Breaking the Light Barrier

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid

Originally posted by bigx01
also since light is a wave you only see light half the time... think of a sine-wave going both positive and negative. now at its peak on both the top and bottom we see light, when it is at zero state there is nothing.

Could you elaborate on that please?

sure if you look at a wave of light it looks like a sine-wave.

Two waves (of the same wavelength) are said to be in phase if the crests (and troughs) of one wave coincide with the crests (and troughs) of the other, as in this picture




the resulting wave would be twice the amplitude of the individual waves or constructive interference has occurred


If the crest of one wave coincides with the trough of the second and completely out of phase, as in this picture




The two waves would cancel each other out or destructive interference has occurred

Of course, one could also have situations in between these two extremes.

where the wave transitions from positive to negitive is where, if we could actually see it happen, light is at a minimum. not that it doesn't exist, its hard to explain, but light is brightest at the peaks of the wave and very dim at the transition point. one could say that we are in light only half the time


it is this property of light is what makes holographs and holograms possible.


does this help a bit

i've made a couple holograms before, many years ago

If you actually somehow managed to find a way to "move faster than the speed of light," wouldn't you not only be moving forward in relevance to a fixed point, but also in time?

Posted Thu Apr 22, 2010
news.discovery.com...

This article explains that as you approach the speed of light, the time of the moving object is slower than its surroundings. It says "Time passes more slowly the closer you approach the speed of light -- an unbreakable cosmic speed limit. As such, the hands of a clock in a speeding train would move more slowly than those in a stationary clock. The difference would not be humanly noticeable, but when the train pulled back into the station, the two clocks would be off by billionths of a second. If such a train could attain 99.999 percent light speed, only 1 year would pass onboard for every 223 years back at the train station."

Of course this hasn't been tested on a scale of much more than billionths of a second, but if its true, you would be moving forward in time as well as in distance.

reply to post by SonofSpy

The theory of relativity makes sense but still doesnt explain why lightspeed is the limit. Thoughts please...thank you..

The answer is really quite simple.

In all known cases, information cannot travel through space faster than the speed of light. Exactly what establishes the speed of light is one hell of a good question - but likely contained within the answer to what, exactly, gravity is.

Take the time to consider gravity, for a moment. It is a very mysterious phenomena, and highly unique among all fundamental forces. Gravity has no polarity, continues to a theoretical infinitum, and is orders of magnitude weaker than the other forces - but exhibited by everything known to have mass. Many even question whether we can consider it a force in the classical sense, but rather it is some sort of underlying entropic principle of the universe.

In either case - the implications of Relativity are absolutely phenomenal. For starters - the name is a misnomer. Nothing CAN be relative according to relativity - space, itself, is a constant frame of reference as established by the following:

No information can be shared between two points faster than the speed of light allows, at least via any known mechanisms. Since changes in the location and status of a body amount to information - it stands to reason that the effects of gravity are also limited to the same speed that light travels (it may, in fact, be that 'gravity' -whatever it is- sets the speed for light). Let's take a trip back to gradeschool science, and consider why objects will sound higher-pitched when coming towards you, and lower-pitched when going away. This is called the Doppler Effect. Since the speed of gravity is limited, it would stand to reason that an object in motion would begin to 'ride' the 'G-wave' of its own mass.

This is why mass appears to increase from other frames of reference when an object is accelerating. Once more - it explains the time dilation of near-C velocities and sets up the speed limit known as the speed of light. What it also does is make all velocities non-relative.

Consider - one object moving at 0.8C in one direction, and another object moving at 0.6C in the opposite direction. The two collide at a relative velocity of 1.4C - which doesn't break the universe and spawn another big-bang - because the two objects have an absolute velocity established by space, itself. While one could make arguments about space moving - it is really immaterial to known physics whether or not space, itself, is moving - the physics remain the same even if this universe is hurtling through some other space at "impossible" velocities.

Of course - I think we look too much at the physical universe and overlook the more simple way of analyzing the universe - which is just to consider the universe and the physics involved to be data and data processing. We get a little too consumed with particles and waves and simply overlook the idea that everything is a functional means to some other end. Missing the forest for the trees, as one could say.

Originally posted by SonofSpy
...As fast as that is I really dont see why the barrier cant be broken.

I have my own model of universes, in which light has the speed it has because it propagates likean acoustic wave in the ether. The ether is solid, and the speed of an acoustic wave in a solid is determined by the density and stiffness of the solid. Particles are made of photons orbiting one another at the speed of light. The particle moves like a bola; the bola's balls have farther to go than the center of the rope, so the center of the rope can't go faster than the orbiting balls. That's why a particle can't go faster than light.

The speed of light is constant by definition. Originally, the second and meter were defined in terms of Earth's diameter and the average length of a solar day. Using those definitions, we measured the speed of light. That measured speed in meters per second then became the new definition of meters and seconds. So the only way the speed of light can change, now, is by changing the definitions of meter and second.

Originally posted by SonofSpy
The speed of light is about 167,000 miles an hour. Einstein said that going faster is impossible. I think hes wrong. Having studied light theory I think its light that cannot travel faster than that.

I agree completely and so does Stanford's Dr. Bill Tiller, who has published some amazing work already along those lines.

A couple things that he proposes to already exist beyond the "light barrier":

- "Localities" (for lack of a better word) of time (ie the inverse of Einstein's space-time on the other side of the speed of light: time-space).

- "Magnons" - the magnetic particle equivalent of an electron, which so far has not been physically observed, despite magnetism being coupled with electricity

A couple more things I suspect myself:

- whatever is causing the phenomenon known as entanglement (measured with a lower bounds 10,000x the speed of light)

- consciousness itself.




So S&F for you sir! (Apparently I'm the first? )