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Can we travel faster than light?


Althalus

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Exactly, SaRuMaN, since I have said the laws of physics as we know them today, I was refering to any new discovery that might shed more light on the matter in the future.

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Gizzie,

You said light was controlled by gravity. Sort of. Light is bent due to the bending of space/time caused by the mass of other objects.

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;D

Give scientists a bit of space and a considerable amount of time, and new theories may surface, en masse.

:s2

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There is a detailed article that explains about a light's 'relativistic mass' as well as light's momentum and velocity. It's an interesting article, and if you want you information CLICK HERE

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          Saruman and Homer,

               Nice play-on-words!!   ;)

          Gizzie,

               Congrats on your 100th post!!  :sq

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OK,

how many types of light are there?

Light generated by the sun (day?)

Light generated by the moon (night)

Light generated by the stars (?)

Light generated when the moon and the sun can be seen in the sky?

Light generated artificially (lasers, for example; does the colour make a difference in speed, distance, mass, particles?)

If the beam of light is concentrated, does it travel faster (or, being concentrated, would have more mass and particles but in a smaller volume (My God, I forgot all about volume!) and therefore, logically speaking, would slow down?

As light bounces back (reflects) at what speed does it do this (maybe ghosts can be captured on camera this way?!)

And what about refraction?

Anyone?

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Gizzie,

You asked how many different types of light there are. The sun and the stars are the same, and the moon gives off refected light. The size of light is refered to as it's wavelength. The strength(or energy) is called it's frequency and the speed is always the same(in a vacuum). So light waves come in a continuous variety of sizes, frequencies and energies. This is refered as the 'electromagnetic spectrum'

Concentrated light has a higher frequency, but the speed is the same. In order of lowest to highest frequency: Radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma ray.

You mentioned about concentrated light having more mass. Remember, light has no mass.

A variety of objects can slow the speed of light: water, glass, diamonds, etc. etc.

When light bounces back, the reflected light still travels at the same speed.

There is a lot I don't know about light, but I hope this helps.

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Homer

Thank you so much  :-*

You explained things in a way that even I understood!!

Problem is that I forgot why I needed this information to post :s02

It's a fascinating subject though, isn't it?

Thanks again and thanks to Norabdawg for her kind wishes :st

Homer is cool  8) ( ;D )

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I recently formulated an idea on how one might be able to use neutrinos to travel faster than light... not very realistic, but still... Neutrinos from the sun DO reach the Earth before photons do. Couldn't it be possible for NASA to harness these particles and use them to create kinetic energy to be able to cover vast distances in space? Just an idea.

Adam

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Neutrinos may reach earth before photons, but they are not faster. Many neutrinos originate in our own atmosphere, but then that's not your point.

Before the energy from a neutrino can be harnessed, it must be understood. It isn't even known if neutrinos have mass or not, much less anything else. If they don't have mass, like a photon, then they travel at the same speed(lightspeed), but if it's discovered they do have mass, then their speed is just under lightspeed.

Depends on the source of information on whether or not they have mass or travel at lightspeed, due to the fact that some experiments have neutrinos at having a small mass(millions of times smaller than a proton) and travel at slightly LESS than lightspeed.

So first neutrinos should be understood better, than perhaps their energy harnessed.

Just a note, if they are discovered to have mass, than the question of Dark Matter will be answered.

Neutrinos are cool 8)

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Tommy,

I never mentioned 'superluminal speeds' or 'warp speed' specifically. Warp speed I think is very interesting, and unless I misunderstood him, SaRuMaN stated in this very thread "it will be possible to traverse vast distances without passing through the space in between." and I agree with the possibility, but I don't know how.

Although traveling at the speed of light can never happen for us(unless some new discovery that will allow that thereby invalidating all of physics), traveling at great distances might happen. I don't have an answer or even a theory as to how it might happen, but if space can be warped, perhaps utilizing a wormhole or another dimension, then traveling outside our solar system and even across the galaxy would be a realistic possibility.

Obviously our current technology prevents us from even experimenting on something like this, but not on theorizing on it. I don't think warp drive has been debunked, even by this article. I think this article explains how one particular theory of warp drive is impossible. A quote from the article: "His research shows that contraction or expansion of space need not occur as it does in Alcubierre`s theory, therefore, no warp-drive effects." To me, that only says that recent research has found that a particular theory has been debunked, and not that warp drive itself is impossible. Too much emphasis was placed on disproving a theory and not enough on proving the impossibility of warp drive for me to not believe it could ever be possible.

What a long winded reply just to say I still believe in the possibility of warp drive :P

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Yep, that article didn't seem too certain that it had disproved it, more seemed to suggest it wasn't likely.

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Thought you migt say that  :D

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crosis,

Thank you, that is an interesting article. How they measure something so small is beyond me :)

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crosis provided a link from ananova.com that states that the neutrino has been measured. A excerpt from the article "Cambridge University scientists calculated a sub-atomic neutrino weighs less than a billionth of the mass of a hydrogen atom.

The hydrogen atom is the smallest and simplest of all the elements on the periodic table"

space.com(among others) has an article explaining the discovery of new evidense for a new state of matter heavier than any previously known. The article states that the equivelant density would be to stuff all of Earth into an auditorium. For more information CLICK HERE

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  • 2 years later...
That's not entirely correct SaRuMaN.

