You can't travel faster than light

[FZD]

So just about every time you talk of going really fast, you're going to hear "You can't travel faster than light".
And yeah, 299 792 458 meters per second may seem like a impossible challenge. But then again, Gorrak, who lived some 6000 years ago, also was of the mind that you can't travel faster than a cheetah, the fastest known animal to him. And the people around him agreed, it seemed impossible at the time.

Exactly why is it that we've now decided you can't travel faster than light?

 

[dubbzy]

Because now we have science, formulas, experiments, theories, models, etc. The short answer is "it breaks everything we know about reality". The long answer is too time-consuming to type out at 3am. I need to wake up for the Apple Cup (Go Dawgs!)

And no, Quantum Entanglement doesn't count because you can't gain/share any "information" from it faster than light.

EDIT: best article I found that wasn't about FTL the game http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/what-travels-faster-than-the-speed-of-light

 

[Varku]

A pretty smart guy, let's call him Einstein saied, that something(including information), that is slower than the speed of light can never move master than light and vice versa and leading scientist seem to belive him...

A small example to this: You have a gun, that accelerate it's bullet to 600km/h
You also happen to own a car, that moves forward with 50km/h. If you now fire your gun while in your car, the bullet travels at 650km/h. the velocitys are added.
But the speed of light is constant. the light emitted by your car's headlights is always traveling at the same speed, no matter how fast the car is moving, the velocitys will not be added.
Of course you can still cover a great distance faster than light could do, by taking a shortcut. (For example with something simmilar to the Warp-technology known from star trek, in which case you bend the room )
Yes, our rules for Physics are only based on observation, but until know there is (at least to my knowledge) no indicator that we can make anything move faster than light, that currently is slower than light. And we tryed alot, did a shit ton of math...

Until then we stick to what we can prove.

 

[MikeNificent]

The only thing that can even travel the speed of light is pure energy (photons), ya?

But like you said, that is relative to what we know now. I'm glad to see TESTies posting something worth thinking about. It gives me hope!

 

[Gearen]

Cause science

 

[Aleph0Null]

Everything impassible until someone made it. usually by mistake.

 

[FZD]

Because now we have science, formulas, experiments, theories, models, etc. The short answer is "it breaks everything we know about reality".
EDIT: best article I found that wasn't about FTL the game http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/what-travels-faster-than-the-speed-of-light

An interesting article. The writer makes one mistake tho: "But actually this experiment (the EPR experiment) has been done many times, and each time Einstein was wrong. Information does go faster than light, but Einstein has the last laugh. This is because the information that breaks the light barrier is random, and hence useless. (For example, let's say a friend always wears one red sock and one green sock. You don't know which leg wears which sock. If you suddenly see that one foot has a red sock, then you know instantly, faster than the speed of light, that the other sock is green. But this information is useless. You cannot send Morse code or usable information via red and green socks.)"
Just means we need to come up with a red and green sock code.

A pretty smart guy, let's call him Einstein saied, that something(including information), that is slower than the speed of light can never move master than light and vice versa and leading scientist seem to belive him...

So it's just the matter of finding a particle faster than a photon?

But the speed of light is constant.

But, you can slow or speed up light by changing the substance it travels in. And different colors (=wavelength) of light travel a longer or shorter path whilst covering the same distance in the same time. Being such easily manipulable, I'm not sure if I'd call it a constant.

Yes, our rules for Physics are only based on observation, but until know there is (at least to my knowledge) no indicator that we can make anything move faster than light, that currently is slower than light. And we tryed alot, did a shit ton of math...

Until then we stick to what we can prove.

The smartass in me wishes to point out, that we can currently slow light to a halt, and then have a lab monkey walk past it.... :P

 

[Printimus]

But what if I really really want to go FTL?

 

[Krystal LeChuck]

But, you can slow or speed up light by changing the substance it travels in. And different colors (=wavelength) of light travel a longer or shorter path whilst covering the same distance in the same time. Being such easily manipulable, I'm not sure if I'd call it a constant.

"c" is the speed of light in a vacuum.

However there is a new theory challenging Einstein's theory of gravity, with a series of experiments that allows us to measure the speed of light in the early universe.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/187113/20161127/variable-not-constant-speed-of-light-theory-challenging-einstein-s-physics-can-now-be-tested.htm

 

[BUTUZ]

Because now we have science, formulas, experiments, theories, models, etc. The short answer is "it breaks everything we know about reality".

You hit the nail on the head there! Breaking everything we know about reality is not difficult as we don't know much. The laughable fact is that we actually seem to think we know everything there is to know right now.

