Breaking the Light Barrier

The speed of light is about 167,000 miles an hour. Einstein said that going faster is impossible. I think hes wrong. Having studied light theory I think its light that cannot travel faster than that. Of course we are nowhere close to having the ability to prove it. Newtons laws apply most to physics on earth. One thing that applies in space is that unless impeded by something you can go as fast as you want. I would appreciate any insight to why 167,000 mph is the cutoff. As fast as that is I really dont see why the barrier cant be broken.

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The theory of relativity makes sense but still doesnt explain why lightspeed is the limit. Thoughts please...thank you..

going faster than lightspeed will tear off the hull on your ship in space... i think thats y in sci-fi shows they have like hyperspeed or lightjump and stuff like that lol

well, if you are standing on a platform and the platform is travelling at the speed of light, wouldnt you go faster than the speed of light if you started walking along the platform

Originally posted by SonofSpy
The speed of light is about 167,000 miles an hour.

Actually, the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second.

yeah c is about 3*10^8 ms-1 for those scientific people

This is all from memory, so if I'm wrong please correct me.

In E=mc^2, I think there is an implied assumption that photons themselves are massless. As CERN and other such sites unravel the true nature of the phenomenon of mass and validate string theory, could their results raise any questions for Einstein's claims about the speed of light?

We also have to consider that this idea presupposes the speed of light IN SPACE. How much do we really know about space though? If string theory continues to hold up to testing, it would revolutionize the way we consider space and therefore virtually everything else.

Originally posted by ulshadow
going faster than lightspeed will tear off the hull on your ship in space... i think

thats y in sci-fi shows they have like hyperspeed or lightjump and stuff like that lol

Perhaps it would tear off the hull or more likely melt it to jelly in earth's atmosphere in space there is no air resistance. So it makes really no difference in that way if your going 50 MPH or a 1,000,000 MPH

About breaking the light barrier it cant happen for something like a ship because the closer you get to light speed the more the mass of your ship increases. So that when you would finally get right near lightspeed your ship would have near infinite mass and would require infinite energy to move it at those speeds.

But even 186,000 MPH is not the max for light speed scientist have made light go many times faster by shooting it through certian types of gases.

There might even be loop holes if you will in getting around the speed of light barrier. If you could bend space around a ship you can make to points closer then they really are. Move a short distance then unbend space and you could travel faster then light without breaking any laws. This is just one theory on how it could be done but it would also require huge amounts of energy.

[edit on 18-3-2005 by ShadowXIX]

Yup Einsteins theories are based on the assumption that the speed of light is constant, which we have discovered it is not.

An excellent loop hole would be to compress the space in front of your craft while expanding the space behind you. You could zip along and relative to the space you exist in you are not moving all that fast, so you experience little time dilation or mass increase, but relative to the surrounding space you could be going multiples of c.

here is a theory:

www.hbccufo.org...

Originally posted by apc
Yup Einsteins theories are based on the assumption that the speed of light is constant, which we have discovered it is not.

That so-called "assumption" is based on countless, and I mean *countless*, experiments that have demonstrated the constancy of the speed of light. You really should look up some examples of how c is measured. Like in a physics book. Can you cite and summarize an opposing example?

An excellent loop hole would be to compress the space in front of your craft while expanding the space behind you. [snip]

How would one "compress" space, it space is the absence of matter? What would you "compress"? Even then, how does that help you?

IF you traveled faster than light, wouldnt you go foreward in time? (twin paradox theory)

Chemical laser: do an internet search on "speed light not constant"...

And I dont think anyone really knows how to go about compressing and expanding space (the very fabric of space). Maybe antigravitons or some other theoretical particle field. It's simply an idea that if there were some way to make it happen, 3-dimensional physics could still be obeyed while traveling faster than light relative to outside objects.

> I would imagine the craft would have to be a smooth spinning disk or sphere to partially offset the craft in its own 2dimensional universe to create the graviton field in the first place, which by all means could have other effects on its three dimensional properties besides inertia... how to get antigravitons tho I have no clue. The effect on space would be similar to a jet engine, only the effect does not actually propel the craft. It would still be driven by 'conventional' motors.

