Special Relativity extended past speed of light.

Possibly the most well-known consequence of Einstein's theory of special relativity is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, c. According to the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2, an object traveling at c would have infinite mass and would require an infinite amount of energy to reach c. Over the past 100 years, numerous experimental tests of special relativity have confirmed its validity.

As the physicists explain in their paper, the Lorentz transformation is traditionally used in special relativity to reconcile different observations made by different observers in different inertial reference frames, and it applies to relative velocities less than the speed of light.

Here the scientists have proposed two new transformations that complement the Lorentz transformation to explain different observations, and both new transformations apply to relative velocities greater than the speed of light. The physicists aren't sure which of the two new transformations is the correct one, and they don't ignore the possibility that both transformations may be equally plausible if for some reason Einstein's theory bifurcates at c into two variations. The two new transformations apply for relative velocities between c and infinity (not including either). Like Einstein's special relativity with the Lorentz transformation, the proposed extensions break down at exactly c, resulting in a singularity. Passing through the speed of light is not defined. As a result, the singularity forms a kind of boundary so that all inertial reference frames fall into one of two sets relative to some rest frame: those with a relative velocity less than c, and those with a relative velocity greater than c.

The physicists explain that there is no objective way to identify whether a particular reference frame is in the subluminal or in the superluminal set of frames other than by reference to some arbitrary rest frame. Although the theories cannot answer what happens at c, the scientists suspect that an object crossing the "light barrier" may have some very interesting consequences. They compare our current understanding of this boundary to that of an object crossing the sound barrier for the first time, an event that was highly disputed before it was achieved in 1947.

Full article.
phys.org...

Am I the only one stoked or what?


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Looks interesting, i believe its only a matter of time before Einsteins theory of relativity is proved wrong. Or at least that the rules can be bent. I don't like theory that has to deal in infinites, that to me just says we cannot work out or understand what happens at the speed of light. I understand the maths adds up for E=mc2 but the great thing is current science and maths arent always correct.

Good find.

Originally posted by Spit_Fire
Looks interesting, i believe its only a matter of time before Einsteins theory of relativity is proved wrong. Or at least that the rules can be bent. I don't like theory that has to deal in infinites, that to me just says we cannot work out or understand what happens at the speed of light. I understand the maths adds up for E=mc2 but the great thing is current science and maths arent always correct.

Good find.

Sorry man, I think you missed the point. If SR is wrong then this story is useless. You have to have a good understanding of the laws of inertial reference frames to understand how the laws could apear to be broken. Its like a loop hole.

I don't think this will require any calculus, so it would be a great place to start.

I appreciate your point, and im the first to admit science aint my strong suit i was simply makin the point that without gettin technical its a positive thing that scientists are not jus accepting Einstiens theorys as a given and that we are looking at everything more objectivly.
When i was at college all those years ago you were told it was wrong to question it and that was that.

But i appreciate your point.

Originally posted by Spit_Fire
I appreciate your point, and im the first to admit science aint my strong suit i was simply makin the point that without gettin technical its a positive thing that scientists are not jus accepting Einstiens theorys as a given and that we are looking at everything more objectivly.
When i was at college all those years ago you were told it was wrong to question it and that was that.

But i appreciate your point.

They should have told you its wrong to question it on intuitive objections alone. Not that you shouldn't question it. The observational and experimental evidence are conclusive tho, and if even one observation contradicted the theory it would be falsified.

I'm not very clever,I only take an interest in such things....Surely light,travelling at the speed of light must also have infinite mass.As a particle.Not a wave.

I was curious because my bicycle lamp doesn't instantly crush the earth and cause a black hole when I switch it on.

Which is fortunate because it makes getting to work really difficult.

reply to post by Ericthedoubter


Beautifully put, I think you are very insightful.

reply to post by Ericthedoubter


Light doesn't need to accelerate to the speed of light as it is always travelling at the speed of... well, light.

Originally posted by Ericthedoubter
I'm not very clever,I only take an interest in such things....Surely light,travelling at the speed of light must also have infinite mass.As a particle.Not a wave.

I was curious because my bicycle lamp doesn't instantly crush the earth and cause a black hole when I switch it on.

Which is fortunate because it makes getting to work really difficult.

