Faster than Light Communication. Can someone explain how this wouldn't accomplish it?

Let's say I have a teeter totter in the neutral position (level plank).

I press down on one end of the teeter totter. Does this not communicate to the other side of the teeter totter (through motion) at a faster than light speed? How is this not instantaneous data transmission from one side of the teeter to the other?

For instance, what if my teeter was somehow a trillion light years long.

My brain tells me light would not be able to keep pace. Instantly, a trillion light years away the other side would get my transmission instantly. Light shouldn't be able to move 1 trillion light years instantaneously though, so this would be "faster than light" in a meaningful way, actual communication.

Please explain why I'm wrong in a way that I can understand, thanks!

edit: by the way, I did do a search but the other faster than light topics utilized hawking radiation theory and other things that i believe to be unrelated to my own theory of "faster than light" transmission.

Very Very interesting my friend. I like your experiment. I like it a lot! I don’t have time at the moment to research this, but I look forward to the future posts.

Excellent idea!!!

I have a pretty good handle on physics, and as far as i am aware, you are perfectly correct, pressing one end down with transmit the action to a sensor at the other end, faster than light could convey.

However, you start to get into real trouble with the fact it is made of physical materials, if you imagen hitting a really long pole with a hammer, you could imagen the shock wave passing along the pole, i am fairly certain this action is slower than the speed of light, also, the pole is now resonating, so where i just wanted to convey a single digit of code, a 1, with my hammer, the signal arriving at the other end is going 1.0,1,0,1,0,1 . . . .

there are several other physical problems that come to mind with a trans-galactic teeter-totter, where to you place/anchor the pivot, could you physically move something trillions of miles long and therefore billions of tonnes in weight?

I am not an expert by any means, i just read a lot of sci-fi :p

top marks for ingenuity though

Imagine instead of a sensor you have a really thin piece of wood suspended off a wall which passes directly above the teeter at the other end. When you push down, the other end of the teeter is simultaneously moving upwards and touches the thin piece of wood.

I only suggest that because I'm unfamiliar with what the appropriate equipment to use would be.

I think that this also implies that a constant "faster than light" could exist, for instance a long straight object in continual rotation (super massive black hole? if bull# tell me). Really it wouldn't need to be a "straight" object.

Also, if I am right does it even matter how long the teeter is?

If the teeter is only 10 feet long would not the communication still be instantaneous? I mainly used the trillion light years example because it's easier to grasp in my head than thinking in small tiny units of time.

Thanks for the responses and keep them coming!

If you ran a non elastic string to the moon from earth and pulled on it, the motion would be instantly measurable on the moon. A Laser aimed at the moon would arrive there after the strings motion is detected. This means moving the string transmits information faster than light.

Interesting and I applaud your thoughts on this.

I found it interesting in the movie kapx that the alien said Einstein theory stated you couldn't accelerate past the speed of light, however once you were there you could tip forward.

That's how they travelled, on a light beam.

there are particals and photons that are capable of being in two places at the same time
quantum intanglement
its a theory that if one partical is induced to move or display a charictoristic the other does the exact same thing and distance doesnt matter
in this way we could comunicate across vast distances in no time

xploder

Originally posted by XPLodER
there are particals and photons that are capable of being in two places at the same time
quantum intanglement
its a theory that if one partical is induced to move or display a charictoristic the other does the exact same thing and distance doesnt matter
in this way we could comunicate across vast distances in no time

xploder

Does this imply that distance as we understand it is an illusion?

This reminds me of something... The Speed of Electricity

Electric charges flow as slowly as a river of warm putty. And in AC circuits, the moving charge doesn't move forward at all, instead it sits in one place and vibrates. Energy can flow fast in an electric circuit because metals are already filled with this "putty." If you push on one end of a column of putty, the far end moves almost instantly. Energy flows fast, yet an electric current is a very slow flow.

Basically if i remember this right... electricity moving through a wire, is like a hollow tube filled with water, both ends capped off with a balloon... you poke one side and the balloon on the other side moves instantly.

Originally posted by Bumr055
This reminds me of something... The Speed of Electricity

Electric charges flow as slowly as a river of warm putty. And in AC circuits, the moving charge doesn't move forward at all, instead it sits in one place and vibrates. Energy can flow fast in an electric circuit because metals are already filled with this "putty." If you push on one end of a column of putty, the far end moves almost instantly. Energy flows fast, yet an electric current is a very slow flow.

Basically if i remember this right... electricity moving through a wire, is like a hollow tube filled with water, both ends capped off with a balloon... you poke one side and the balloon on the other side moves instantly.

This is almost identical to my teeter totter idea (in concept), very interesting thank you for the contribution! The electric current is "almost instantaneous" I wonder what slows it down? Would whatever slows it down slow my teeter down as well?

I thoroughly recommend the book "Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics", by Nick Herbert.
There are some extraordinary surprises in there, including a list of 14 familiar things that DO move faster than light.

Starling.

reply to post by Starling


I will check it out, thank you for the recommendation.

reply to post by XPLodER


How does it work? How are they physically connected in such a way that they "know" what the other particle is doing? Or is the mechanism still unknown? Very interesting to say the least.

reply to post by sremmos


Your seesaw idea won't work because the signal would propagate at the speed of a transverse wave in the plank. The speed of a transverse wave in a plank depends on the size and shape as well as the material. Transverse waves are always slower than longitudinal waves, which propagate at the speed of sound in the material. The speed of sound in steel is roughly 6 km/s.

