| Author | Message | ||
| Tim N (Timn88)
Intermediate Member Username: Timn88 Post Number: 2209 Registered: 6-2001 |
Randy youy are describing that the tub moves as an occilliation. the speed of that wave is a property of the medium. | ||
| Randy (Schatten)
Member Username: Schatten Post Number: 630 Registered: 4-2001 |
I honestly don't understand the point where the string would actually move at the speed of light. Lets say it had a property that was solid and would not flex. A perfect material of sorts. And those two individuals were holding them without slack. If one tugged on another - the string doesn't move at the speed of light. Actually the string might move one inch if that is how far he tugs it. Each portion/section/division, however small you want to place it - would actually move one inch. Nothing would be moving at the speed of light at all. Thus, the entire piece of string or rod would be moved over to one side by one inch. | ||
| William H (Countachxx)
Intermediate Member Username: Countachxx Post Number: 1844 Registered: 2-2001 |
Mitchell , you are correct, I was thinking of nonlocal communication, not quantum tunneling, although quatnum tunnelling is the best way to travel, not quite as stylish as a ferrari but a lot faster  | ||
| Racer 001 (Mr_0011)
Member Username: Mr_0011 Post Number: 482 Registered: 3-2002 |
The speed that space is expanding is much faster than the speed of light... | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 472 Registered: 1-2002 |
james- on your 1st question, yes. what you're reffering to i, attempted, to summerize in my reply addressed to william. on the 2nd question, what you're asking about, i believe, is a study dubbed 'information theory'; the premise is: information, when communicated over distance, breaks apart into, what appears to be, a random collection of 'signals'; however, under closer (read: finer detailed) inspection, the system is actually 'ordered' in similar fashion to a chaotic system; i.e. weather, lorenz attractor, rising cigarette smoke. anyway, the birth of this concept was born of claude shannon's pen while at bell labs sometime in the '40's (he called it 'the mathmatical theory of information'; the applictaion, in war time, per se, was to 'order' the stream of information (not neccessarily words, music, or even information in the classical sense, but signals; repeating signals), while in transit, and intercept the encrypted information. i'm unfamiliar with recent advances in this field, but would gladly oblige to find you a couple cites and references on either chaos or information theory. regards. | ||
| James Glickenhaus (Napolis)
Member Username: Napolis Post Number: 416 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hugh Didn't someone recently posit that certian subatomic particles could as part of a wave exceed c as long as other components of the matter they comprised, the other side or reverse of the wave traveled slower so that the matter comprised of both sides of the wave didn't exceed c? I though they were hopefull that they could increase the speed of info beyond c. Another thing I recently read suggusted one could teleport information breaking it down at one end of a wire and assembling it at the other thus making it impossible to intercept it on route. Best Jim | ||
| William H (Countachxx)
Intermediate Member Username: Countachxx Post Number: 1842 Registered: 2-2001 |
Mitchell if you quantum tunnel and you get to point B faster than a photon then you have achieved FTLT Hubert, are you a physicist, cus that is WAY over my head, Thank God you didnt whip out the formulas or i would run away screaming | ||
| Mitchell L. Davidson (Jussumfastgi)
Member Username: Jussumfastgi Post Number: 444 Registered: 4-2002 |
Tim, we can, and will. I am so very tired of typing, lol, i am going back into general discussins. ;) Simply put we can not go faster than light because the fuel to mass ratio of light is 100% and you can't do better than 100% fuel to 0% mass. However all you have to do to get around this is use an outside force not related to the system, or you could always fall towards your destination using gravity, wether man made or naturaly occuring. Tunnling is not FTLT | ||
| Tim N (Timn88)
Intermediate Member Username: Timn88 Post Number: 2198 Registered: 6-2001 |
This topic is so hard to follow because it requires thinking. its beed hard for me to analyze complex situations and focus on things because i think im getting sick, maybe the flu but i hope not. i missed practice today beause of it and i cant afford to miss it tomorrow. I dont have the time to get sick anymore... I dont think anythinhg will ever go faster than the speed of ligh. how can it? all the interactions between everything we know, such as feel, sight, EVERYTHING you have EVER experienced, is all based on interactions of electromagnetic waves. how can we go faster than these waves? | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 471 Registered: 1-2002 |
