it suck if you scanned yourself and there was a "paperjam" as you were printing out at the other end.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

Does the ligth have mass? No? Why then the light can't escape from a black hole? Does the black hole have mass? Is the mass at the black hole (in it's acretion disk) going faster toward it than the light? Does it mean that mass can travel faster then light? Is there something completely different at play? Another "physics" maybe?

Unless I'm mistaken, black holes have never been proven to actually exist; they are thus far merely a theoretical and science fiction concept.

Einstein was indeed briliant for his time and for ours, but there may come a time when people will have much more data about the univers and the way it works.

Why is it that so many people believe Einstein's theories so whole-heartedly, when there is really no solid evidence to prove that they are anything more than a concept?

whats this matter waves??

Google is your friend.
Concerning the concepts of high-speed travel in general, I think that there's more merit in the concepts of quantum physics (and the concepts of spacial folding) than in gravitational physics. Especially since so many quantum physics properties have been proven (such as the ability to transfer the properties of one atom to that of another atom using an energy stream).

[mee 0]

I suppose that is a not your content and you should put it in Quotes. You can find the same here :

 

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Even if you have posted it there, you need to quote it here. and not put the entire thing as content.

 

Moreover the link that u gave states that:

 

Some of the weird science stuff has been removed, it was previously left here for the humour value.

Some people evidently don't have a sense of humour...

 

 

That's something of mine he quoted but I subsequently removed it.

 

Ignore the stuff in bold above, I wrote an article on the Cell (PS3) processor and people were using the alternate physics stuff to attack me, it was all meant to be removed anyway and that's the first thing I thought of.

 

It's not "real" physics and I never claimed otherwise but it turns out the idea I described for FTL travel is very similar to some other existing ideas which are considered quite respectable.

 

The problem is it requires an anti-gravity source to work (which I also wrote about), unfortunately if you write anything on that subject you are immediately considered a nut case.

 

I think the ideas have some validity but the descriptions were quite old and not well written, I'd planned to rewrite them anyway, one day I'll do that. In the mean time I've removed them.

 

BTW I should point out that I'm not disagreeing with Einstein, in fact it's all dependant on relativity (at least how I understand it).

[fusionx 0]

Let's leave this sort of stuff to the scientists and they would most likely find out how, why and when. Sure it would be great but it will only occur in like a few hundred years. So you won't be able to find out if it has been done or will be done. Unless you would like to invent a time machine and get a design on how to make it work.

[SqlByte 0]

its been discovered that we can decrease and increase the speed of light.

199669[/snapback]

its also discovered that we can teleport light !

but there is always but.. for now only on one nanometar... so thats not realy a lot isnt it

I think that its posible to travel faster then light, but not to us and definitly not now.

 

and why do you need faster then light to travel if you can go back in time when you travel as fast as light but that is another topic.. that i need to search for

[LeAnn Rimes My Angel 0]

I saw an episode on the Learning Channel with a mathematical genious who calculated it is possible to travel faster than light. I don't know if an infinite amount of energy is needed, since infinity of anything doesn't exist (in my opinion). The solution they proposed was to use wormholes in space. And the example they used was a pizza (DON'T LAUGH... YET). One person demonstrated a worm hole by first throwing pizza toppings on top, and considered that the galaxy. Next, he took an object, and demonstrated regular space travel from one edge of the pizza to the other side. After that, he took the whole pizza, and folded it so that one of the sides made contact with the other. Taking that same object, travelling from one edge to the other is instant. As a result, that demonstrates a very simple example of a potential breakthrough in the future, once humans discover a way to use wormholes to travel great distances instantly in space.

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

It seems to make perfect sense, Dark God. I don't see why so many people have put so much faith in Einstein's theory that nothing can pass the speed of light, since he had no proof, nor any way of testing his theory. Until we have the technology to see if that theory is fact, I suggest we keep an open mind and don't get ahead of ourselves.

[CrazyRob 0]

At one time peopl believed the world was flat.  Later, they believed that traveling at the speed of a locamotive would be dangerous to humans.  Then they believed that human flight was impossible.  Again they thought supersonic flight was unachievable.

