Author Topic: The speed of light... broken?  (Read 4779 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

The speed of light... broken?
Thought this might interest some of you guys. Part of my love for Freespace is my fascination with deep space and I'm guessing it's the same for many of you:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

 

Offline Maxwell

  • 25
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Are you accusing me of being a space nut?
The NERVE!
*quietly hides small collection of nasa mission patches, stack of printed star charts, and "Satellite hunter" rigged binoculars*


 :nervous:

Quote
an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

I've always wondered about that.
From my totally uneducated perspective I don't think time is nearly so simple in action.

I'd wager that if you could go faster than light you would arrive before we could witness you arriving at your destination from here, but still be on time here.  If you returned then you would return before you observed you leaving, but still return at a standard time.
Kind of like a bullet or jet flying faster than sound.  It could leave and return before its sound but its sound is not linked to its current position.

Not that we'd really have a way to test any of this.

 

Offline Scuddie

  • gb2/b/
  • 28
  • I will never leave.
Re: The speed of light... broken?
The idea behind space and time as most people see it now is exceptionally flawed.  The real idea is that if you travel a light year at the speed of light, It is only by visual perception that time speeds up or slows down.  If I traveled one light day at the speed of light from one point with a recording telescope to another, it would take one day.  However, when I arrive, the secondary telescope records that I arrived just as I departed...  But from the other, it looks as if it took two days to get there.  The time has not changed in any way, shape or form.  It is just the perception of it that is distorted, because light takes a day to travel between those two points.

The idea that you can change the dynamics of space and time by traveling faster than the speed of light breaks every fundamental rule of science we know to date.
Bunny stole my signature :(.

Sorry boobies.

 

Offline BloodEagle

  • 210
  • Bleeding Paradox!
    • Steam
Re: The speed of light... broken?
"The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart."

How would they be able to tell? How far were the prisms from each other? Notice how it says "up to 3ft apart."

If they can't measure the space between two prisms, why should I believe that they can tell the difference between the speed of light, and a speed higher than light?

 
Re: The speed of light... broken?
"The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart."

How would they be able to tell? How far were the prisms from each other? Notice how it says "up to 3ft apart."

If they can't measure the space between two prisms, why should I believe that they can tell the difference between the speed of light, and a speed higher than light?

Well I'm pretty sure it wasn't visually.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Meh. As much as I suspect it's some kind of an overlooked fluke in the experiment arrangements themselves, I have to say...

If light's speed in vacuum is broken, it doesn't break causality. It would only mean that now this whatever phenomena marks the velocity of causality.

Also, it would not mean that the theories of relativity (special and general) would suddenly stop being accurate. They would remain accurate on their defined area of accuracy, similar to how Maxwell's equations are a special case of quantum electrodynamics... or how NEwton's mechanic works fine at subrelativistic velocities and low energy densities.


Assuming that the light's speed is the "ultimate velocity of causality", so to speak, is a good assumption based on experiments and observations thus far, but not much more (heh - as if any theory could be more :p). It seems to work - but then again, blind people shouting in dark could think that the speed of sound (or mechanical wave motion) is the ultimate velocity of causality.


...obviously I'm a sucker for anything that could bring reasonable long-distance lagless communications and FTL travel to reality, so I naturally hope that this is real and accurate.

Also, the pings for Moon colonies would always be greater than 1.3 seconds if FTL communication isn't made possible. How are those poor kids in Moon colonies gonna play BtRL with Earth-dwellers in the future, huh? So I really wish this to be true... but my sceptic side keeps telling me it probably isn't. :(
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Ashrak

  • Not Banned
  • 210
    • Imagination Designs
Re: The speed of light... broken?
lmao @ pingtimes :p


i wanna go ftl before i die ;)
I hate My signature!

