Faster than light travel.
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I have just finished watching a Charleisscoollike video on light. And couldn’t help but hear that he said it is impossible to travel faster than light.
That’s when I got thinking, light isn’t fixed and its speed can be altered. Scientists have managed to slow down light to 30km per hour.
So, surely this must mean that you could easily go faster than light, maybe not the speed of light in a vacuum (299 792 458 m / s) But surely faster than light itself if it were to be slowed down?
Now I could be completely and utterly wrong here (feel free to correct me if I am) But what would this mean for the effects of light? Like red shift, blue shift and time dilation?
Please respond.
That’s when I got thinking, light isn’t fixed and its speed can be altered. Scientists have managed to slow down light to 30km per hour.
So, surely this must mean that you could easily go faster than light, maybe not the speed of light in a vacuum (299 792 458 m / s) But surely faster than light itself if it were to be slowed down?
Now I could be completely and utterly wrong here (feel free to correct me if I am) But what would this mean for the effects of light? Like red shift, blue shift and time dilation?
Please respond.
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Luke Lawliet wrote...
I have just finished watching a Charleisscoollike video on light. And couldn’t help but hear that he said it is impossible to travel faster than light.That’s when I got thinking, light isn’t fixed and its speed can be altered. Scientists have managed to slow down light to 30km per hour.
So, surely this must mean that you could easily go faster than light, maybe not the speed of light in a vacuum (299 792 458 m / s) But surely faster than light itself if it were to be slowed down?
Now I could be completely and utterly wrong here (feel free to correct me if I am) But what would this mean for the effects of light? Like red shift, blue shift and time dilation?
Please respond.
The claim of not being able to go faster than light refers only to light in a vacuum.
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mibuchiha
Fakku Elder
Also, I'd like to know the details of this "slowing down light" thingy. It has to be through some sort of medium. Light travels at speed lower than c through all medium denser than vacuum, nothing strange there.
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Scientists have managed to slow down light speed, unfortunately they've never been able to accelerate something to the speed of light, they've managed to get close (too close in fact) however nowadays it's still impossible to accelerate something to the speed of light.
Moreover given the state of things (we have antimatter yei!) it's not folly to think that FTL (faster than light) communications and transportation may become available at some point in the future (please see the Special Relativity Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_theory_of_relativity - this wikipedia article has good references- which already takes this idea to the next level). Alas it is nigh impossible that we'll see this in our lifetime.
Moreover given the state of things (we have antimatter yei!) it's not folly to think that FTL (faster than light) communications and transportation may become available at some point in the future (please see the Special Relativity Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_theory_of_relativity - this wikipedia article has good references- which already takes this idea to the next level). Alas it is nigh impossible that we'll see this in our lifetime.
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tswarthog
The Iconoclast
When anything not light gets close to that speed things get very tricky and all the rules change. Until it can be fully understood what happens at or around the speed of light their will be no concern to the idea of "faster than light".
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VoodooChild wrote...
they've managed to get close (too close in fact)This bit confuses me. Why would you say that we've gotten "too" close to light speed?
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even then if you are in a vacuum i know its, theoretically at least possible to go faster then light, but not in the traditional way, such as warp drive, were you "somehow" <-keyword compress spacetime infront of you and expand it behind you so you are in a space time bubble not actuly moveing but making the universe around you move.
then theres my personal preferd mode of FTL [looks cooling in sci-fi] the muilti dimensional drive, were you leave our dimension entierley and bring yourself to one were speed is irrelevant, as in you are going ten MPH in said dimension and going 500 mph in ours. with enough calculations you can figure exactly were to drop out of this multi dimensional space back into ours and be were you need to be
then theres my personal preferd mode of FTL [looks cooling in sci-fi] the muilti dimensional drive, were you leave our dimension entierley and bring yourself to one were speed is irrelevant, as in you are going ten MPH in said dimension and going 500 mph in ours. with enough calculations you can figure exactly were to drop out of this multi dimensional space back into ours and be were you need to be
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GroverCleaveland wrote...
This bit confuses me. Why would you say that we've gotten "too" close to light speed?One of the Physics professors who works at my college (UNAM if you're interested) made his Ph.D in France and had the chance to visit the CERN. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html In his stay he commented that a experiment was conducted - in Arizona as well - which sought to accelerate an object to the speed of light, apparently the object was .0000001 of reaching the speed of light (aprox. I don't remember the exact digit) and regardless of the attempts of the scientists to accelerate it further, the object would not gain any acceleration, in some cases the object was destroyed.