 

Of course, now we know they were all wrong.  And it is only a matter of time before someone shows not with an equation, but with physical evidence, that E=mc^2 is does not define the upper speed limit of travel most places in the universe.

196000[/snapback]

i sont understand why peope then believed thta the world was flat that is crazy man

[Cerebral Stasis 0]

It's because few Easterners (if any) knew of the Americas, but quite a few had gone in that general direction and never returned, so they assumed that there was some kind of dropoff or monster that stopped the sailors, and noone was brave enough to set sail and find out.With the little scientific knowledge they had, the concept of a flat world made perfect sense at the time, just like how our knowledge of the earth being round makes perfect sense now. All one can do is take all avaliable facts and derive a conclusion based on the evidence at hand.Remember, we're talking about a time during which there were four elements; earth, sky, water, and fire.

[juice 0]

As far as I know nothing and absolutly nothing can travel faser than light. Eistien said that E=MC? which means Energy equals matter travelling at the speed of light sqared. What am I typing? It says as soon as matter reaches the speed of light sqarred it turns into energy. You know what? Time is an illusion and it does't exist I live my life not worrying about these things. A little while ago, people thought the world was flat and if you went to the edge you would fall off, how crazy is that!

Edited September 15, 2006 by juice (see edit history)

[salamangkero 0]

I believe that time does exist and its effects are readily observable. The very concept of movement is an effect of the transition of time. However, I digress.

Someone once hypothesized the existence of particles called tachyons. These things were believed to travel faster than light. Not only that, they were also believed to operate in "reverse time".

Consider an effects of Einstein's relativity equation: Time Dilation. What this means is that moving clocks tick slower than those that stay still and that apple halves propelled near the speed of light brown slower than those lying still. Note how time approaches zero as the speed of an object approaches the speed of light.

Now, what happens when the speed of an object, heaven help us, exceeds the speed of light? It is quite intuitive to assume that time, too, will slow down beyond zero, in effect, turn negative, thus the concept of "reverse time". The eccentric author of paranormal books, Erik von Daniken, has provided us a seemingly mundane hypothetical situation that simulates how these tachyons work.

Suppose we have a flashlight connected to a tachyon-sensitive reciever in such a way that it lights up whenever the reciever detects a tachyon. Suppose, too, that we have a satellite in orbit programmed to fire a tachyon in the direction of the reciever at exactly 12 midnight. What happens?
The flashlight lights up well before midnight...

This does present a lot of opportunites:
1. If we propel anyone faster than the speed of light, we would effectively break the effects of aging.
2. If we set up an interstellar delivery network that operates at speeds faster than light, we can send buckets of fish fresh, not frozen. We might as well expect them to arrive at their destination still hanging onto life by a thread.

The aforementioned effects also present a lot of problems:
1. Anyone planning to travel faster than the speed of light should invest a lot in protective gear and hull integrity. It is the universe, after all; do you expect to zoom through it without running into any particles? And at such speeds...
2. Anyone creating blueprints of an engine designed to propel itself faster than light, or even at the speed of light, would do well to remember that time slows down for it, effectively limiting the speeds it can attain to velocities well below that of light. Analogously speaking, if your engine powered a rowboat, the faster it goes, the slower it will row.
3. As an effect, objects travelling at the speed of light either have to be "born" that way or propelled by a powerful outside force. Photons were lucky enough to be born that way. For everything else, you don't need an engine. What you need is a catapult.
4. Then again, if there were an engine like that in Futurama, which doesn't propel the ship forward but impels the universe about it, then I'd say it is magic, completely beyond the realm of physics and hardly worth my precious neural cycles.
5. Anyone who happens to find himself caught in a speed faster than light and unfortunate enough to operate in reverse time will do well to remember that if you drink water, you will become thirsty, the effect will inevitable come before the cause and that your conversations will start with "Good-bye" and end with "Hi" or "Hello"

[elhadi 0]

may be in the future