tim- excuse me for my befuddled response; saw a topic of interest and my keyboard got the better of my senses. you're right in your comments.my apologies for inciting confusion. | ||
| Tim N (Timn88)
Intermediate Member Username: Timn88 Post Number: 2194 Registered: 6-2001 |
hugh, i know that space is pretty much a vacuum. there is light in space. light waves travel forever in a vacuum, remeber the change in an electric field creates a magnetic field perpendicular to it and that changing magnetic field produces an electric field and so on. the wave keeps propogating, with the magnetic and electric fields. im saying that the electric field interactions between the atoms in the big string are what causes this big string being described to be tugged. it shows why it wil still take over 4.3 lightyears for the other astronaut to feel the tug. the tug cant go any faster than the speed of light because of this. im still trying to figure out what you are trying to tell me with your post. i didnt think anythng i said was wrong. | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 470 Registered: 1-2002 |
william- you're missing the nuance within the ftl experiments; that is, a negative group velocity! the energy of the optical pulse differs from the energy difference between two electronic energy levels in the atoms of the medium (i.e. when the light is far from resonance), the refractive index increases with frequency. This "normal" dispersion reduces the group velocity below c. Roughly speaking, an atom may temporarily absorb a photon, even though the light is not exactly at resonance, and re-emit it some time later, thus slowing down the light. However, the behaviour of the light pulse is very different closer to the absorption line, where the refractive index decreases with increasing frequency. This behaviour leads to so-called anomalous dispersion in which the sign of the delay changes, which means that the group velocity can exceed c. This problem was treated in a classic analysis by Arnold Sommerfeld and L�on Brillouin, who pointed out that the strong absorption and distortion that occur at the resonant frequency generally make the group velocity a meaningless concept. They demonstrated that neither information nor energy can travel faster than light in this region. Throughout most of the 20th century, this was usually accepted as the last word on superluminal group velocities. However, the field was revived in 1970 by Geoffrey Garrett and Dean McCumber, then both at Bell Laboratories in the US. They showed that it should be possible to observe an undistorted Gaussian pulse with a group velocity exceeding the speed of light, or even with a negative group velocity, provided the pulse has a narrow bandwidth and the region though which it travels is short. This effect was dramatically confirmed in an experiment by Steven Chu and Stephen Wong, then also at Bell Labs, in 1982 (Phys. Rev. Lett. 48 738). Although Sommerfeld and Brillouin's conclusion - that neither energy nor information travels faster than c - remains valid, the group velocity is not entirely meaningless. The smooth Gaussian waveform is reshaped by the absorber, leading to a peak at precisely the time predicted by the group velocity. As for the energy, most of it is absorbed by the medium, and the sensible conclusion is that the transmitted energy comes from the leading edge of the incident pulse, which never travels faster than the speed of light. by pumping energy into the caesium vapour to create a kind of optical amplifier. First a laser is used to pump most of the caesium atoms into a particular spin state. Next, two additional pump lasers are used to lend energy to the atoms. These atoms can amplify light from yet another "probe" laser by making an electronic transition in which they absorb "pump" energy and re-emit it into the probe beam. There are two specific frequencies at which such a probe can be amplified in this way. By replacing absorption with amplification, the NEC team can swap the regions of normal and anomalous dispersion (see figure 1b). A region halfway between the two amplification lines appears where there is little loss, amplification or distortion. Here the group velocity becomes negative and nearly constant. Indeed, Wang and co-workers measured a group velocity of -c/310. In other words, a pulse travelling a distance, L, is advanced by 310L/c. Within the cell, the peak of the pulse travels backwards relative to the direction it is moving in outside the cell. Long before the incident light pulse reaches the cell, two peaks appear at the far end: one travelling away from the cell at c, the other travelling back towards the entrance. This second pulse travels 300 times more slowly and is timed to meet up with the incident peak. The transmitted pulse travelling at c appears to leave the cell some 60 ns before the incident pulse arrives, enough time for it to travel an additional 20 metres. What is shocking is that such an effect has been observed for the first time without a great deal of attenuation, amplification or distortion of the pulse. It appears as though energy