 

Offline Col. Fishguts

  • voodoo doll
  • 211
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Ick, bad article. I've read about the same experient on a german science site : http://www.wissenschaft.de/wissenschaft/news/281702.html

I couldn't find an english version right now, but in short: The gap was crossed by virtual particles which takes no time. Things like this have been done before, the only new thing here is that it worked over a distance of several centimeters.
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

Visit The Babylon Project, now also with HTL flavour  ¦ GTB Rhea

 

Offline Ashrak

  • Not Banned
  • 210
    • Imagination Designs
Re: The speed of light... broken?
"virtual particles"?
I hate My signature!

 

Offline Col. Fishguts

  • voodoo doll
  • 211
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

Visit The Babylon Project, now also with HTL flavour  ¦ GTB Rhea

 

Offline Bobboau

  • Just a MODern kinda guy
    Just MODerately cool
    And MODest too
  • 213
Re: The speed of light... broken?
The idea behind space and time as most people see it now is exceptionally flawed.  The real idea is that if you travel a light year at the speed of light, It is only by visual perception that time speeds up or slows down.  If I traveled one light day at the speed of light from one point with a recording telescope to another, it would take one day.  However, when I arrive, the secondary telescope records that I arrived just as I departed...  But from the other, it looks as if it took two days to get there.  The time has not changed in any way, shape or form.  It is just the perception of it that is distorted, because light takes a day to travel between those two points.

The idea that you can change the dynamics of space and time by traveling faster than the speed of light breaks every fundamental rule of science we know to date.

you are either being sarcastic or are ignorant. you have that very much backwards, 'every fundamental rule of science we know to date' requires that time slow down for you the faster you go, c "the speed of light" is basicly the speed of propigation in the universe, it is infinity. sence light has energy, but no mass, it must move at the maximum velosity, c, light moves at the same rate any event in the universe moves, including time.

the whole "you will get there before you leave" is a misinterpretation, it is imposable to move faster than c, this is one of the reasons, by "you will get there before you leave" it means that time for you not everyone else would have flown in reverse. if you move at the speed of light you will experience no passage of time, the faster you go the shorter your trips will be, but when you get back a whole bunch of time would have passed.

get it?
Bobboau, bringing you products that work... in theory
learn to use PCS
creator of the ProXimus Procedural Texture and Effect Generator
My latest build of PCS2, get it while it's hot!
PCS 2.0.3


DEUTERONOMY 22:11
Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sorts, [as] of woollen and linen together

 

Offline Mr. Vega

  • Your Node Is Mine
  • 28
  • The ticket to the future is always blank
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Special relativity doesn't necessarily forbid all faster than light movement, just as long as information can't do it.
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
-John Maynard Keynes

 

Offline Dark RevenantX

  • 29
  • anonymity —> animosity
Re: The speed of light... broken?
What if we're already traveling at the speed of light?

 

Offline Scuddie

  • gb2/b/
  • 28
  • I will never leave.
Re: The speed of light... broken?
you are either being sarcastic or are ignorant. you have that very much backwards, 'every fundamental rule of science we know to date' requires that time slow down for you the faster you go, c "the speed of light" is basicly the speed of propigation in the universe, it is infinity. sence light has energy, but no mass, it must move at the maximum velosity, c, light moves at the same rate any event in the universe moves, including time.

the whole "you will get there before you leave" is a misinterpretation, it is imposable to move faster than c, this is one of the reasons, by "you will get there before you leave" it means that time for you not everyone else would have flown in reverse. if you move at the speed of light you will experience no passage of time, the faster you go the shorter your trips will be, but when you get back a whole bunch of time would have passed.

get it?
It's WAY more complicated than that, much more so than can be put into words...  But I should let you know that most of your statement conflicts with itself in one way or another.  Finite and infinite cannot be used to describe the same object or principle, even such a complex thing as space time.  On top of that, light is not without mass.  A resting photon is without mass, but it is also without energy, matter, or irradiation.  There is a reason why black holes can survive, most of their mass after the event horizon comes from absorbed light...  which they could not absorb if light had no mass.  Just because we cannot currently measure the mass of light does not mean it is zero.  It may very well be indefinitely low, but it cannot be zero.  0.000000_1 != 0

Anyway, it may be true that c is infinite, but that would mean that time is not a non-static, but rather space.  It would mean 299,792,456 m/s is twice as fast as 299,792,454 m/s.  Either that, or an object is moving at 149,896,229 m/s is moving at half the speed of time...

