Faster Than Light Travel is Possible - Here's How

As most of you already know, matter may not reach light speed, for it would take an infinite amount of energy to move even a single atom at this speed. Let alone pushing matter at a speed faster then light. Keeping that in mind, technically, though, there is a rather interesting detail.

Imagine two trains going in opposite ways. One train goes North at 60 mph, and the other train goes South at 60 mph. Each single trains are spending energy to reach 60mph only, and are not spending energy to reach 120 mph. Relative to each other, though, the trains are in fact going at 120 mph.

Now imagine two spacecrafts going in opposite ways. One spacecraft goes towards the Taurus constellation at 0.75 c (three quarters of the speed of light), and the other goes towards the Sagittarius constellation at 0.75 c. According to my math, this makes each spacecraft travel, relative to another, at 1.5 c (one and a half the speed of light).

This has limited practical implication, of course. Following this logic, to make a ship leave Earth at a FTL speed, one would have to push the ship in one direction at over 0.5 c - and push the entire solar system in the opposite direction at over 0.5 c.

But academical implication is that technically, the speed for an object, traveling relative to an (albeit moving) observer, may in fact relatively easily exceed the speed of light. It could be possible, in such condition, to have objects seemingly travel faster than light - and bend space-time accordingly.

Food for thought.


Swan

velocities does not add linearly like that

math.ucr.edu...

en.wikipedia.org...
____________
Just for easier understanding, from first link


I hope it helps make things clear

Indigent
velocities does not add linearly like that

math.ucr.edu...

en.wikipedia.org...

OK, reading all that, my brain just exploded.....

Need to put a warning up next time man...

reply to post by swanne


I think that it is somewhat moot to discuss things moving through space at approaching, or faster than the speed of light, without mentioning the potential of space bending warp effects. Whether two objects, moving in opposite directions would appear to one another to be approaching or exceeding the speed of light or not, the fact remains that this would be an illusion, rather than a loophole in physics. However, warping space time around a vessel, drawing what is ahead closer, and pushing what is behind further away, THAT is something which, by tiny little baby steps, we could approach in the future.

The discovery of the Higgs and the ability to store antimatter, are both key steps to understanding the process by which we may come to be able to travel the stars with as much aplomb as we cross the globe today.

relative to what?

if the observer and the train/ufo are travelling together, at what speed are they going?

besides, who wants to go somewhere before light? when you get there, it will flood in on top of you with information that has already happened. And it would blind you.

As Mr. Spock would say, "Your logic is flawed"

One of the popular theories right now is a ship using focused and powerful magnetic/gravity to pull a "distance" of space to it, then pop through that and repeat this over and over like a rock skipping through water, sort of.

The ship would be pulling space up like an accordion with the gravity focusing like a grappling hook on the distant point away from it, bringing the distant point to the ship, and when space springs back again, you are at your next spot, say, 1 light year for each jump.

Or whatever distance it is set and capable of doing.. I can't really picture humans with that capability however.. Imagine the trouble people would be getting themselves in. They would venture out and offend some powerful ET who would get all their friends to really clobber our planet.

swanne
As most of you already know, matter may not reach light speed, for it would take an infinite amount of energy to move even a single atom at this speed. Let alone pushing matter at a speed faster then light. Keeping that in mind, technically, though, there is a rather interesting detail.

Imagine two trains going in opposite ways. One train goes North at 60 mph, and the other train goes South at 60 mph. Each single trains are spending energy to reach 60mph only, and are not spending energy to reach 120 mph. Relative to each other, though, the trains are in fact going at 120 mph.

Now imagine two spacecrafts going in opposite ways. One spacecraft goes towards the Taurus constellation at 0.75 c (three quarters of the speed of light), and the other goes towards the Sagittarius constellation at 0.75 c. According to my math, this makes each spacecraft travel, relative to another, at 1.5 c (one and a half the speed of light).

This has limited practical implication, of course. Following this logic, to make a ship leave Earth at a FTL speed, one would have to push the ship in one direction at over 0.5 c - and push the entire solar system in the opposite direction at over 0.5 c.

But academical implication is that technically, the speed for an object, traveling relative to an (albeit moving) observer, may in fact relatively easily exceed the speed of light. It could be possible, in such condition, to have objects seemingly travel faster than light - and bend space-time accordingly.

Food for thought.


