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WindupAtheist
New Member
41 Posts |
 Posted - 12/21/2001 : 07:35:31
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My opinion: The human species will find a way to "cheat" the speed of light someday. Just not for a long bloody time. To pull a number out of my ass, I say 500 years.
What does everyone else think?
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 12/21/2001 : 07:41:23 [Permalink]
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't our current understanding say that nothing that has a rest mass can achieve C? Therefore, unless we discover some property of matter or some physical law that we can hardly imagine today, I'd say it was pretty slim. But I would certainly never say "it will never happen".
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Sum Ergo Cogito |
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James
SFN Regular
USA
754 Posts |
Posted - 12/21/2001 : 15:09:08 [Permalink]
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quote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't our current understanding say that nothing that has a rest mass can achieve C? Therefore, unless we discover some property of matter or some physical law that we can hardly imagine today, I'd say it was pretty slim. But I would certainly never say "it will never happen".
You got a point there, TD. Hundreds of years ago, people thought the universe revolved around the Earth. A hundred years ago, people didn't think it was possible to go very fast while riding a train(I've heard that they thought 12 MPH would've sucked all your air out), and yet, now we have trains that can go over three hundred KPH(MPH?).
Just gotta wait the right amount of time until someone thinks of some way of doing it.
"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness is usually the father." -Bailey's First Law |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 12/21/2001 : 18:24:45 [Permalink]
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But say that we were all sitting on a photon that just left the sun...
Time is relative to speed. The slower you go the faster time passes and the faster you go the slower it passes. Time and light travel at the same speed so that traveling at the speed of light relative time would stop.
So if we ride our photon to another galaxy 1500 light years away we would get there at exactly the same time that we left. After 2 weeks at a sunny resort we hop another photon back to Earth and get there at the same time that we left--relatively. However by Earth time we've been gone 3000 years and two weeks. Which means that the people who put up the funding for the trip would have no way of profiting from it--so how could you get backers?
Even though a trip at light speed would take "no time at all" you could only do it profitably--in terms of knowledge gained-- at distances of only a few light years at most.
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The brain that was stolen from my laboratory was a criminal brain. Only evil will come from it. |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2001 : 18:21:32 [Permalink]
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Light passing through water goes much more slowly than sound (for instance). Therefore, it is the speed of light in a vacuum which must be exceeded by particles containing mass. The laboratory experiments which awhile ago purported to show light traveling faster than light were tricks where a portion of the photon seemed to travel faster than another portion of the same photon, but did not actually exceed 299,792,458 m/s in a vacuum. Now, the space between galactic groups may, seemingly, move faster than the speed of light but space does not disobey any rules, because space, itself, lacks mass.
ljbrs 
"Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error." Goethe |
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 12/30/2001 : 20:52:40 [Permalink]
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quote:
Light passing through water goes much more slowly than sound (for instance).
Umm... that seems to be saying that the velocity of light in water is less than the velocity of sound in water.
The velocity of sound in pure water at room temperature is around 1480 m/s. The optical refractive index of pure water is about 1.33, so the velocity of light in water would be c/1.33, or about 2.254 x 10e8 m/s, or more than 150,000 times faster than sound.
Or have I misunderstood what you said?
Boris Karloff died for your sins. |
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hatten_jc
New Member
Sweden
44 Posts |
Posted - 12/31/2001 : 04:29:29 [Permalink]
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quote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't our current understanding say that nothing that has a rest mass can achieve C? Therefore, unless we discover some property of matter or some physical law that we can hardly imagine today, I'd say it was pretty slim. But I would certainly never say "it will never happen".
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Sum Ergo Cogito
Once there where a known scholar of his time that said that NO man could travel at speed of +80 km/h becuse the speed would suck out the air and they would suffercate.
Some year later a train with passengers did that and NO one died.
Once there where many scholar that said flying is imposible then the Mongolfier prove them wrong in there hotair ballone.
Then they said heavier then air flying is imposible nothing could creat the power needid to lift a airplane in the air with passengers.
Weel the Wright prove them wrong.
If faster then light travel would be possible there must be some unknown physick law that make it posible to brake it and untill scientist find the way its imposible and may be imposible forewer and ewer.