Light bends around other celestial objects because it's those other objects that have mass. Mass causes gravity to bend or distort the literally shape of space/time. So when light is bending around an object, it is bending because space itself is bent and light has to bend with it

Light has no mass. The reason anything with mass can never go the speed of light is two-fold. It would take an infinate amount of energy to move an object with mass to the speed of light; AND it would take an infinate amount of time to do so. That's in accordance with the laws of physics as they're known today.

Physics is cool 8)

The greatest misconception that people have about Special Relativity's speed of light barrier is that Einstein never said that an object can't travel faster than lightspeed. Actually, SR doesn't preclude speeds faster than light.

What is a big no no is travel AT the speed of light.

It's what happens to matter and energy AT the speed of light which is the problem. Spacetime is such that when you achieve the speed of light, an object of mass "X" at rest, reaches infinite mass at precisely lightspeed. And therefore the energy needed to push the object at that speed becomes infinite as well. Or so the theory goes.

Problem with that....and it's something that Einstein had said himself......is when a theory begins to talk of infinite quantites of anything, the theory breaks down and becomes nonsensical. However, it's been the want of most of the physics community for the past 100 years to take Einstein's word as "bible", no matter the inconsistencies of infinite quantities. Yes, the theories are great at predicting the results of experiments in particle accelerators, but no particle has ever been pushed to the speed of light limit. Very close, yes, but not at (for the reasons previously given). However, given present science's incomplete understanding of the nature of particles such as photons, and their dual natures as particle/waves, only approximations as to the nature of these particles can be given.

Yes, photons appear to be massless (and of no size) particle-waves of various energies, but given that energy and mass are equivalent (E=MC^2), it seems that somewhere along the line there's a misunderstanding of what is going on.

The speed of light maybe a barrier for objects moving through spacetime in a conventional manner, but there's no reason that given a change of conditions to the way spacetime behaves, that FTL travel cannot be achieved.

We are children, so far as our knowledge of spacetime and such is concerned. We have a lot more to learn and it's patently obvious that the more we learn, the more we realise we don't know as much as we think we do. The breakthrough might come tomorrow, or in 100 years. But oneday, people will look back on discussions like these and laugh......as they sip a cup of coffee in the transit lounge of the New LA Spaceport, on 18 Scorpii 3 grin2.gifgrin2.gif

(BTW.....notice it's not called Einstein's LAW of SR (or GR.....General Relativity))

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  • 3 weeks later...

this thread is so cool, lol.

well i have an idea thats probably really stupid so i want all you clever people to give ur opinions on this......

if its not possible to go faster than the speed of light does it make sence that if you could open some kind of tunnel in space that anything that goes through it, such as a spacecraft could at least travel close to the spead of light, or at least very fast, and then that ship can accelarate very fast it self through that tunnel then maybe it would be like for example running while on a train, but more like there being the track that the train is on moving very fast and then the train itself moving very fast across the moving track, then would u be moving faster , does this make sence. what i mean is that the tunel in space u travel through makes the ship or any matter that goes through it travel close to the spead of light, and at the same time the ship itself has the capabilities of traveling close to that speed, then if the ship would go at this speed while in this tunnel then would the speed the ship is traveling go through the tunnel any quicker and so would the ship go much faster than the speed of light becasue of this with out really the ship going faster than the speed of light or the tunnel u travel through accelerating things faster than light so no laws of physics would be broken or anything? does this make any sence, im just a bored tenager who doesnt know what he is on about but this stuff really facinates me..................im such a geek. please like say if im an idiot. thanks.

p.s.

theres no real science behind this, just watching to much star trek.

Edited by MattDuk
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You're talking about wormholes......there's nothing "Star Trekky" about that. They are a natural consequence of certain geometries of spacetime.

When you get a strong enough gravitational field present at any one spot in spacetime, you can bend the fabric (geometry) of that spacetime so that it begins to fold in upon itself. Eventually the folding of spacetime becomes so intense that spacetime collapses and forms what is called a singularity.

Basically that's how a black hole forms.

However, under certain conditions, a singularity doesn't form, and the collapsing spacetime forms a tunnel to another part of spacetime elsewhere......either in this universe or another. So here, in this instance, you have a shortcut between two distant points without having to travel the long way around through spacetime itself. This is essentially what a wormhole is.

The best way to visualise it is to take a piece of paper and fold it in half, making an "U" shaped piece of paper. Put two points...."A" and "B".....on opposite sides of the paper. Now to get from one point to another, in the normal sense, you have to travel along the sheet from your starting point, around the curve and back down the sheet to the other point. That's analogous to travelling through spacetime normally......slower than light speed. Now, if you get an old toilet roll, and glue the paper to it so the two points are over the holes in the roll, and then draw a line between the two points via the roll, this is analogous to a wormhole.

Here, you have effectively left normal spacetime behind and travelled a path between your two points which is much shorter than normal. So you get there quicker. With the wormhole, you have warped spacetime in such a manner that you effectively draw the two points together, making the distance between them less than it would otherwise be.

In either case, your ship's velocity of travel will always remain less than the speed of light, but with the wormhole, you have effectively travelled the distance between your two points at a speed which appears to be many times faster than lightspeed.....when seen from the perspective of unwarped spacetime.

I hope that helps you out grin2.gif

Edited by Ozmeister
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  • 2 weeks later...

this is becoming a faq topic on qantic physic... ^^

anyway, i'd have some questions too tongue.gif :

First of all, are we sure, is there proofs that light is made of photons, or is it just a theory ? Because i really can't imagine something without mass... :/

And about black holes, i've heard that, when approching them, matter is "accelerating"... (i don't know how they say in english, sorry) Concretely, what does that mean ?

Thanks to all the scientists here tongue.gif

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