Swan

edit on 8-2-2014 by swanne because: (no reason given)

You can't exceed the speed of light based on what you mentioned above. The total velocity of the objects moving in relation to each other never exceeds the speed of light, as you mentioned, they are moving at .75 c. Just because they are moving away from each other at equal speeds, the fixed point from which they originated as the starting point in space-time is what is relative (or the observer), not the relative position of the other object, that's not how relative velocity works. They will not exceed .75 c at any point, but the distance between their relative frames of reference will grow by a factor greater than .75 c, and from the relative perspective of the viewer, which is in a single frame of reference, both objects would appear to be moving at .75 c and never change. The distance between them and rate of change in that distance is not the same as the relative speed.

I think your mistake here is confusing where and what the relative frame of reference is.

This is what your answer would be using a velocity composition formula:

u' = (u + v)/(1 + uv/c^2) = (0.75c + 0.75c)/(1 + 0.75*0.75) = 0.96 c.

~Namaste

reply to post by swanne


I love seeing discussions with theories about light-speed travel. I hope one day some random person figures it out and posts it on this website and it goes more crazy than Miley Virus.

Nonetheless, I fear we, as a somewhat technically limited society, will never understand magnetic displacement and energy usage enough, in my lifetime, to enjoy the many benefits of intergalactic travel.

I think we are too hooked on the idea of propulsion and not enough on phase-shifting...then again, what could I know?

swanne
Now imagine two spacecrafts going in opposite ways. One spacecraft goes towards the Taurus constellation at 0.75 c (three quarters of the speed of light), and the other goes towards the Sagittarius constellation at 0.75 c. According to my math, this makes each spacecraft travel, relative to another, at 1.5 c (one and a half the speed of light).

As already pointed out, your math is flawed, because you can't add relativistic velocities like that.

However this is not to say that objects aren't receding from us faster than the speed of light:

Expanding Confusion: common misconceptions of cosmological horizons and the superluminal expansion of the Universe

We use standard general relativity to illustrate and clarify several common misconceptions about the expansion of the Universe. To show the abundance of these misconceptions we cite numerous misleading, or easily misinterpreted, statements in the literature. In the context of the new standard Lambda-CDM cosmology we point out confusions regarding the particle horizon, the event horizon, the ``observable universe'' and the Hubble sphere (distance at which recession velocity = c). We show that we can observe galaxies that have, and always have had, recession velocities greater than the speed of light. We explain why this does not violate special relativity and we link these concepts to observational tests.

So the reason we believe there are recessional velocities faster than the speed of light is because of expanding space. Since this is not a local phenomenon it doesn't violate relativity, which two spaceships passing each other at a relative velocity of 1.5c would do in your example, if your math wasn't flawed.

reply to post by swanne


I understand exactly what you are driving at but the method I proposed as this, and forget about all we do not know as they can only transmit information this way so far but the entire field of quantum entanglement is still very, very young indeed.

Take a craft, in the centre place a apperatus that does the following.
First it splits two quantum synchronised regions and sends each to opposite sides of a conduit at the speed of light, it encases the vessel in a form of unity field that would look a little like doughnut with the coduit running through the center, if you could see it then entangles that unity field in one side of the quantum synchronised region (currently we can only do this with split photon's and potential charge but?), Then it disentangles it at the other region displacing the entire vessel half the length of the apparatus conduit at quantum exchange (this is actually faster than light but non linear) so though it has only moved as a little less than twice the relative speed of light it has not broken any law's of relativity due to the fact it has translocated and not travelled, (not teleportation as there is not actual destruction and reconstruction here) so if it could do this in sequential pattern then you would have a APPARENTLY fast moving object with no inertia-relative to it's starting point and which could using more than one orientation of such apparatus and coduit change direction or stop instantaneously but of course for linear motion it would still need normal kinetic propulsion systems.

What if a method of keeping the object entangled in it's unity field but changing the carrier field simultaneously was developed, then mayby if the carrier region/field/wave could pass through matter then while so entangled so could the craft.

Sound familiar, it should as these are the characteristic's of many UFO sighting's.

reply to post by swanne


I thought light was waves and particles at the same time. Might be wrong but particles are matter. So light particles (matter) can travel at the speed of light.

Aren't there different speeds of light relative to were you are. Gravity bends light so the bent light must take longer to get somewhere that straight light.

Ah, but you are overlooking something in my opinion. Doesn't Einstein's Theory of Relativity tell us that the universe will not allow such things? The other object, even from a different object's point of view, will never surpass the speed of light. So if you are using one of the moving objects as the observer, it doesn't work. And if you use a stationary object as the reference point, then you in fact have two moving objects, and the observer, three in total. That doesn't really mean anything in my opinion.

Someone might want to double check what I am saying, but if I remember correctly, an object relative to another will never surpass the speed of light, EVEN IF the reference object were already moving at a high rate of speed. This is where length contraction and time dilation comes in. The physical universe actually appears to change explicitly so light remains the cosmic speed limit.
I think I replied to what you are talking about, but I think you may have meant something else, but I'm not sure.