That said, my knowledge of Physics is shabby at best, I'm just relaying what I know from reading some articles and from talking with people that study this for a living. :P
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But even if we could accelerate close to the speed of light what can we do with it? We don't even have materials that can sustain itself due to all the heat generated from friction.
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mibuchiha
Fakku Elder
It shouldn't be confusing Grove. In particle accelerators loads of particles are accelerated to speeds very close to c (in magnitude that is). The idea is simple, higher speed means higher energy, so you can get heavier particles out of the collision. But none of those experiments actually attempt to accelerate things to c, forget about going faster than that. A glance at the Lorentz factor tells you why we're not even close to accelerating things to c, even if 99.99999999999% of c is our everyday thing.
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This is explained by Einstein's theory of special relativity, and the fundamental point is that space and time are not fixed constants but change with relativity. The faster you travel relative to a point, the slower time moves with respect to that point. At the speed of c, time seems to stop for you at the perspective of the point. Beyond this, time would travel backwards and causality (logic of time cause-and-effect) would be violated. The maths would have division by zeroes, and since physics is explained precisely by math we assume traveling faster or at the speed of light to be impossible. Out of this theory of light came the energy-mass equivalency equation, the famous E=mc^2. Now you know this is true, because we've made bombs with it, and disasters are happening in Japan right now based on this equation. (Fun fact: the bomb dropped on hiroshima released the same amount of energy as that contained in one gram of matter, about the mass of a BIC pen cap.)
If you were to travel near the speed of light on a rocket away from Earth then time for you passes slower than the time of Earth and you might well have aged one year in the time Earth ages 70 if you were traveling fast enough. This is not a fountain of life, since you don't notice time is going slower. This is only useful to travel to the future. It would take about one year though to accelerate to these kinds of speeds because humans can only pull so many g's.
Another interesting thing that happens in two perspectives that are moving with different speeds is that events that happen at the same time in one perspective don't happen at the same time in the moving perspective. Mind blown?
Keep in mind that there is no friction in space. It's a near perfect vacuum. You would have to worry about tiny rocks punching holes through your ship at such a high speed though. Also, we could be traveling near the speed of light right now if measured relative to a point moving away from us. You couldn't know because time slows down when you move faster and thus whenever you speed up to catch up to light, it stays constant. It's like when you're driving on the highway and catching up to a car except that no matter how much you accelerate it goes the same speed faster than you. In this sense, you can't even get beyond 0% the speed of light.
Light, when passing through a medium, has to take a longer time to travel because it bounces off of atoms until it gets out. The speed it travels along this bouncing path though is still the same speed of light in a vacuum. Add to the fact that light gets absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms taking even more time out of its travel.
Also, just in case some of you don't know what light is, it is a sustained alternating electic and magnetic field stabilizing each other. Electrons make light when they gain energy.
If you were to travel near the speed of light on a rocket away from Earth then time for you passes slower than the time of Earth and you might well have aged one year in the time Earth ages 70 if you were traveling fast enough. This is not a fountain of life, since you don't notice time is going slower. This is only useful to travel to the future. It would take about one year though to accelerate to these kinds of speeds because humans can only pull so many g's.
Another interesting thing that happens in two perspectives that are moving with different speeds is that events that happen at the same time in one perspective don't happen at the same time in the moving perspective. Mind blown?
But even if we could accelerate close to the speed of light what can we do with it? We don't even have materials that can sustain itself due to all the heat generated from friction.
Keep in mind that there is no friction in space. It's a near perfect vacuum. You would have to worry about tiny rocks punching holes through your ship at such a high speed though. Also, we could be traveling near the speed of light right now if measured relative to a point moving away from us. You couldn't know because time slows down when you move faster and thus whenever you speed up to catch up to light, it stays constant. It's like when you're driving on the highway and catching up to a car except that no matter how much you accelerate it goes the same speed faster than you. In this sense, you can't even get beyond 0% the speed of light.
That’s when I got thinking, light isn’t fixed and its speed can be altered. Scientists have managed to slow down light to 30km per hour.
So, surely this must mean that you could easily go faster than light, maybe not the speed of light in a vacuum (299 792 458 m / s) But surely faster than light itself if it were to be slowed down?
So, surely this must mean that you could easily go faster than light, maybe not the speed of light in a vacuum (299 792 458 m / s) But surely faster than light itself if it were to be slowed down?
