Speed of light travel

Not only does the amount of energy required increase to infinite, but time also speeds up to infinite at the speed of light. As you approached the speed of light time would speed up so fast that when you came back from that speed so much time would have passed that there would have been a better way to travel invented.

Originally posted by IronMan
To be honest, I hadn't thought about how to get the clones there, but I was just
musing about so-called 'grays' look so alike.
If there's any truth in such creatures, it may be that sending 'vessels' such as these little, emotionless entities to a planet and then hooking up through thought with them may be the only way.
Seems abit silly nuh?

im not really sure what ur talking about. please explain. grays?

www.fourmilab.ch...

Originally posted by rockonchucktown

Originally posted by IronMan
To be honest, I hadn't thought about how to get the clones there, but I was just
musing about so-called 'grays' look so alike.
If there's any truth in such creatures, it may be that sending 'vessels' such as these little, emotionless entities to a planet and then hooking up through thought with them may be the only way.
Seems abit silly nuh?

im not really sure what ur talking about. please explain. grays?

Er yeah... (reddening of cheeks!),
I was only using the 'gray' alien idea as an example. I was indicating that these thin, little big-eyed beings may be vessels that thought from another time, plane or place, may be controlling.

While I'm here,
Is there anything tachyons can assist in this time/speed problem?

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
Not only does the amount of energy required increase to infinite, but time also speeds up to infinite at the speed of light.

Unless you're doing your fast travel using a space ship with engines that are not based on Newtonian laws. i.e. you create a warp field to rapidly accelerate w/o getting crushed against the back of the ship. If a warp field negates the effects of inertia, perhaps it negates the effects of time advancing faster too.

Not sure though, as I haven't yet created my own warp field to test this hypothesis. I'll keep you all posted.

Because a gravitational warp field would create it's own dilation, which would slow down time, a warp field would be the only way to go. The field would have to be configured in such a way to force a vessel to travel along a gravitational wave, possibly even exceeding the speed of light to an outside observer. The vessel itself however, because it is inside it's own gravitational distortion, would not actually be moving faster than light. It's like bending the laws instead of breaking them.

I haven't read all the post, I'm sure this was mentioned but I will say it again.

Until we have an alloy that can expand indefinitly and keep its shape, we will never go the speed of light.

As something reaches the speed of light, it starts to expand indefinitely.

[edit on 18-9-2005 by SpittinCobra]

[edit on 18-9-2005 by SpittinCobra]

So it seems that the answer to existing in time travel is having the
correct hull and hoping that we're not stretched to our limit!

What if the the two points A & B (the place you are and the the place
you want to be) touched when time/space is bent, would you need a
craft that could bear a lot of stress then?

Oh, I nearly forgot... can you slow the speed of light?

But my point earlier (see my post about Cerenkov Radiation on page 2) proves that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light in a medium, only that it is impossible to travel faster than light in a vacuum. Air, being a medium, would allow for faster than light travel however, sustaining it against the immensley strong forces of friction (and the subsequent heat) is another matter. The original post never asked whether it was possible to sustain it nor whether the travel was in a vacuum, so you can say that speed of light travel is possible.

In reply to the previous post, yes you can slow down light. If yo put a spoon in a glass of water and look from above it looks as if it has bent where it entered the water. This is because the light slows down when it goes from air into the water and so refracts. So it is possible to slow light down when changing medium.

[edit on 18/9/05 by Infidellic]

Thanks Infidellic I see now that it must always be the medium or the 'surroundings' that light takes part in, that is the only way to slow light down.
Am I correct?

O thought the question was about exceeding the cosmic speed limit, not about passing the speed of light in a medium. Not that passing light speed in a medium would be easy, but the prospect of exceeding light speed in a vacuum dispell the limits that have been set for by our giants.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants." --Isaac Newton

Originally posted by IronMan
Thanks Infidellic I see now that it must always be the medium or the 'surroundings' that light takes part in, that is the only way to slow light down.
Am I correct?

The medium (if there is one) determines the local speed of light (how fast light can travel within it). The refractive index is the (speed of light from medium travelling from)/(speed of light of medium travelling into) therefore when travelling from one medium to a medium with a higher refractive index the light will slow down with ultimately a vacuum (not being a medium at all) will not slow down light at all and it will travel at the fastest possible speed in the universe, the cosmic speed of light.

It can be confusing, basically the medium the light is travelling through decides how fast it can go. Matter can travel faster than the speed of light locally (in a medium) EXCEPT in a vacuum where the speed of light is the fastest that matter can travel due to its mass becomming infinite and the energy required to achieve light speed being infinite.

Thanks again,
It's just now my head's aching and I'm staring suspiciously
at the light switch!

How come when you are driving with your headlights on in your car and are clocked by police radar, the radar gun registers the speed you are driving and not the speed of light from your headlights?

Hmm... A conumdrum indeed!

