Transferring information faster than light?

[angelzsniper]

Science! It makes me confused. I know nothing can travel faster than light since E=MC^2, C is the speed of light and as you reach the speed of light, the energy it takes to accelerate the mass becomes infinite. But can someone explain why this doesn't work.
Let's say for example that you have a length of a string, you hand your friend one end and keep the other end. You each go to other sides of the room. If you tug on the string, I can only expect the other side tugs at the exact same time (assuming the string is already stretched to its full capacity)

So will you be able to take something like this into a much larger scale (doesn't have to be a string) in which you pull/push on something and it happens somewhere else a few lightyears away? Just something to think about...

(1st post by the way )

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I don't know about the theory, but the practice I can say! A string that long would collapse upon it's own weight, or it would weigh so much that the energy required to pull it would be absurd. Going the speed of light absurd.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Kinetic energy doesn't travel that fast. Crimson is probably right though... the material to make such a thing simple doesn't exist, and probably wont.

 

[Dr. UBAR]

Matter doesn't move like that. The atoms bump into eachother and transfer the kinetic energy along the string. This is considerably slower than the speed of light. The closesst thing to FTL effect right now is quantum entanglement. I believe it was mentioned in Mass Effect.
Be prepare you might lose your mind. Heck Einstein thought it was spooky.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Matter doesn't move like that. The atoms bump into eachother and transfer the kinetic energy along the string. This is considerably slower than the speed of light. The closesst thing to FTL effect right now is quantum entanglement. I believe it was mentioned in Mass Effect.
Be prepare you might lose your mind. Heck Einstein thought it was spooky.

Quantum entanglement always sounded... weird to me. Seems more like magic than science (But its quantum science... I'm not supposed to understand I think).

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Matter doesn't move like that. The atoms bump into eachother and transfer the kinetic energy along the string. This is considerably slower than the speed of light. The closesst thing to FTL effect right now is quantum entanglement. I believe it was mentioned in Mass Effect.
Be prepare you might lose your mind. Heck Einstein thought it was spooky.

Oh quantum entanglement is perfectly understandable, as long as you don't try and understand why it happens.

 

[Zacharine]

Well, two considerations:

#1: the speed of light is absolute max for anything travelling in 'empty' space (as there is no such thing as empty), in relation to said space. This does not take into account that space-time can bend and twist and expand, creating what appears to be from an outsiders perspective a faster-than-speed-of-light effect.

#2: Einstein though Quantum Mechanics was bogus and anyone thinking it even possibly plausible a crackjob. We know that trough quantum entanglement information transfer can be made effectively instantaneous, with distance being a non-factor. So the 'absolute' max speed isn't so absolute, it simply applies to particles/objects with positive rest-mass when travelling trough space-time.

 

[Robert632]

Welcome to The Escapist! Hope you enjoy your stay and stay out of the basement, unless you want to be slurping your ass through a straw. Or other such things.

O.T:I as always taught that light was the fastest thing realistically, but I haven't really spent alot of time thinking about things like this. I just felt like greeting you.

 

[Tharwen]

In theory, yes, because in your example the force down the string is what's travelling faster (Read: influencing space before light can get there, not actually travelling) than the speed of light, not the string itself.

In practice, every material will stretch enough to make this redundant.

 

[Necator15]

If you were to push or pull the string the energy would go out in kind of a wave below the speed of light.
(Also, I think you have the wrong equation there, that's the mass-energy relation, what you're looking for it relativistic effects which is something along the lines of m' = m/(1-(v^2/c^2)), where m' is the relativistic mass; v is the velocity; and c is the speed of light. Which as you'll see tends toward infinity as v --> c)

 

[hittite]

Oh, yeah. Quantum Entanglement comes with head explosion warnings. But, if you could harness it (and let me tell you, that would be really hard), it could provide not only instantaneous communication, but (theoretically) travel as well.

Okay, so assuming that you've set up a quantum link between two separate areas. Information can now be sent back and forth in real time, no matter how far apart they are. Assume also that you have perfected an Alcubierre warp field to the point that you can manipulate the size of the exterior without changing the interior (much like the Doctor's tardis). It may be possible to shrink it to the size of a Planck length and use it to ride the information from one location to another.

Admittedly, I got all of that from reading science fiction, but considering how many degrees the author had, I'm calling it an educated guess.

