Flying Faster than Light

[Electric Scooter]

It has now been a few years since the Higgs Field was discovered.

What does it do? Well it turns out that mass is not an intrinsic property of atomic particles. Instead they get their mass from interacting with the Higgs Field. Every time a Higgs Boson hits an atomic particle it gives it mass.

That is except for photons. Photons have no mass because when a Higgs Boson hits one it disintegrates into quarks and neutrinos. So what does this all mean? It means we can easily violate light speed. Have you ever heard of the UFO stories about a craft emitting a bright light? Well if the ship shines off photons then all Higgs Bosons hitting those photons are prevented from reaching the UFO and giving its atoms mass.

So, in effect, we can remove the mass of a spacecraft by emitting intense light from its surfaces.

[pellinore]

I hope you expand on this, I was always taught the conventional view that nothing can exceed the speed of light- your physics degree is paying off. Here's someone explaining the conventional view:

 

[Alchopwn]

9 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

Well if the ship shines off photons then all Higgs Bosons hitting those photons are prevented from reaching the UFO and giving its atoms mass.

 

This will only work if there is some way for the craft to shed Higgs Bosons before flight.

[Emma_Acid]

12 hours ago, Cookie Monster said:

Instead they get their mass from interacting with the Higgs Field

This is a popular misconception, sorry. The Higgs mechanism is only responsible for the mass of fermions (electrons and quarks), which is only 1% of all mass. The rest comes from the strong nuclear force.

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It means we can easily violate light speed.

Erm, no? Also - massless particles don't "violate" light speed, they travel at c.

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Well if the ship shines off photons then all Higgs Bosons hitting those photons are prevented from reaching the UFO and giving its atoms mass.

Again, no. The mass comes from the non-zero value of the Higgs field. Photons won't stop this from happening. The photon escapes as a massless consequence of the mechanism.

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So, in effect, we can remove the mass of a spacecraft by emitting intense light from its surfaces.

"Intense light" is used every day, in countless experiments around the world, and none have ever resulted in the removal of mass.

[Emma_Acid]

12 hours ago, pellinore said:

I hope you expand on this, I was always taught the conventional view that nothing can exceed the speed of light- your physics degree is paying off.

Nothing can exceed the speed of light, even something without mass. The energy required rises exponentially before basically running away to infinity. 

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Here's someone explaining the conventional view

That's Don Lincoln, a professor at Fermilab, who worked on the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

And calling it "the conventional view" kind of implies that there are other views, when there aren't.

[pellinore]

7 minutes ago, Emma_Acid said:

And calling it "the conventional view" kind of implies that there are other views, when there aren't.

It's a theory. It's not bad, to be fair. But some of us like to think outside the box.

[Electric Scooter]

6 hours ago, Emma_Acid said:

This is a popular misconception, sorry. The Higgs mechanism is only responsible for the mass of fermions (electrons and quarks), which is only 1% of all mass. The rest comes from the strong nuclear force.

Erm, no? Also - massless particles don't "violate" light speed, they travel at c.

Again, no. The mass comes from the non-zero value of the Higgs field. Photons won't stop this from happening. The photon escapes as a massless consequence of the mechanism.

"Intense light" is used every day, in countless experiments around the world, and none have ever resulted in the removal of mass.

 

Photons are Bosons so I don`t understand why you put in the first part.

It wouldn`t take an infinitely large amount of energy to accelerate a ship instantly to the speed of light if it had no mass, it would take an infinitely small amount of energy. The point you make about such as ship still being limited to light speed does however seem valid.

Higgs Boson decay has plenty of papers on it, and I`m proposing `decaying them` using an intense light field would remove the mass of the ship.

[Emma_Acid]

I think the main confusion comes with how the pop-science media talk about the Higgs. The Higgs boson gives particles their mass, it doesn't give mass to everything. Electrons, quarks, w and z bosons etc all get their mass from interacting with the Higgs field. But the mass of your cup of coffee comes from the potential energy stored up in the strong nuclear force that holds everything together.

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Photons are Bosons so I don`t understand why you put in the first part.

Which bit don't you get? The Higgs mechanism isn't responsible for all mass, only the mass of fermions (and w/z bosons).

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It wouldn`t take an infinitely large amount of energy to accelerate a ship instantly to the speed of light if it had no mass

You can't have an object with no mass. It's like trying to see a painting without using photons. The mass is the object.

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The point you make about such as ship still being limited to light speed does however seem valid.