There is no such thing as perfectly rigid material (elestic is not the word you're looking for). Everything stretches, and everything has mass and limited rigidity, so the speed of sound is finite in every material. The speed of light is about 50,000 times faster than the speed of sound in steel.

If instantaneous communication is possible, it probably will involve quantum entanglement. There are several old discussions concerning the announcement last May 20 about a Chinese experiment. They claim to have sent information instantaneously over a distance of 16 km.

Originally posted by ArcAngel
Interesting and I applaud your thoughts on this.

I found it interesting in the movie kapx that the alien said Einstein theory stated you couldn't accelerate past the speed of light, however once you were there you could tip forward.

That's how they travelled, on a light beam.

I have the book of K-Pax and the quote is:
Gene Brewer- " But according to Einstein nothing can travel faster than the speed of light., or one hundred and eighty-six miles per second, if I remember correctly."
Prot- " You misunderstood Einstein. What he said was that nothing can accelerate to the speed of light because its mass would be infinite. Einstein said nothing about entities already traveling at the speed of light, or faster."
GB- " But if your mass becomes infinite when you--"
Prot- " In the first place place Doctor Brewer---may I call you Gene?----If that were true, then photons themselves would have infinite mass, wouldn't they? And beyond that, at tachyon speeds---"
GB- "Tachyons?"
Prot- Entities travelling faster than the speed of light are called tachyon. You can look it up"
GB- " Thank you I will. If I understand you correctly, then you did not come to Earth on a spaceship, You sort of hitched a ride on a beam of light."
Prot- "You could call it that."

reply to post by sremmos


I don't get it. Its definitely outside the box, and I'm no physicist but here's my problem with it.

All you're saying is that End 2 of the teetertotter is moving as fast as End 1 of the teetertotter. This is the same for any solid piece of anything. If I swing a baseball bat isn't the end that hits the ball moving instantaneously with relation to the end where I'm hold it? If I go on Wheel of Fortune and spin the wheel aren't all sides moving instantaneously with all other sides?

Just because one side of the teetertotter is moving at the exact same time as the other side doesn't mean that there is something 'travelling' faster than the speed of light. End 1 of the teeter teetertotter is moving infinately 0 faster and slower then End 2, but its not moving infinately fast. The both ends travelling instantaneously by reference to eachother are still only moving through space as fast as, I don't know, 5mph? Just an example.

The theories that say nothing can move faster then the speed of light just say that nothing can break the velocity of the speed of light. So the teetertotter/baseballbat/wheel of fortune isn't moving at the speed of light its only moving as fast as its moving.

Now, so lets say you have a gigantic space teetertotter that is just longer then 300,001 killometers. It would take light just over a second to travel that distance. You push on one end of the teeter totter and the other side moves 'at the same time' all the way across space. That other side all the way across space is only moving as fast as you pushed the end you pushed. Also, the light bouncing off the other end have to reach the observers eyes before it can count as 'communication.'

So, no that is not faster then the speed of light.

Originally posted by sremmos
This is almost identical to my teeter totter idea (in concept), very interesting thank you for the contribution! The electric current is "almost instantaneous" I wonder what slows it down? Would whatever slows it down slow my teeter down as well?

The problem with your teeter totter is that relativity puts a limit as to how inelastic any material can be. Watch this video:

www.youtube.com...

It looks like it's made out of rubber but we all know that's actually concrete, steel, and other very rigid materials.Your teeter totter would do tha same thing, you would move it on one end and see it bend before the other end moves.

I am not very familiar with the topic but pretty much what happens is that a particle, in order to move another particle, must get close to that second particle. Since the particles are traveling a distance before colliding there will be a delay, and the more particles you have (the longer the teeter totter) the greater the delay between ends.

Electricity is similar, execpt in this case is electrons moving other electrons

reply to post by snusfanatic


While you are correct that the teeter totter is not moving up/down at the speed of light, the implication is that the communication of movement is faster than light, or that I could influence an object faster than light could influence an object a trillion miles away.

For instance, if I put a small tiny piece of wood and set it up so the up moving end of the teeter totter breaks that piece of wood, from a trillion light years away I nearly instantly broke a piece of wood. This is not a conventional way to break the speed of light but rather an attempt at an unconventional (but still tangible and useful) one.

In other words an input can have a nearly instantaneous (or actually instantaneous) output across any distance of space given the right setup. If you both made the input and shined a light, the output would occur a trillion light years away long before the beam of light reached the location, indicating faster than light "transmission" so to speak.

Originally posted by daniel_g

Originally posted by sremmos
This is almost identical to my teeter totter idea (in concept), very interesting thank you for the contribution! The electric current is "almost instantaneous" I wonder what slows it down? Would whatever slows it down slow my teeter down as well?

The problem with your teeter totter is that relativity puts a limit as to how inelastic any material can be. Watch this video:

www.youtube.com...

It looks like it's made out of rubber but we all know that's actually concrete, steel, and other very rigid materials.Your teeter totter would do tha same thing, you would move it on one end and see it bend before the other end moves.

I am not very familiar with the topic but pretty much what happens is that a particle, in order to move another particle, must get close to that second particle. Since the particles are traveling a distance before colliding there will be a delay, and the more particles you have (the longer the teeter totter) the greater the delay between ends.

Electricity is similar, execpt in this case is electrons moving other electrons

Ah, thank you for this explanation, you are saying that on the particle level "movement" of an object requires the particles to "shove" each other? If we could see this effect (on the micro level) would it be like a wave?

I am glad I was wrong because my being incorrect seems to have led to an increase in my understanding! Hahaha.