 

[angelzsniper]

Matter doesn't move like that. The atoms bump into eachother and transfer the kinetic energy along the string. This is considerably slower than the speed of light. The closesst thing to FTL effect right now is quantum entanglement. I believe it was mentioned in Mass Effect.
Be prepare you might lose your mind. Heck Einstein thought it was spooky.

Ooh, quantum entanglement. Is that what it's called? Well, that's kind of what I was getting at, where two objects (in this case, really tiny particles) are linked together somehow, and similar to a seesaw, one goes up then the other must be down. So.. if this can be reproduced in a much larger scale, yay, really really fast information.

 

[Three Eyed Cyclops]

There is a lag between when you pulled and your friend on the other end receives the pull. If you want to demonstrate this to yourself in a simple model, just use a slinky and stand a couple of meters (or yards) apart. Pull/push and you can watch the compression wave travel along until it reaches the other end. A string is not as spring like, but it would behave the exact same way (the bonds between the atoms in it can be modeled using spring/force constants).

Well, two considerations:

#2: Einstein though Quantum Mechanics was bogus and anyone thinking it even possibly plausible a crackjob. We know that trough quantum entanglement information transfer can be made effectively instantaneous, with distance being a non-factor. So the 'absolute' max speed isn't so absolute, it simply applies to particles/objects with positive rest-mass when travelling trough space-time.

Just because he was Einstein doesn't mean that he was right about everything. If quantum mechanics didn't work, then you or I would most likely be unable to post on a website.

 

[Mystify]

a tug or push is carried by atoms interacting with each other sequentially. the timing may seem instantaneous of the small scale of a room, but it is far from it.

Quantum entanglement does not actually transfer information. It basically says that if a particle is in a superstition of state A and B, and another particle is entangled to it so that it is the opposite state, when you measure the first and it collapses into state A, the other will collapse into state B when you measure it. Scientists initial reaction was that the particle must be communicating its state to the other particle, since the state is not determined until it is measured, and this communication would break the speed of light. However, this CANNOT be used to send information, and actual communication between particles are not acutally needed for this phenomena to work. However, the physics to explain that are even more complicated and will give you a serious headache.

 

[Necator15]

Ooh, quantum entanglement. Is that what it's called? Well, that's kind of what I was getting at, where two objects (in this case, really tiny particles) are linked together somehow, and similar to a seesaw, one goes up then the other must be down. So.. if this can be reproduced in a much larger scale, yay, really really fast information.

That's pretty close, but it has to be a pair of particles. (Every particle is created together with it's respective anti-particle for instance every proton is made with an anti-proton, every electron with a positron and so on and so forth) Each of the particles will have the opposite spin (That's why they're anti with respect to each other) and will always be opposite each other.

 

[blankedboy]

Well, you could stretch a piece of string between two planets and use Morse code.

 

[Zacharine]

There is one way you could do the string thingy though: Use Space-time itself as the string. When you tug at a string, you are essentially sending out a wave of force that tugs your end of the string and, because mass is lazy and prefers to stay in it's current state of movement, ecompasses the entire string slowly, arriving to the other end as a form of a wave crest of force.

Now take that concept and apply it to space-time. Space-time can, theoretically, expand faster than the speed of light, so it might be possible to use a directed wave of space-time as a sort of galactic string. Problems include: how to ensure the wave doesn't expand and dissipate, how to translate that wave effect into information/action at the receiving end. And of course, how to create an effect like that in the first place without requiring anything with mass to be sent as well.

But this idea fails the moment you need anything with mass to be sent accross that distance, e=mc^2 slaps it down (unless you can bend space-time and... circumvent... the rule)

 

[thenumberthirteen]

As has been explained the pressure wave travels slower than light so no joy there. As for entanglement the changes happen simultaneously, however the change itself is random, and so no information can be passed using this method. The speed of light still rules.

 

[angelzsniper]

Okay, so assuming that you've set up a quantum link between two separate areas. Information can now be sent back and forth in real time, no matter how far apart they are. Assume also that you have perfected an Alcubierre warp field to the point that you can manipulate the size of the exterior without changing the interior (much like the Doctor's tardis). It may be possible to shrink it to the size of a Planck length and use it to ride the information from one location to another.

Star Trek? Anyway, I don't know why Planck length would even fit in this situation.

That's pretty close, but it has to be a pair of particles. (Every particle is created together with it's respective anti-particle for instance every proton is made with an anti-proton, every electron with a positron and so on and so forth) Each of the particles will have the opposite spin (That's why they're anti with respect to each other) and will always be opposite each other.

My. Head. I'm like googling half this stuff to figure out what you guys are talking about.