Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:07 pm  

Turns out old Albert's theories do not, according to some whizzes, exclude travel at faster than light speed. As i read it, it isn't possible to travel AT the speed of light, or believed previously to be so, since at that speed, time "stands still" and mass "becomes infinite". But in fact, it would be fair to say that all theories of physics break down at that point as they can't describe the conditions in a singularity. However what these guys have done is to go beyond that speed and simply extend Einstein's theory, which continues to work perfectly well at greater than light speeds. So, it may be that the speed of light is just another barrier that is possible to cross, like the sound barrier turned out to be. ARTICLE

Turns out old Albert's theories do not, according to some whizzes, exclude travel at faster than light speed. As i read it, it isn't possible to travel AT the speed of light, or believed previously to be so, since at that speed, time "stands still" and mass "becomes infinite". But in fact, it would be fair to say that all theories of physics break down at that point as they can't describe the conditions in a singularity. However what these guys have done is to go beyond that speed and simply extend Einstein's theory, which continues to work perfectly well at greater than light speeds. So, it may be that the speed of light is just another barrier that is possible to cross, like the sound barrier turned out to be. ARTICLE

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:30 pm  

If you break the light speed barrier, do you disappear? Or turn black?

What do you do for a job? You seem far too bright to be a rugby league supporter.

[Kosh]

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:31 pm  

"The actual business of going through the speed of light is not defined," Hill told LiveScience. "The theory we've come up with is simply for velocities greater than the speed of light."

Aye - the devil's always in the detail, isn't it?

I like the bit comparing it to crossing the sound barrier. The major difference being, of course, that achieving supersonic velocity does not involve assuming infinite mass and having the entire Universe collapse in on you.

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 2:17 pm  

Kosh wrote:

Aye - the devil's always in the detail, isn't it?

I like the bit comparing it to crossing the sound barrier. The major difference being, of course, that achieving supersonic velocity does not involve assuming infinite mass and having the entire Universe collapse in on you.

But many scientists assumed you could not break the sound barrier, or if you did, Bad Things Would Happen.

I am no expert on Einstein, but if I get the point correctly, it isn't quite that mass "is infinite", but that if you follow the theory to its conclusion (assuming that the speed of light was the "conclusion" then that would be the apparent result, but such a result is not a real result in the sense that that state cannot be described by the laws of physics.

Also the entire universe doesn't collapse in on you at the speed of light. Ask any photon, or enquire outside the event horizon of any black hole!

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:42 pm  

Pffft. 20-odd series of Star Trek and 3 Star Wars films conclusively show Einstein to be just plain wrong.

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 7:59 pm  

I will not believe this new science until I see it demonstrated by John Senior and balled up socks...

[tb]

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 8:14 pm  

Andy Gilder wrote:

I will not believe this new science until I see it demonstrated by John Senior and balled up socks...

Overalls, not socks. He was running up a warehouse corridor. How can you get such a crucial detail wrong?

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 8:32 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

As i read it, it isn't possible to travel AT the speed of light

Doesn't light travel at the speed of light?

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 8:32 pm  

But what happens when you go slower than the speed of dark?

Re: Faster than the speed of light : Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:21 pm  

Speed of Dark is a good book. By Elizabeth Moon IIRC.