Oh, and that's like Einstein's thought experiment of trying to catch up to a beam of light. You could probably just read about it rather than have me try to explain it, and probably butcher it. But in essence it coincides with what I am saying about the speed of light never being surpassed. So even something that is moving near the speed of light already, if it shoots a beam of light, the beam of light will not have that previous velocity added to it. It will just be moving at the speed of light.

swanneNow imagine two spacecrafts going in opposite ways. One spacecraft goes towards the Taurus constellation at 0.75 c (three quarters of the speed of light), and the other goes towards the Sagittarius constellation at 0.75 c. According to my math, this makes each spacecraft travel, relative to another, at 1.5 c (one and a half the speed of light).

And light travels at 2c in your above situation (or 1.75c). 1.5c is less than 2c (or 1.75c) .. so nothing is traveling faster than light.

You can't really add things like you are doing ... but even if you did, nothing is surpassing the speed of light.

reply to post by swanne


Your posting is so confusing and wrong, sorry, I don't even know where to start....

Ok, say that we have two space ships traveling in opposite directions, which would measure whatever speed X between those two objects.

Good. Except that this is entirely irrelevant since all what counts would be the speed of one space ship towards it's destination.
The ship doesn't go twice as fast just because you measure two ships where the one moves backwards, the other ship will still be going toward its destinations with its own speed, regardless of what measurements are taken in regards to OTHER ships. Or are you thinking it somehow would effect the speed of the ship?

Second..you say something like "to have objects faster than light ... and bend space/time accordingly"

I cannot follow this since THE SPEED of the object is not what "bends" S/T.

If we assume that a warp drive exists that can bend S/T (which I may well believe) than there is no reason to believe that the space craft with that drive has to go a certain speed to bend the S/T. Heck it could even stand-still and might be able to manipulate S/T.

The actual speed (eg. traveling a distance A - B in a certain time) has nothing to do with bending space/time.

So...in other words: If we hypothetically assume that Warp drives exist/are possible..we dont even NEED to go Faster Than Light (in a traditional sense)...so the problems with matter increase when we approach LS won't even come up!! The concept of distance becomes irrelevant with a warp drive. (It eliminates the requirement to move from A to B in a classic sense). (For an observer, of course, the warp drive space ship would "move" faster than light...the ship itself does just "bend the space" and then jump conveniently, no need to develop an engine which would actually move the ship (in the classic, physical sense) at or near light speed.

Edit:

And this is one of the fundamentals of relativity....nothing can exceed LS, a light beam forward from a space ship that already travels 1c won't go 2c.

All the math says that you cannot go the speed of light because you would have infinite energy and thus infinite mass. You would become the universe. I do not believe this but even if I did it does not show what would happen if you went faster than the speed of light. I have seen nothing that would preclude you from going faster that the speed of light, just not the speed of light. The problem is how do you change speeds without accelerating. If you could jump from one speed to another then it would be able to go from 90% the speed of light right to 110% the speed of light without ever being at the speed of light.

To initiate FTL , disengage from the Higgs Field. I think it's the button on the left.

The Higgs Field is an invisible energy field that exists everywhere in the universe. The field is accompanied by what may be a fundamental particle called the Higgs Boson, which it uses to continuously interact with other particles. As particles pass through the field they are endowed with the property of mass, much as an object passing through treacle (or molasses) will become slower

hyperrman
reply to post by swanne

 

I love seeing discussions with theories about light-speed travel. I hope one day some random person figures it out and posts it on this website and it goes more crazy than Miley Virus.

Nonetheless, I fear we, as a somewhat technically limited society, will never understand magnetic displacement and energy usage enough, in my lifetime, to enjoy the many benefits of intergalactic travel.

I think we are too hooked on the idea of propulsion and not enough on phase-shifting...then again, what could I know?

I would settle for interstellar travel, more than enough in this galaxy to keep humans busy.

reply to post by pikestaff

I would settle for interstellar travel, more than enough in this galaxy to keep humans busy.

At the time we will achieve this it wont be enough as the galaxy eventually will die, after intergalactic it wont be sufficient as the universe will cool down eventually or collapse, the point where is enough would be inter dimension/universe travel/time travel

Thank you to you all for presenting this information to me.

I apologize for the rather misleading OP. I didn't make my researches before speaking up, and it resulted in an OP with an extremely inaccurate and misleading information. I feel bad for it, I present to you all my sincere apologies. It was my mistake and mine alone. I would humbly request the mods to move the inaccurate and misleading OP out from its current topic and into the Trash Bin.

Regards,

Swan