Ow!  Thinking makes my head hurt like math!
Bunny stole my signature :(.

Sorry boobies.

 

Offline Mika

  • 28
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Somehow I knew that article would end up linked here.

By the way, the time dilatation is not only a visual effect, but it is a real effect. The time is indeed going slower in a system that is moving faster. This has been confirmed with satellite experiments.

* Takes out popcorn and watches the debate with a grin *

Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline Scuddie

  • gb2/b/
  • 28
  • I will never leave.
Re: The speed of light... broken?
By the way, the time dilatation is not only a visual effect, but it is a real effect. The time is indeed going slower in a system that is moving faster. This has been confirmed with satellite experiments.

* Takes out popcorn and watches the debate with a grin *
Tell me, were these satellite experiments using a system that was moving closer or further from their line-of-sight?

* Adds a new variable to the equation with a grin *
Bunny stole my signature :(.

Sorry boobies.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Actually, satellites' time goes faster than on Earth surface, due to weaker gravity field* at high altitude. This effect is way more prominent than the pitiful orbital velocities (compared to relativistic velocities), which can be handled very well with classical physics and don't really cause any significant** time dilatation.


Also, you need to remember that special relativity is indeed very special and in it's simplest form it is limited to constant motion (constant relative velocity); anything else and things get real complicated real soon. Satellites don't travel at constant velocity... round and round they go and go, where (and when) they stop, who knows... :p


*Yes, I know that gravity isn't actually a field force in general relativity, but it gets complicated if I say that at high altitude the space and time are less stretched by the mass/energy of Earth, thus making time go faster...

** Yes, there is an effect of time dilatation due to orbital velocity, but it's very very small. Gravitation potential difference makes a much more prominent change in the measurements of time on surface and orbit.


As to what time dilatation is - it is real, obviously. There is no other way that myons borne of cosmic radiation bombardment in the upper atmosphere could ever get to Earth's surface - their half-life is way too short and they should by all experimental data be decimated before reaching the surface... but, as their velocity is so great, their observed half-life lengthens, as the rate of time passage slows down for those fast particles.


Photons are interesting buggers, by the way... they do have momentum, and energy, but according to my knowledge they do not (or rather, should not) have gravitational effect on their surroundings. After all, photon's energy always consists of relative energy - the observed energy of the photon depends solely of the relative motion between the observer and the photon, and obviously the energy of the photon in the emitter's inertial frame. And relative (aka kinetic) energy does not cause gravitational effects, since it would mean that all the fast-moving particles such as neutrinos should be collapsing to small event horizons... which doesn't happen, quite obviously.


By the way, ever thought what is the photon's energy in it's own reference frame? :drevil:


EDIT: The direction of relative velocity doesn't make a fundamental difference in the time dilation itself, but it obviously does affect observations. A good example of what the directions affect (or rather, don't affect) is the "twin paradox", which obviously isn't a paradox at all after you go through it a few times carefully...
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 
Re: The speed of light... broken?
The shivans are coming!

 

Offline Mika

  • 28
Re: The speed of light... broken?
Quote
Tell me, were these satellite experiments using a system that was moving closer or further from their line-of-sight?

* Adds a new variable to the equation with a grin *


I cannot imagine any way this could affect a clock.

Yeah, the photons own reference frame is a funny thing. And also the interpretation of its existance with regards to the outside world.

Mika
Relaxed movement is always more effective than forced movement.

 

Offline Nuke

  • Ka-Boom!
  • 212
  • Mutants Worship Me
Re: The speed of light... broken?
beaking the speed of light with a photon doesnt intrest me, let us know when they break it with an atom. paticle teleportation is something theyve always been able to do in a lab.
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Nuke's Scripting SVN