Faster than light travel.

Marowit

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ParadoxBG said:
Datalord said:
Well, einstein hypothesized that if you approach light speed, time slows down, but to my knowledge, this is only the theory that currently makes the most sense, and hasn't been verified with an experiment,

In short, we think not
Actually, this was verified. I can't quote any sources, unfortunately, it was a long time ago, but scientists placed two perfectly synched clocks, one on the ground and one on the fastest supersonic jet then available. They had the jet fly around as fast as it was able (still a ridiculously small fraction of the speed of light) and when they looked at it again, the jet clock was a tiny fraction of a second behind the control clock.

Like I said, it was a long time ago, so I may have fudged some of the details. Anyone recognize this experiment?
see my post right above this one.
 

Marowit

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Keshihead said:
It'd be awesome if faster than light travel WAS possible, but would the human body be able to withstand the sheer amount of force placed on it?
acceleration is the key here.

If you were to go 0 to 3x10^8m/s in 10 seconds, you are correct.

If you were to turn it up over a longer time period there is no reason to think we couldn't do it...other than Einstein's formula dictates that nothing moving at the speed of light can have mass...but I'm will to bet we're wrong about that one.
 

ChaosGenesis

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I see no valid reason why it can't be possible once a technology could be developed to allow such speeds. I'm no physicist but it just seems like it only makes sense that it is possible. Light can be slowed down so what's to say there isn't a way to accelerate it.
If we could find out how to speed it up then the next step is to figure out how to reach that speed. Perhaps that requires converting matter to photons and back again at the destination though I don't see that being survivable for any living creature.
If we're talking about FTL travel that is manageable and survivable by humans... I have a feeling we'd be long extinct before we'd have the time to develop such technologies.

I think it is foolish to rule out anything completely though. As far as I'm concerned, anything is possible, we just don't know how yet.
 

Pyro Paul

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Faster than light travel is impossible because when you approche light speed Energy begins to have mass which compounds the amount of energy you need to accelerate the object. this meens in order to maintain something at light speed you must have infinate energy behind it.

the only way to achieve Faster than light speed is through the form of an 'Inertia-Less Drive' a theoretical technology which can alter the preceptive mass of an object (current current theories involve changing the wavelength, frequency, or other properties including resonence although it is largely just all pen and paper theory). when an object has a Mass of 0 then by default it is travelling at light speed (as light has a mass of 0.)

theoretically if you can alter the mass so that it has 'Imaginary Mass' (negative mass) then any acceleration will achieve natural FTL with reasonable energy expenditure.


this doesn't break Einstines theory... it just kinda goes over his head.
 

Marowit

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Pyro Paul said:
Faster than light travel is impossible because when you approche light speed Energy begins to have mass which compounds the amount of energy you need to accelerate the object. this meens in order to maintain something at light speed you must have infinate energy behind it.

the only way to achieve Faster than light speed is through the form of an 'Inertia-Less Drive' a theoretical technology which can alter the preceptive mass of an object (current current theories involve changing the wavelength, frequency, or other properties including resonence although it is largely just all pen and paper theory). when an object has a Mass of 0 then by default it is travelling at light speed (as light has a mass of 0.)

theoretically if you can alter the mass so that it has 'Imaginary Mass' (negative mass) then any acceleration will achieve natural FTL with reasonable energy expenditure.


this doesn't break Einstines theory... it just kinda goes over his head.
...and they called it...

Mass Effect. Sorry I couldn't help it, because it's the whole premise of the game!
 

hvitulf

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GodsAndFishes said:
They say that you can't go faster than the speed of light, but many years ago they also said that you couldn't go faster than the speed of sound. But eventually we'll probably find some sort of cheat code that works in the universe to get around it.
oldschool FTL code: beat the first Ninja Gaiden game on an original NES or toploader, then during the end sequence press, up, down, up, down, A, B, Left, Right, hold select and start at same time
the newer versions require lots of mod scripting, are less reliable and occasionally cause computers to explode.
 

Abengoshis

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Create a large anti massive object behind you, curving space-time "upwards", then make a very massive object in front of you, curving space time "downwards".
The back will be pushed forward away from the anti-mass and the front will be pulled forward by the mass. (The mass moves with whatever capsule you are in).

maybe...
 

