Faster Then Light Speed, Can We Do It?

I broke the speed of light. Therefore it is possible.

a reply to: TheUltimateSecret

Ooooh do tell. 😒

a reply to: BASSPLYR

That post is very confusing and a little confused into the bargain.

The vacuum isn't everywhere. Einstein's relativity requires a transmitting medium, and that has usually gone under the name 'ether'. But this is a sore point for physicists, who regard ether as an obsolete idea but haven't come up with any other suggestion for the universal medium.

So, let's talk about 'ether' being all-pervasive. It's not so much that it's everywhere as it is the case that everywhere is it!

Photons travel through the ether as waves but can be regarded as particle-like in certain interactions.

One of these is when they hit atoms in a substance that we human observers would call 'transparent'. In these cases, the spontaneous emission you're referring to does occur - it's a sort of pass-the-parcel in which light is absorbed (as energy) and spat out again, repeated over and over.

This does indeed slow down the speed of the (n.b.) light that is being transmitted through it. So 'spontaneous emission' isn't really that spontaneous. But - this doesn't alter the speed of light in a vacuum (referred to as 'c') even one jot. C is a universal constant.

There are some gases (Bose-Einstein condensates) that can effectively slow down light passing through it by such a huge degree that it is possible to overtake it on a pedal-powered bicycle. But that's different to the idea of exceeding 'c' on a bicycle.

Where you've lost me is by bringing positrons into it. Positrons don't normally exist in nature since, being anti-matter, they are annihilated during contact with their corresponding natural particle, the electron. Electron/positron annihilation can generate photons. But this is something very different (and completely separate) from the spontaneous emission discussed above.

There's a science-fiction story that builds on the idea of light being slowed down during 'spontaneous emission' in the form of an invention that the author calls 'slow glass'. Slabs of this slow glass are stood in scenic locations for decades and then sold as interior decor, where the ten years-worth of slowed-down light forms an illusory window onto the scene where the light was captured. (The plot is a bit more significant than this, but I don't really remember it, just the invention itself).

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Only God can go faster than light. The God of gods.

Here's my take...

If you go light speed you go backwards. So to go faster, you have to start by going backwards, and going that way fast enough. Doing so will will cause you to excell past light speed. But that could cause a lot of challenges.

a reply to: audubon

Sigh. So you didnt understand what i wrote. Ok. There are a few here who can follow along.

Say you are in a space ship traveling 3/4 the speed of light. Another spaceship going the other direction at 3/4 the speed of light. Technically wouldn't you then be traveling 1.5 the speed of light relative to that other spaceship? Would your mass approach infinity? Would you go back in time? Heaven forbid you turn on your headlights and they go backwards.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

It is a virtual EM waveform that permiates and dictates everything.

yes, in a way. But I personally in agreement with the theory that explains nature of charge and electroweak force as emergent result because of dimensions set up. My recent read was Kaluza-Klein approach based purely on Einstein's GR formulas.

Double post.

".... intuitive description of dimensions is that it's the ways in which we can move – up and down, left and right, forward and backwards – which leads us to believe we live in a three-dimensional world."...

I can view the cube from six sides, for example. How many dimensions this gives me?


cheers)

...and from observer pov, when the cube rotates, you will see its outta sides lengthwise shorten visually if viewed front on. That's because of effect of perspective, Thinking it is prove of 'depth'. The cube can be rotated six different directions to observe that effect.

Thinking what is the nature of a single dimension and how physical object gets formed the way we see it in space?

Cheers))

originally posted by: Bedlam
a reply to: BASSPLYR

Depending on the generation, newer ones might get up to 50C. You could get to planet dirt in 5-6 weeks. If you wanted to.

It's around Barnard's Star, then? It's a 3100K red dwarf. And a flare star? Not a great place.

originally posted by: mbkennel

originally posted by: Bedlam
a reply to: BASSPLYR

Depending on the generation, newer ones might get up to 50C. You could get to planet dirt in 5-6 weeks. If you wanted to.

It's around Barnard's Star, then? It's a 3100K red dwarf. And a flare star? Not a great place.

Pfft.
I can't believe you actually took the time to work that out (glances furtively from side to side).
I wouldn't be so stupid (looks nervously around again and laughs) to do it but if you factor in a 10% falsification allowance you (hypothetically speaking of course) might get a few more options.

You could then (if you had time to spare) correlate against the conventional exoplanet speculative discovery timeline to provide a few more likely suspects ...probably.

a reply to: Jukiodone

Just keep in mind planet dirt was chosen because its barren and fairly uninteresting or hospitable.

Its a place even aliens supposedly would have very little interest in

a reply to: Jukiodone

Clearly most promising by spectral type and distance would be Epsilon Eridani, then maybe 61 Cygni next.

Alpha Centauri is a close double, likely not good for habitable planets.

There's a few other red dwarfs, a bit brighter than Barnard, maybe a bit better, Lalande 21185, Lacaille 9352. Wolf 359 (famous from ST:TNG!) is really dim.

