FTL Travel

I have a question... If somebody has already ACHIEVED Faster Than Light travel, say for instance a government, how would we know?

You couldn't "see" the craft while it was tooling about. You couldn't "Hear" the craft either... How would we know?

Is there any theorum on a reaction the atmosphere or spectrum would make when "crossing" into the spectrum? i.e. A sonic boom only from light speed?

I ask this because it occurs to me that alot of the UFO sightings could be explained if WE (Earthlings) had an FTL craft.

Far as I know there would be NO WAY to detect it would there?

PEACE...
m...

Such a vehicle would have to be space-launched, so I don't see how anyone would recognise it as more than a shooting star perhaps before it enter's FTL velocities.

No idea how the transition would occur, but would it cause a Star Trek-style warp speed contrail? That might be visible to us Earthlings.

Having started my collegiate life thinking I would one day be a physicist... I know just enough of this crap to sound boring at cocktail parties.

While faster than light travel is hard enough... transitioning from slower-than-light to faster-than-light is really really hard.

About 12 years ago I sold a story to Omni magazine that touched this very topic... I recreated it (almost) here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I can't picture you as a physicst...

I'm glad you posted the link to that story William, I don't believe Iw as a member when you first posted it, but it truly is intriguing. Well written.

Have you written anymore stories of fiction like that?

news.bbc.co.uk...

but apparently you can't do anything with it. But you can go like 5% faster than light.

So, William, you are saying that (I haven't had a chance to read the story yet) going from sublight to FTL would be recognizable somehow?

P...
m...

In principle yes.

You can see it for instance when looking down into one of those water bassin nuclear reactors. The blue light.. That's Cerenkov radiation. It's a signature for faster then local lightspeed travel by (I believe) charged particles.

[Edited on 26-8-2003 by Devils Advocate]

Originally posted by Springer
So, William, you are saying that (I haven't had a chance to read the story yet) going from sublight to FTL would be recognizable somehow?

Yes... because the item -- if accelerating to light speed and beyond-- would acheive infinite gravity... we'd surely notice that!

Originally posted by Devils Advocate
In principle yes.

You can see it for instance when looking down into one of those water bassin nuclear reactors. The blue light.. That's Cerenkov radiation. It's a signature for faster then local lightspeed travel by (I believe) charged particles.

[Edited on 26-8-2003 by Devils Advocate]

Sorry, but that still isn't faster than THE speed of light (meaning in vacuum), just faster that the LOCAL speed of light which in that case is lower. Still fast though

FTL can be achieved easily with fiber optics and a review of 1) Einstein - there is another force at work. And 2) Maxwell - go back to the original thoughts.

We do this, eventually.

Lol I was thinking about this the other day , nice post !

I was thinking , when something goes faster then the speed of sound we get the sonic boom , is there any such event when something goes FTL ?

Sense there are reports of things " expanding " FTL in the depth of space , would any such event show something as a result ?

Perhaps we are seeing it but don't attribute the event to the FTL boom , for lack of a better word

[edit on 10-5-2009 by Max_TO]

[edit on 10-5-2009 by Max_TO]