has, in fact, travelled faster than light. Of course, this is not the case. The effect observed only works in the presence of an amplifying medium, i.e. a medium that stores energy. In this case the energy is stored in the pump-laser beams. The caesium atoms are prepared in a state that allows them to transfer energy from these beams to the signal beam. The faster-than-light propagation occurs because the pump beams preferentially amplify the leading edge of the incident pulse, lending power to the signal and being repaid by absorbing some of the energy in its trailing edge. (It is important to note that even the dramatic 60 ns advance is only one fiftieth of the width of the pulse.) This is exactly analogous to the intuitive explanation of normal dispersion, except that in this case the atoms temporarily amplify the light pulse rather than absorb it. A fascinating suggestion is that this experiment might work even for a pulse composed of only a single photon. However, there has been a good deal of controversy over how to discuss the information transmitted through such a system by a single-photon pulse, and many subtle issues remain. Although relativity emerges unscathed from these experiments, our understanding of exactly which velocities are limited (or not) by c continues to evolve. And even though neither energy nor information is transmitted faster than light in experiments like the one at the NEC, it has already been proposed that the effects may one day be useful in compensating propagation delays in electronic systems. further, in all the experiments, the results have been 'uncontrovesial' since, by relativity, the actual group velocities and phase velocties are NOT limited to c; hence, they are allowed, under classical conditions, to exceed c (superluminal or motion effects as i cited below); however, more importantly, and illusive is the measurement of the front velocity, which is, classically, limited to c; those, have not yet been measure; hence, the debate surrounds the quantification of the front velocity, and the interpertation of the finding surrounding group velocities. the values, in and of themselves, are not so suprising. | ||
| William H (Countachxx)
Intermediate Member Username: Countachxx Post Number: 1840 Registered: 2-2001 |
We have the technology now to build solar sails & Ion rocket engines that can approach V about 50% of C or better. What we lack is the will to "Make it so" as Capt Jean Luc Picard would say | ||
| William H (Countachxx)
Intermediate Member Username: Countachxx Post Number: 1839 Registered: 2-2001 |
Einstein created the Faster Than Light or FTL speed limit cus he disliked Quantum physics & he liked to say that " God does not play dice with the universe" Well new findings in quantum physics seem to indicate that god has a surreal & bizzare sense of humour. Sorry Albert. FTL is acheivable many ways, such as Quantum Tunneling which is my personal favorite. Electrons have been proven to communicate much FTL. Some scientists claim to have passed a recording of beethoven's 5th symphony at FTL and scientists have discovered ways to transport quantum particles like Star Trek does with humans & stuff. Its just a matter of time till humans break the FTL barrier. I'm sure a lot of other species have already laid waste to it | ||
| Robin Overcash (Robin)
New member Username: Robin Post Number: 24 Registered: 1-2003 |
Actually there are atoms in space.. it's not a perfect vacuum. One interplanetary spaceship design actually looks like a giant umbrella with the top turned inside out, so it scoops up all the atoms in space and accelerates them out the back, thus accelerating the vehicle. Looks kinda like this: ---( But yeah, nice link that gives general distances between molecules on Earth, in orbit, outside the solar system, outside the galaxy, etc... http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/gmis9903.htm -R | ||
| Matt (Matt_lamotte)
Junior Member Username: Matt_lamotte Post Number: 162 Registered: 10-2002 |
Or we could just take my car. | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 469 Registered: 1-2002 |
mitchell- a massive object ( one that has mass) needs infinite energy to reach c, while massless particles like photons always carry their energy at precisely the speed of light. more importantly, the relativistic notion of simultaneity makes it clear that no information can travel faster than light without throwing all our concepts of cause and effect out the window. relativity teaches us that if two space-time events are separated so that they cannot be connected by any signal travelling at c or less, then different observers will disagree as to which of the two events came first. since cause needs to precede effect, we conclude that no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light. however, in relativity, under the scope of 'optics' there is an allowance for 'motion effects' that allow for velocities greater than c. so, mitchell, once you devise a way to transform me, into pure energy (without killing me), we can travel at light speed. sound good? lastly, work at princeton by R Y Chiao et. al. have observed superluminal behavior of energy, but, the energy has never (not yet) exceeded c. what did happen, however, waht photon propogation by the incident medium and laser; single photon propogation has been intimated, but not yet observed. in essence, what happened, was an amplyfiying medium preferntially amplified the leading edge of the incident beam. so, the beam 'appeared' to exit the chamber before entering it, but what really happened was that the incident beam was pushed out 60ns ahead of the trailing beam. | ||