On a serious note,
Earlier in another posting, a comment was made about 'particle' and 'wave',
I always believed it was a wave of energy, can anyone explain further?

so everybody i just skimmed through the first page and fuigured id post something to see what happens. First thought..............would u be able to see anything at the speed of light. Have u ever through a ball up in a limo with all the windows closed and the AC off. U through i t up and it lands back in your hands and appears to fall straight even though it is really going like 65 miles an hour fowards. Would this happen at the speed of light if u had a "light proof" cocpit, would u have that same packet of light around u so that u could see the instruments. Second, could u see anything else? If u are going the speed of li8ght it would be impossible to see anything behind u cause u would either outrun the light or go at the same speed and see one picture. What about infront??? Yeah... something tells me u would be pretty screwed going that fast. But anyway figureing u survived the G's and u could see everything and u weren't ripped apart by the light in the cockpit, then what......................u would be going so freakin fast u wouldn't be able to stop really............especially considering that u would be in space by now. And my final point, i think we need to figure out how to go to LUDACRIS SPEED and break the PLAID BARRIER.


Ohh yeah....................light is made up by photons, a particle but this is unfortunaly one of the most mysterious theroys i know of. Photons act as waves of energy, not particles. All i know is i asked an expert and he said some fancy stuff...........never answered my questions..............and charged me like $40. That day earned a WTF


anyway, yeah light is technically particles that supposed travel at the same speed as energy and waves My guess is as good as yours

[edit on 21-9-2005 by sandman666]

Originally posted by IronMan
Earlier in another posting, a comment was made about 'particle' and 'wave',
I always believed it was a wave of energy, can anyone explain further?

Light is now beleived to be a particle of no mass called a photon. Whilst it is a particle it exhibits wave like properties and therefore was intially declared a wave. You are taught (up until around late GCSE/AS level [UK school qualifactions at the ages of 16/17]) that light is "a wave of energy" as it exhibits all the behaviour of waves and that it is an easier model that turning peoples' worlds upside down telling them things like this that they don't really need to know :p

How come when you are driving with your headlights on in your car and are clocked by police radar, the radar gun registers the speed you are driving and not the speed of light from your headlights?

In reply to the question about car headlights and speed guns, the speed guns (and static camera jobbies) use laser light to work out your speed. Lasers are of one colour of the electomagnetic spectrum (not necessarily a visible colour -> hence you don't see a spot of light on your car!). Your car headlights are an amalgamation of a wide range of frequencies. The detector should therefore ignore it as it is unlikely to interfere. In a way you answered it yourself. A "radar gun" as its name would imply use the same technology as the radars used by aircraft however at smaller power and probably at a different part of the spectrum. Now, radars for aircraft use Microwaves (again part of the electromagnetic spectrum) and your car headlights don't emit microwaves (well they might just a little tincey wincey bit but not enough to register).

In the end I still say Einstien is going to end up wrong on this one. Toward his later years he himself actually questioned a few bits of his theory but choose to not go back and reinvestigate.

Also we have in several instances lately witnessed FTL by split particles.

One of the arguments by certain people on why you cant go faster then light is that if you did you could come back and meet yourself (which is supposedly impossible for whatever reason). Anyway even assuming meeting yourself is "impossible" I say IT WONT happen.

When you leave a point even if you instantly accelerate past the speed of light go out a few miles and come back you WONT meet yourself instead what you will meet the whole way is images of yourself. (The light that was striking you as you left). Its the same thing as looking in a frigin mirror. I havent seen the world end because of that....

As of yet there is no PROOF Einstein was right. The more we investigate into astropyshics, quantum mechanics and other such "leading edge" fields the more we find these laws and theories to be at least lacking. Using todays "laws and theories" things we are now witnessing are already called impossible. Quantum mechanics breaks 60percent of all known laws of pyshics. Does this mean the things which we are now witnessing cant exist? Of course not it simply means our current laws and theories on the subject are wrong.

There is no case of "who are you to judge those great minds" here. Its a simple fact that when your view of things no longer encompasses what is happening then the view must change or you will not progress. If I was to tell you take a right at the next intersection to get to the gas station and you see the gas station on the left as you get there would you go right because I told you to?

Einstein and the others in their field were indead geniuses but they were not perfect, they also didnt have the benefit of seeing the things the current generation of scientists have witnessed. Thus while they were close to right they didnt have all of the information needed to trully make a "law" and at this point neither do we.

Guidelines are good to have as long as you remeber that no one is perfect and the chances of ANYONE being completly right are almost nothing.

here in the US i had a 8th grade science teacher who told us about photons, strangly enough i was the only one who got it. Got into a good discussion about that and wasted all class, was rather interesting. Really easy teacher to get off topic, especially since we were learning about ocean currents

Originally posted by XerrogAs of yet there is no PROOF Einstein was right. The more we investigate into astropyshics, quantum mechanics and other such "leading edge" fields the more we find these laws and theories to be at least lacking.

Whoops, thanks for pointing this out I forgot to mention that I was working on those theories. However, as you said later on, nothing in science can be proven. Heck, according to some quantum thing even the act of observing affects the outcome!