Light, when passing through a medium, has to take a longer time to travel because it bounces off of atoms until it gets out. The speed it travels along this bouncing path though is still the same speed of light in a vacuum. Add to the fact that light gets absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms taking even more time out of its travel.
Also, just in case some of you don't know what light is, it is a sustained alternating electic and magnetic field stabilizing each other. Electrons make light when they gain energy.
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Hmm, could light itself be accelerated faster that it is known to travel in a vacuum? Light traveling faster than the speed of light.
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Zero_Hour wrote...
Hmm, could light itself be accelerated faster that it is known to travel in a vacuum? Light traveling faster than the speed of light.Well, you can't really "push" light. For you to push it, it would have to have mass and light is massless. It's already traveling at it's maximum in other words. If it were to go though elongated space then it would seem to travel faster in space that is non elongated. (Space is more elongated near massive objects like Earth making gravity)
Edit: Also if light were to travel faster than itself in normal space, then you can send message back in time violating causality again making it impossible. Unless you don't believe in causality (some scientists say that if messages were to be sent back in time then they were already sent before in the first place so it is a natural part of the timeline)
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VoodooChild wrote...
GroverCleaveland wrote...
This bit confuses me. Why would you say that we've gotten "too" close to light speed?One of the Physics professors who works at my college (UNAM if you're interested) made his Ph.D in France and had the chance to visit the CERN. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html In his stay he commented that a experiment was conducted - in Arizona as well - which sought to accelerate an object to the speed of light, apparently the object was .0000001 of reaching the speed of light (aprox. I don't remember the exact digit) and regardless of the attempts of the scientists to accelerate it further, the object would not gain any acceleration, in some cases the object was destroyed.
That said, my knowledge of Physics is shabby at best, I'm just relaying what I know from reading some articles and from talking with people that study this for a living. :P
I already knew about the experiments being conducted at the LHC, and I also knew about the speeds which the particle accelerator could produce. I am asking why you said "too close" which would imply that you view the achievement in a negative fashion.
@Mibu I must have miscommunicated my confusion. That isn't what I was confused by. ^Read^
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GroverCleaveland wrote...
I already knew about the experiments being conducted at the LHC, and I also knew about the speeds which the particle accelerator could produce. I am asking why you said "too close" which would imply that you view the achievement in a negative fashion.My bad then. I don't think of this as something negative, on the contrary I view it with great expectations and hope for more scientific research regarding that matter (among others, science FTW).
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VoodooChild wrote...
GroverCleaveland wrote...
I already knew about the experiments being conducted at the LHC, and I also knew about the speeds which the particle accelerator could produce. I am asking why you said "too close" which would imply that you view the achievement in a negative fashion.My bad then. I don't think of this as something negative, on the contrary I view it with great expectations and hope for more scientific research regarding that matter (among others, science FTW).
Okay, you have redeemed yourself in my eyes. Confusion over.
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[size=14]If you were in a vehicle traveling at the speed of light, and the vehicle you were in had headlights, what would happen if you turned on the headlights while traveling at lightspeed? [/h]
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The Chronicler wrote...
[size=14]If you were in a vehicle traveling at the speed of light, and the vehicle you were in had headlights, what would happen if you turned on the headlights while traveling at lightspeed? [/h] first off the vehicle could not travel at light speed. it's relative mass would become infinite before it reaches that. (E=Mc^2 related shenanigans)
since Acceleration= Force/Mass, and mass is infinite. A becomes 0. next. if you were traveling close to light and then you fired a laser ahead of you. From ANY relative stand point the beam would appear to travel at light speed. to compensate for this time dilation occurs. so at different relative standpoints. time moves at different rates.
Relativity is fucked up yo.
At least. that's my understanding. If I'm wrong someone better at physics please correct me. I need to know this for an exam relatively soonish. DX
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Yep, if you were to travel near the speed of light and shine light in front of you, it'd still move at the speed of light faster than you. That's cause time in your perspective slows down. Also, like I said, you can't really tell if you're moving close to the speed of light right now or not. It's all relative to the point you measure from. Ex. In a car on the highway going 60 mph, you can say that you're standing still and that the world is moving under you at 60mph and that the cars in the other lane are traveling 120mph relative to you.
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The question of traveling at light speed isn't about the physics behind it but could a human survive the amount of forces that are going on. Star Trek compensates with inertial dampeners, and other series use wormholes or "move" space instead of the ship. But there is also no conceivable way to travel that fast and there would also be the question of maintaining structural integrity at faster than light speeds.