History has proven that whenever we think we know how everything works, something comes along to prove it all wrong!

 

[DarthMatter]

The reason nothing can travel faster than light is because of the model we use to explain why physics behave the way it does.
Before the theory of Special relativity there was a problem of wanting an absolute frame of reference, to be able to measure everything from a set fix point. Since this doesn't exist in our always changing universe all approximations where flawed to the point of useless, when the need for more precise measurements became bigger and bigger. The problem was solved by relativity, where you just choose a frame of reference and do your calculations from that. Setting the "speed of light c" (or the speed of light in a perfect vacuum as it actually is and Einstein constant as many want to change the name to) is a fix point to solve all the problematic equations that arose from this way of seeing things. By setting a maximum speed as constant the time in different frames of reference don't have to be the same att all times. This makes things a lot easier when running the numbers. :)

So it's just the matter of finding a particle faster than a photon?


But, you can slow or speed up light by changing the substance it travels in. And different colors (=wavelength) of light travel a longer or shorter path whilst covering the same distance in the same time. Being such easily manipulable, I'm not sure if I'd call it a constant.


The smartass in me wishes to point out, that we can currently slow light to a halt, and then have a lab monkey walk past it.... :P

If we find something that is faster than a photon in vacuum we will need to seriously rethink most of what we know about modern physics. Since then there is something that doesn't agree with our best theory. It would be fun, but probably won't happen (at least not anytime soon).

Wavelengths are not a distance the wave travels, it's a distance of a period of a periodic wave. From a top to an other top for example. It has nothing to do with the speed of the wave or the distance it travels.

We can almost stop light, yes. But the speed we can not go faster than is the speed of light in a perfect vacuum. There is a difference.


If you want the explanation in Swedish, just send me a PM :)

 

[Montoya]

Traveling faster than light is ridiculous, that is why simple bending the universe around yourself is a far better way to achieve these FTL speeds!

 

[Printimus]

Traveling faster than light is ridiculous, that is why simple bending the universe around yourself is a far better way to achieve these FTL speeds!

Someone watched Event Horizon recently?

 

[Han Burgundy]

"We know what we know.....until we don't" -The stoner guy from my floor freshman year

 

[FZD]

Wavelengths are not a distance the wave travels, it's a distance of a period of a periodic wave. From a top to an other top for example. It has nothing to do with the speed of the wave or the distance it travels.

I don't mean the wave itself, but the photon resonating this way and that during it's travel. Granted, this is not my strong suite, but there is a particle that's physically forming the wave, right? it's not just an abstraction?
For example, if you have a car that's driving along a straight route, and reaches it's destination in 1 minute, and another car driven by a drunken driver that started from the same point, drives along the same straight route but aggressively switches the lane all the time, and still gets there in 1 minute. They covered the same distance, in the same time, but the wavelength of the sober driver is near infinity, the drunken drivers wavelength is like 10m or something.

If you want the explanation in Swedish, just send me a PM :slight_smile:

Oh, I'm not actually from Sweden. That's just my VPN routing traffic :)

 

[DarthMatter]

I don't mean the wave itself, but the photon resonating this way and that during it's travel. Granted, this is not my strong suite, but there is a particle that's physically forming the wave, right? it's not just an abstraction?

It's not actually a particle. I usually think it's best described as a part of a wave signal.

So if you put a lot of them in a line yo get a wave, but on their own they act like a particle.
It's a bit more complicated, but works for everything under last year of physics bachelor levels of complexity.

Using this way of looking at it, a photon is still a wave traveling, not a particle traveling in a wave pattern. So the wave length still doesn't change anything in how far the photon itself is traveling.

Oh, I'm not actually from Sweden. That's just my VPN routing traffic :slight_smile:

Ok, good to know :)

 

[Eamon_Flannigan]

 

[FZD]

It's not actually a particle. I usually think it's best described as a part of a wave signal.

So if you put a lot of them in a line yo get a wave, but on their own they act like a particle.
It's a bit more complicated, but works for everything under last year of physics bachelor levels of complexity.

Using this way of looking at it, a photon is still a wave traveling, not a particle traveling in a wave pattern. So the wave length still doesn't change anything in how far the photon itself is traveling.

So it's a bunch of photons flying in a static formation, each individual photon flying in a straight line?

 

[DarthMatter]

So it's a bunch of photons flying in a static formation, each individual photon flying in a straight line?

If I'm understanding you correctly, pretty much.
If there is something that you don't think adds up, ask and I'll try to explain further. :)

 

[Montoya]

Someone watched Event Horizon recently?

Nope, its from Prof Farnsworth award winning theory and engine design.