Liiizard

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Sure. Jump into a black hole. Pop out from a white hole. You won't be intact when you get through, but the subatomic particles that USED to be you will have traveled faster than light.
 

randomrob

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Well if you could invent machinery that operates at light speed then yes you could. But you can't, so you can't. However we could invent near light speed travel. Btw if it's impossible to leave the universe because it's expanding at the speed of light then could we leave it when it starts contracting again?
 

zhoominator

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We certainly can't accelerate to speeds faster than c, that would require an infinite amount of energy (since the mass will approach infinity as the speed approaches c). I can't imagine how we'd get close through accelerating as (a) That would require ridiculous amounts of energy (as has already been previously stated) and (b) Our feeble human bodies probably wouldn't survive an acceleration like that.

The idea of altering the shape of space and folding it sounds interesting though and doesn't sound like it would contradict the theory of relativity (but I don't claim to be an expert, I'm only a 2nd year student). Mind you, I'd imagine that would rquire ridiculous amounts of energy too. Who knows though, there may be loopholes that we'll be able to exploit in future to get round these problems. After all, that's what physics is about ;) !
 

hvitulf

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Abengoshis said:
Create a large anti massive object behind you, curving space-time "upwards", then make a very massive object in front of you, curving space time "downwards".
The back will be pushed forward away from the anti-mass and the front will be pulled forward by the mass. (The mass moves with whatever capsule you are in).

maybe...
and die in the resulting gravitational catastrophe, you'll die moving extremely fast, but die nonetheless
 

hvitulf

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Ok, bending space is probably the only way to move from point A to point B faster than light could (which means that you could get to the sun with a brisk walk in only a moment). Answer this: what is gravity? Bent space! So lets work on anti-gravity/gravity control(similar to chaos control) and we'll be able to go from there.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovMbBEZNXuE&feature=related

this guy has it right
 

Maze1125

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Captain Blackout said:
Three, photons have mass? What?
E=mc^2
Photons have energy, therefore they have mass.

What is generally said is that photons don't have any rest mass, but photons are never at rest.

Skooterz said:
I've never understood why they have so little mass when travelling that quickly. Shouldn't they, by the very theory you mentioned, have infinite mass?
Because they have no rest mass.
The mass a moving particle has is related to it's rest mass. An object with greater rest mass has a greater mass when travelling near light speed than an object with less rest mass.

The equations work out that anything with positive rest mass must have infinite mass at light speed.
But something with zero rest mass, like a photon, can have finite mass at light speed.

Marowit said:
If you were to go 0 to 3x10^8m/s in 10 seconds, you are correct.

If you were to turn it up over a longer time period there is no reason to think we couldn't do it...other than Einstein's formula dictates that nothing moving at the speed of light can have mass...but I'm will to bet we're wrong about that one.
The amount of energy for an object to reach any particular speed is the same regardless of how quickly you reach that speed. Doing it slowly simply gives you more time to get that required energy, and potentially has greater efficiency.

The amount of energy required to reach light speed is infinite, and no amount of time or efficiency is going to give us the infinite energy required.
 

A13X T3h NubCak3

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Skooterz said:
A13X T3h NubCak3 said:
Even Photons have mass when travelling at the speed of light.
I've never understood why they have so little mass when travelling that quickly. Shouldn't they, by the very theory you mentioned, have infinite mass?
That would be the case if light speed was infinate now wouldnt it?.. whats 3 billion x an incredibly small small number... The mass of an electron is 9.11x10^-31 the mass of a photon is ALOT SMALLER .... The speed of light is 3x10^8 m/s

The rest mass of a photon is practically 0 its so small

Im only a physicist to a A level standard ^^ its just what ive learnt

The dude above me explains it alot better but. You would need infinate amounts of energy to reach the speed of light because mass increases. E/m=c^2 as E increases as does M so you would never really get there
 

Skeleon

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I'd have to go with the Event Horizon model. Not only because it's an awesome movie but also because, as we know, time can slow down or speed up when gravity is involved. An artificial black hole might allow for something like FTL-travel. I'm not sure that'd actually be "folding space" like they do in Event Horizon, though...
 

Velvo

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Things with mass can't go fater than light. You can try to bend space to move things through it more quickly, but that would take so much damn energy it's not even funny, plus mechanisms for doing it that we don't yet have.

To me, it is much more likely that we will find ways to move energy, or if not that, information, across space faster than light, or perhaps even instantaneously. Or hell, wouldn't it be neat if we could leave the universe and pop back in wherever we wanted to? Just cut space out altogether! Course, wishful thinking never got any scientist anywhere.