Your bycycle lamp emits photons. Photons travel at c as allowed by SR influenced by Maxwells equations.

Originally posted by john_bmth
reply to post by Ericthedoubter

 

Light doesn't need to accelerate to the speed of light as it is always travelling at the speed of... well, light.

Thats what SR is all about. Light travels at c for every observer.

reply to post by ubeenhad

Originally posted by ubeenhad

Like Einstein's special relativity with the Lorentz transformation, the proposed extensions break down at exactly c, resulting in a singularity. Passing through the speed of light is not defined. As a result, the singularity forms a kind of boundary so that all inertial reference frames fall into one of two sets relative to some rest frame: those with a relative velocity less than c, and those with a relative velocity greater than c.

I wrote a paper in high school along that didn't discuss any transformations, but it did discuss almost verbatim what is stated in that quote. I'm glad to see some credible people have the same thoughts as me.

Of course I can see the difficulty of having to pass through the speed of light to get to a faster speed, and this is the reason why many claim that FTL travel is impossible according to relativity, but relativity doesn't really say that as far as I can tell, it only says traveling AT the speed of light is impossible and then a logical leap is made by some that it therefore precludes FTL, when I don't make this leap of logic.

I've never seen any evidence for hypothetical tachyons which travel faster than light (which was the topic of my paper), but if such things existed they wouldn't violate relativity as long as they didn't slow down to the speed of light. So I conceptually see this point about the speed of light being a singularity, an idea I had when I was younger.

Originally posted by ubeenhad
Am I the only one stoked or what?

I was stoked when I wrote my paper, but the only credit I got for the idea was an A- from my 12th grade teacher, because the stuff in the OP hadn't been published yet and I don't think he bought it which kind of "de-stoked" me. Maybe I can go back and show this to my teacher and try to get that A- changed to an A now?

Originally posted by Ericthedoubter
I'm not very clever,I only take an interest in such things....Surely light,travelling at the speed of light must also have infinite mass.As a particle.Not a wave.

I was curious because my bicycle lamp doesn't instantly crush the earth and cause a black hole when I switch it on.

A photon has a rest mass of zero. If you divide that zero by zero, you don't get infinity, so I have no idea why you're talking about light having infinite mass.

But if you divide any non-zero mass by zero, you do get infinity. I'm not sure why neutrinos have a loophole since some have a nearly zero, but nonzero mass, unless they are going such a small fraction below the speed of light that we haven't been able to measure the difference.

Tut! Tut!

Just as it was understond for a long time and provable with math that man could cause himself to fly, so has math been "proven" to show that nothing can move faster than the speed of light--mor or less. But as with flight where airfoils and propelling systems broke the "no flight for man" barrier, so there are ways around SOL motion.

Scrap Einstein's equations entirely in discussions of hyperspeed space flight. All that required is an independent technology applied which can among a bunch of attributes allowing faster than light motion. That technology is evident in the UFOs and has been displayed about every time one is witnessed. They have the means to cancel mass--not the same as anti-gravity. Without the restrictice aspects of Einstein's mass, the centerpoint of his argument, there is no inherent limit to an upper velocity for a massless object.

Such craft will be the greatest weapons ever devised in that regard, but they will also be more important to mankind than the invention of the wheel. Anytime you want to argue why UFOs are still secret and hotly denied, you have no better reason that those. In addition, there is a vast complex of hinging aspects to UFOs that cover every spectrum of human existence, historically, politically, psychologically, culturally, and socially. The trauma for every earthly soul will run deep and wide. Hence, it is best that individuals come to their own personal understanding of the phenomena rather than an official announcement suddenly breaking the news.

If a bullet is shot from a gun on a moving truck doing 100 miles an hour.. is not that bullet moving faster than if it were fired from a stationary point? Same with throwing a brick from a moving car?

Would not therefore the speed of light be faster if the light source is moving faster?.. say from a faster moving star?

For reference:

What would happen if you fired a gun on a train moving as fast as a bullet?
Imagine you are on a perfectly smooth speeding train, moving at a uniform speed (not accelerating or turning), in a car with no windows. You would have no way of knowing how fast you are going (or if you were moving at all). If you throw a ball straight up in the air, it will come straight back down whether the train is sitting still or going 1,000 mph. Since you and the ball are already moving at the same speed as the train, the only forces acting on the ball are your hand and gravity. So the ball behaves exactly as it would if you were standing on the ground and not moving.