"Light speed" is a bit of a misnomer. c is really the speed of casualty. Its the fastest that cause and effect can happen at - because we live in a universe where effect follows cause, there has to be a speed limit attached to it, otherwise you could read a letter before its sent to you, or an egg could smash onto the floor before its dropped. Entropy guides the order in which these kinds of things happen - a smashed egg on Cookie Monster's floor is a higher entropy system than Cookie Monster holding an egg; so entropy provides the order in which things should happen, and the structure of spacetime provides the physical framework for it. The egg has to travel through spacetime to hit the floor, it can't just appear there.

The more mass an object has, the more sluggishly it moves through spacetime. But the majority of an object's mass is from the strong nuclear force through its binding energy. Energy = mass and all that.

So the less mass something has, the faster it can travel through space at the expense of time. But this has to have a limit, otherwise there's no such thing as causality. Spacetime has a structure - it will always take time to move from one part of that structure to another (talking classically of course).

A photon travels at this speed because it has no structure and no rest mass. As soon as you start including things like the strong nuclear force, then all that potential energy gives the object mass, slowing it down.

If you got rid of the mass of a space craft it would explode like a nuclear weapon, because of the potential energy released. And if you got rid of the interactions with the Higgs mechanism, the fermions would disappear at the speed of light and the ship would just disappear. 

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Higgs Boson decay has plenty of papers on it, and I`m proposing `decaying them` using an intense light field would remove the mass of the ship.

Higgs bosons decay anyway. They're highly unstable and don't stick around for longer than a few microseconds. Either way, its the Higgs field that gives fermions their mass, not the boson.

 

[Emma_Acid]

23 hours ago, pellinore said:

It's a theory. It's not bad, to be fair. But some of us like to think outside the box.

I've never liked this argument. It suggests that physicists don't "think outside the box" when in truth its all many of them do, and that "layman's logic" (to paraphrase another UM regular) can get you through to working out decent thought experiments and scenarios, when it really can't.

[Emma_Acid]

1 hour ago, Emma_Acid said:

Which bit don't you get?

I did not mean for that to sound as confrontational as it did! 

[+Grim Reaper 6]

On 3/22/2023 at 6:11 AM, Cookie Monster said:

It has now been a few years since the Higgs Field was discovered.

What does it do? Well it turns out that mass is not an intrinsic property of atomic particles. Instead they get their mass from interacting with the Higgs Field. Every time a Higgs Boson hits an atomic particle it gives it mass.

That is except for photons. Photons have no mass because when a Higgs Boson hits one it disintegrates into quarks and neutrinos. So what does this all mean? It means we can easily violate light speed. Have you ever heard of the UFO stories about a craft emitting a bright light? Well if the ship shines off photons then all Higgs Bosons hitting those photons are prevented from reaching the UFO and giving its atoms mass.

So, in effect, we can remove the mass of a spacecraft by emitting intense light from its surfaces.

Until the time dilation factor can be overcome traveling traveling any near light speed will cause many problems moving in either direction.

[Emma_Acid]

1 hour ago, Grim Reaper 6 said:

Until the time dilation factor can be overcome traveling traveling any near light speed will cause many problems moving in either direction.

Time dilation is a natural outcome of acceleration. The biggest problem in light speed is accelerating mass.

[+Grim Reaper 6]

8 hours ago, Emma_Acid said:

Time dilation is a natural outcome of acceleration. The biggest problem in light speed is accelerating mass.

My problem with the Time Dilation effect and light speed is when you reach your destination the changes on Earth are so dramatic there would be no reason to return there. Depending upon how far you traveled the Earth may not even exist any long. In addition the original purpose of the mission may no longer even exist when you reach you destination.

So, when one considers the dramatic change that occurs due to the Time Dilation effect what use is it to travel at light speed?

[Emma_Acid]

10 hours ago, Grim Reaper 6 said:

My problem with the Time Dilation effect and light speed is when you reach your destination the changes on Earth are so dramatic there would be no reason to return there.

This is the rub right here. Time dilation only matters if you return. The synchronicity of two clocks only matters if they're brough back together - i.e., they're part of the same reference frame again.

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 Depending upon how far you traveled the Earth may not even exist any long

Its less to do with distance and more to do with acceleration, but sure, I get you.

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In addition the original purpose of the mission may no longer even exist when you reach you destination.

Isn't this the plot of the book The Forever War? I've not read it, its been on the list for like 2 decades.

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So, when one considers the dramatic change that occurs due to the Time Dilation effect what use is it to travel at light speed?

We can't travel at lightspeed. I think the most we can ever hope for is a very small percentage of it (I think New Horizons holds that record at 0.0054% of the speed of light)*. So we can just get rid of those arguments because they're essentially irrelevant. There are so many bigger hurdles to overcome - like how to realistically power craft without basically strapping yourself to an oversized firework, how to deal with the effects of zero G on the human body, multi-generational projects etc.

* I mean - with current technology, public buy-in and political will etc.

Edited March 24 by Emma_Acid