| Mitchell L. Davidson (Jussumfastgi)
Member Username: Jussumfastgi Post Number: 438 Registered: 4-2002 |
Guys guys, instead of trying to figure out howwe can travel faster than light, try to figure out why we CAN'T once you figure that out, how we can becomes clear. | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 468 Registered: 1-2002 |
tim- quick reminder. there are no atoms in space, at least not 'virginal' space (where man hasn't dumped waste in yet); it's a vaccum. no sound, nothing. light, if you recall, is composed of photons which exhibit a duality (wave & particle). a good, laymen, review of relativity is 'einsteins dreams' by alan p. lightman (physics & english prof at m.i.t); goes into the twins paradox, slowing of time, and a brief proof using the lifetime of bosons (interstellar radation particles.) if you'd like a more involved text, check out 'a brief history of time' (the discussion of black holes and singularities,and kashandars limit is apt to this current topic), and 'the universe in a nutshell.' both by hawking. | ||
| Tim N (Timn88)
Intermediate Member Username: Timn88 Post Number: 2193 Registered: 6-2001 |
In method 1, it would take astronaut 2 over 4.3 light years to feel the tug. Why you ask? good question. Tugs or pushes or anything you feel actually are electrostatic forces from the atoms in your and. Doyou know that when you type the atoms of your fingers arent touching the keyboard, the atoms in your ass arent actually touching the chair, etc. the strength of electromagnetic force is inversely proportional to the distance, so as you get closer, the force soon becomes very high. Thus, as the positively charged nuclei of the atoms in your fingers get close to the pos. charged nuclei of the keyboard, the force becomes so great that you dont actually touch it. same goes for the aroms in the string. the electromagnetic fields that create these forces can only travel at the speed of light | ||
| Tim N (Timn88)
Intermediate Member Username: Timn88 Post Number: 2192 Registered: 6-2001 |
nope. neb, what you say is wrong. siply not correct. the information could not travel faster than the speed of light. | ||
| Hubert Otlik (Hugh)
Member Username: Hugh Post Number: 467 Registered: 1-2002 |
easier, however slightly more catastrophic method: create a singularity by imploding a star (atomic explosion x 1000), and travel through the singularity. praying you can survive the infinite increase in gravitational force once you penetrate the event horizion, you could, in essence, travel through, and exceed the speed of light. the above hypothesis, is, in fact, intimated in enisteins work on relativity, but did not garner much attention; however, with the advent of quantum mechanics (which einstein staunchly protested against), the discussion of singularities has become more open. ps- do you have ANY idea how much material you would need to create either a 500 million LY long 'rod', or 4.xxx LY long string? while the catastrophic impeteus (catalyst; i.e. explosion) neccessary for einesteins elegant theroy is equally absurd; who's going to volunteer to travel a total of 8.xx LY's to be the string courrier? and, do you know how long it would take to pull, to tautness, a string 4 LY long? | ||
| Matt Lemus (Mlemus)
Intermediate Member Username: Mlemus Post Number: 1629 Registered: 8-2002 |
Neb I prefer good old fashion warp drive. M | ||
| Nebula Class (Nebulaclass)
Junior Member Username: Nebulaclass Post Number: 183 Registered: 11-2002 |
1. An astronaut is holding a piece of string, and sitting, immobile, near Alpha Centauir (4.3 light years away.) 2. A second astronaut is holding the other end of the string, but is sitting right outside of Pluto's orbit (4 ly away from Astronaut 1.) 3. Astro 2 pulls on string until there is ZERO slack. 4. Astro 2 then tugs on the string. 5. Astro 1 would instantaneously feel the pulse from the tug, although it orginated 4.3 ly away. Method two: 1. Create two rods that are 500,000,000,000 light years long. 2. Holding one rod in each hand, intersect them near your hands (the ends of the rods would look like an x, with a point where the two rods intersect). 3. Now, move the rods so that they are no longer tounching each other (now the rods are parallel to each other). 4. The point of intersection would move from your hand to the end of the rods MUCH faster than the speed of light. Whala! Put THAT in your lederhosen and dance, Einstein. |