So what does this mean for our gun? If the gun shoots bullets at 1,000 mph, then the bullet will always move away from the gun at 1,000 mph. If you go to the front of a train that is moving at 1,000 mph and shoot the gun forward, the bullet will move away from you and the train at 1,000 mph, just as it would if the train were stopped. But, relative to the ground, the bullet will travel at 2,000 mph, the speed of the bullet plus the speed of the train. So if the bullet hits something on the ground, it will hit it going 2,000 mph.

Now the article also says this:

What's true for bullets, however, is not true of some other things that you might "shoot" from the front of the train. A great example is sound waves. If you turn on the stereo in your living room, sound waves "shoot out" of the speaker at the speed of sound -- something like 700 mph. The waves propogate through the air at that fixed speed, and they can go no faster. So if you put a speaker at the front of the 1,000 mph train, the sound waves will not depart the train at 1,700 mph. They cannot go faster than the speed of sound. This is the reason why planes traveling faster than the speed of sound create sonic boom

science.howstuffworks.com...

But photons can act as both a wave and a particle can they not? How do you determine which applies in this case?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It has been suggested that Maxwell's equations are incomplete, that the CIA scrubbed certain information from all public sources in his books because they related to national security. Likewise, Einstein has been called a fraud because he stole peoples ideas while he worked for the U.S. Patent office. Tesla for one strongly disagreed with GR at least and had his own theories to counter it called the Dynamic Theory of Gravity. If there is even the tiniest shred of truth to any of that it would account for SR being "incomplete". I think it's wrong to say the theory is incomplete - it should be stated they theory may have been wrong and a new theory takes it's place in light of new data - having to expand the theory ( force a square peg into a round hole) is a form of hero worship. We don't even know if Newtons theory of gravity is correct or the things said about thermodynamics - we simply choose to believe them until new information comes along.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
But photons can act as both a wave and a particle can they not? How do you determine which applies in this case?

It's the nature of the type of observation or experiment you make that determines whether you observe wave or particle properties. You don't get to pick one, you pick the type of observation you want to do, and see which properties of light can be observed in that observation.

In the case of time dilation, the wave properties are the ones observed to be affected by the different "clock speeds" in different reference frames, which change the frequency of the light. It's the changing frequency and the different clock rates which allow the classical examples you mentioned to not apply to light.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Very insightful ideas.

You are getting yourself pretty close to the big elephant in the physics room.

What do things like time dilation and length contraction mean at the most fundamental level. A quantum theory of gravity would solve this problem. So for now the best idea would be to pick your favorite unified field theory and what it predicts, if its been worked out.

About your first part, thats the thought experiment Einstein did since he was a kid. He imagined being on a train and speeding up to a ray of light. He found later with SR, that the speed of light is constant for everyone, which had TONS of consequences.

Also the question "which one applies in this case" is an invalid question when talking about quantum mechanics. Its Bohr's idea of "complementarity". Wave particle duality. Like Feynman says "Its like asking the marital status of the number 4"

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Thank you for the answers and clarification.

Like I said,I'm not terribly clever so I think I'll step out of here and watch from the sidelines.

Before my brain melts.

Thank you Arbitrageur and ubeenhad for your interesting and thought provoking answers.

Originally posted by Aliensun
Scrap Einstein's equations entirely in discussions of hyperspeed space flight. All that required is an independent technology applied which can among a bunch of attributes allowing faster than light motion. That technology is evident in the UFOs and has been displayed about every time one is witnessed. They have the means to cancel mass--not the same as anti-gravity. Without the restrictice aspects of Einstein's mass, the centerpoint of his argument, there is no inherent limit to an upper velocity for a massless object.

You got no idea how an anti-gravity spacecraft would work.

And the term is loose enough, it could cover a hypothetical mass canceling device(sounds easy when you say it like that ) without much difficulty.

Mass is just frozen energy, to cancel mass you would have to do it with no energy. Im sure twisted/strong magnetic fields, or a proven model from gravity propagation would be more likely sources of ftl travel. Even using one of the other forces to counterbalance gravity. But we don't even know for sure how gravity propagates through space. Its still a mystery.