Ross 154 is an X-ray emitting flare red dwarf---no go.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: greenreflections

Light (photons) travel through this vacuum via a mechanisim called spontaneous photon emission. The process takes a set amount of time to complete before the photon is set on its way again while it travels. Think of it like its conducting through the vacuum. Its not really but its a decent analogy.

So photon gets absorbed by virtual electron positron pairs and gets spit out a moment later.

Odd way of thinking about it---why is this necessary?

How fast this process takes establishes the speed of light. Charged particles travelling through these virtual electron positron pairs experience a tinsy amount of drag as their charges are impeaded a little passing through or by these virtual particles. This little drag adds up fast and is what we call inertial mass. Its more complex than that but basically thats it in a nutshell.

That's the Haisch/Rueda theory of inertia as electromagnetic zero-point interactions.

But what about neutrinos? We know they travel at nearly 'c', and are elementary leptons with exactly zero charge.

If they aren't interacting with virtual electron positron pairs, why do they travel at nearly the same speed?

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Imagine the mission planning meeting where the objective was to guess what Aliens don't like/consider inhospitable when you have zero/incomplete data on them......
Dirt to us might be a very special holiday destination for them- or even worse- it could be where they test out their new weapons/conduct military training!

The only rationale that works for me (assuming its a manned mission populated by none suicidals) would be the kind of human behavior witnessed during "the age of discovery" which usually meant sailing towards the nearest alleged land mass and crossing your fingers that you don't get put in the pot before you find the riches: Risk v Reward.


a reply to: mbkennel

Unless they had some sort of probe/ advanced remote observation technology , it looks like there was only 1 or 2 (dubiously) suspected planets in those systems prior to 1990.

interesting posts...interesting universe.

I will continue where I felt it in my last post. These are only scattered thoughts never meant to be anything but armature speculation and which they are. At night few drinks and a full Moon does that to me)))

I tend to think lately of the universe as two separate entities, if I may. The entity I am interested in is the construct of space-time, its lay out and rules. Quantum mechanical events around us are happening on a frame that is independent and of different origin from space-time. Space-time is the landscape, the road with turns and downhills.

Lets take empty space. Could it be that each dimension represents separate entity? I said separate, because every one of them can exist on it's own, independently of each other. For example, two sources some distance apart produce 2D planes each. As these two planes expand they eventually meet and overlay continuing expanding into each other and relative to each other at, say, 90 degrees composing interlaced basic grid. They won't collide because each of them is at an angle to another. Collision would occur when the two expand in the same plane. In that case they merge or cancel out.

Lets add to these two planes more planes, different sources that rush their front 2D waves toward each other. We can add as many as we like, but finite number, because two are never occupying same plane. It will look like infinity minus one.
I can stop adding planes in my thought experiment at number twenty. Looking at the construct now will reveal a grid. Grid of interlaced, superimposed 2D planes. At this time QM events are all set to act and take place))) Inside that grid everything else is happening, including Big Bang, may be).

I am going to continue with this ideas but not now. Thinking to address why speed of light is what it is. It should have no number as time at that speed does not exist. But we do have that constant and I would like to know why. The grid set up might hold an answer. Not only, but how physical objects materialize and how holographic principle is such a great concept.

cheers)

a reply to: audubon

Photons travel through the ether as waves but can be regarded as particle-like in certain interactions.

This is very confusing.

As 'waves' what do you mean by that? Individual wavelets?
How does photon emitter releases a photon visually before you call it a wave?

I rely on Isotropic Radiator concept to help me to visualize 'photon as a wave'. I too think photon is a wave while 'en route' and a 'particle' in an event of emission or absorption.

originally posted by: greenreflections
a reply to: audubon

Photons travel through the ether as waves but can be regarded as particle-like in certain interactions.

This is very confusing.

As 'waves' what do you mean by that? Individual wavelets?

It's actually pretty complicated and the real description is known as Quantum Field Theory (in particular quantum optics) and you need to go to graduate school in physics to learn it.

Very very roughly, the waves are the 'basis' of expanding the electromagnetic field in terms of elementary "basis functions" (think of creating an arbitrary function from a sum of sine and cosine waves like in a Fourier analysis), and the "particles" come about because thanks to quantum mechanics, there is a minimal amplitude for the weight of any one basis function and higher amplitudes correspond to integer multiples of that minimal amplitude. So there is a 'count' nature (like particles) and a 'wave' nature (as in oscillations over space and time) and they exist simultaneously as different facets of the same phenomenon. As if your coefficients you attach to your Fourier decomposition could only be over a certain grid instead of any real value. One elementary minimal magnitude on one elementary basis function is a photon.

And then one more complication, you add in the fact that it's all probabilistic thanks to quantum mechanics and you're really confused---because you can actually have '2.5' photons, simulating a real value-amplitude, but it's really a 50/50 probability of 2 photons or 3 photons. And that's different from a classical field with strength 2.5.

But in a nutshell, it's really hard to visualize a photon in an accurate way. Basic quantum mechanics is really unintuitive, and quantum field theory is another layer of mind#ery on top of that. So you're perfectly normal if it doesn't make sense, because it doesn't.