Alternativ schientist may find a way to FOLD space making jumps or finding alternativ dimension where speed is absolute.
Never underestimate a human's capacity for active stupidity.
Sorry about my lousy English ? can we talk in Swedish :) |
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Mespo_man
Skeptic Friend
USA
312 Posts |
Posted - 12/31/2001 : 06:23:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Alternativ schientist may find a way to FOLD space making jumps or finding alternativ dimension where speed is absolute.
[hatten_jc]
I prefer the "perma-press" universe Hatten. Folding and wrinkling the cosmos is soo unsightly. Makes for embarrassing comments at dinner parties. 
(:raig
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Stygma
New Member
36 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2002 : 20:06:42 [Permalink]
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| Come along, Meg, we must tesser. |
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WindupAtheist
New Member
41 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2002 : 22:29:05 [Permalink]
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Tesseract? Bah! I'll take the Mobius Continuum any day.
Anyway, didn't I hear somewhere that it was theoretically possible to warp or fold space? They just didn't have any idea how one would do so, or even get hold of enough energy to try.
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digz
New Member
6 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2002 : 17:11:47 [Permalink]
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I think Arthur Clarke said ",, man will never conquer space,," I kinda believe the dude,,, if im wrong on that let me know ,, I read it somewhere ,, fun site ya got here!!
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Dog_Ed
Skeptic Friend
USA
126 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2002 : 01:40:35 [Permalink]
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I dunno, I distrust the argument that because mankind has consistently surpassed limits that were thought to be unbreakable then there are no limits that cannot be surpassed. The universe may not be so kind as to guarrantee that we can travel between stars without using roughly a planet's mass of fuel and spending a century on a one-way trip. (I hate that...I grew up reading one science fiction book after another and I really wanted starships to be possible.)
Warping space, well maybe, but given that the only way we know to warp space on a large scale is to concentrate a huge mass (or combination of mass, energy, pressure) and then there's a problem traversing the warpage without bad things happening, well it may not be feasible in the real universe.
I really, really hope it IS possible, though.
"Even Einstein put his foot in it sometimes" |
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Garrette
SFN Regular
USA
562 Posts |
Posted - 01/16/2002 : 06:35:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
I dunno, I distrust the argument that because mankind has consistently surpassed limits that were thought to be unbreakable then there are no limits that cannot be surpassed.
I think this idea is central to Tipler's idea of proving god in "The Physics of Immortality," and I believe his ideas are flawed for this and other reasons.
Nonetheless, I certainly hope that there always remain innovators who, when stymied, take heart from the fact that other unbreakable barriers have indeed been broken. Breakable or not, continue the attempts, I say.
My kids still love me. |
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Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 01/17/2002 : 02:42:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Nonetheless, I certainly hope that there always remain innovators who, when stymied, take heart from the fact that other unbreakable barriers have indeed been broken. Breakable or not, continue the attempts, I say.
Excuse Me! But that machine has already been invented.....Twice.
1st in 1958 by Vincent Price (The Fly) and next by Rod Taylor in 1960 (The Time Machine), well if you don't count that Wells wrote about it long before that.
Rap Crap is to music what Paint by Numbers is to art. |
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Garrette
SFN Regular
USA
562 Posts |
Posted - 01/17/2002 : 04:34:08 [Permalink]
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Vincent Price....didn't he recently get named Dean of The Royal Fellows or somesuch? No, I'm remembering wrong; he recently dropped the Dean of the Royal Fellows in a vat of wax. That's it.
My kids still love me. |
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Xev
Skeptic Friend
USA
329 Posts |
Posted - 01/17/2002 : 15:32:28 [Permalink]
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In the immortal words of Carl Sagan "They laughed at Einstien, they laughed at the Wright brothers, yeah, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
We can't travel faster than light, is my understanding of relativity, so I'd say, if we're going to explore space efficiantly, wormholes or hyperspace would be the way to go, IF they're possible.
But, who knows when or if. I'd love to think that we'll be able to, somday.
"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in
thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which
never yet hurt anybody."- Marcus Aurelius |
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