>> on second thought.. if you modulated the graviton and antigraviton fields in proper phase it would make for a very nice motor too.

[edit on 19-3-2005 by apc]

Originally posted by ChemicalLaser


That so-called "assumption" is based on countless, and I mean *countless*, experiments that have demonstrated the constancy of the speed of light. You really should look up some examples of how c is measured. Like in a physics book. Can you cite and summarize an opposing example?

How would one "compress" space, it space is the absence of matter? What would you "compress"? Even then, how does that help you?

It has been suggested by physicists that the speed of light is not constant. That the speed of light was faster in the past, so objects millions of light-years away are much younger than millions of years.

This work is by no means proof its really only a theory right now.

wiki.cotch.net... &printable=yes

www.setterfield.org...

Scientists have also found ways to vastly increase the speed of light. Scientists at NEC Corporation's (NEC) basic research unit in the US have created Laser pulse travels 300 times faster than light.

"Our experiment shows that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, is wrong. Einstein's Theory of Relativity still stands, however, because it is still correct to say that information cannot be transmitted faster than the vacuum speed of light,"

optics.org...

As for "compressing" or ''bending'' space it can be done infact its being done all the time. The Gravity of Planets, Stars and Blackholes all do it to various extents. Im not sure if it would ever be possible to create and control such powerful gravity. One thing is for sure it would require energy we are not even close to producing. I have heard estimations like the energy our sun produces in its lifetime to make such a system work but who knows.

[edit on 19-3-2005 by ShadowXIX]

Alright, this is not helpful, but it's sort of on topic. One of the few things I remember from middle school science class was that the speed of light is 186,241 miles per second.

Off topic but sort of related, is absolute zero the coldest something can get? Makes sense that it would be.

Absolute zero is the coldest something can get its the point where molecular oscillations are the slowest they can possibly be. Though I believe even then the oscillations never come to a complete stop, even at absolute zero. This is because quantum mechanically, molecules cannot cease all motion. I think it would be correct to say all "classical'' molecular motion stops at Absolute Zero.

The coldest place in nature is in the depths of outspace even There it is 3 degrees above Absolute Zero. Scientist have been able to get within a few billionths of absolute zero but no one has ever gotten to absolute zero and thanks to the the third law of thermodynamics they never will.

Okay 167,000 miles per SECOND. Not hours. Still pretty fast. Its possible we just dont seem to have the math to figure it out. In my optics books the speed of light is 166,000 or 167,000 mps. I dont know about that 188,000 claim though. But it all comes down to what medium that light goes through. Most mediums slow light down. The power of an optical lens how much light gets thruogh is the density of the lens itself.light going into a lens at 167.000mps and come out 143,000mps and gives that lens a 1.43 index of refraction. Now if there is a medium out there that could speed light up that would answer alot of questions.

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Go to MIT.com. One of there best experiments is when a female scientist created a medium that could actually catch light almost freezing it in place. you could amazingly see a beam of light trying to move slowly through the medium. She took light from 167,000mps to 0.

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Of course she couldnt hold the light there indefinitly. The light was moving but at a crawl and finally made its way out of the medium. Fascinating stuff. We just need a medium that makes light travel faster and a way to measure it.

Originally posted by SonofSpy
Okay 167,000 miles per SECOND. Not hours. In my optics books the speed of light is 166,000 or 167,000 mps.

No, the mean speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. What books are you looking at?

The speed of light is:

299,792,458 m/s which converter to mi/h is
670,616,629 mi/h which converted to mi/s is
186,282 mi/s.

The constant for the speed of light is in a vacuum, or as nearly so as we can create one. (The vacuums we create on Earth are hardly anything like the vacuum of space) Light does travel at different speeds through different mediums, but that doesn't mean that the constant is wrong. It just means the physical properties of the universe affect light.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
The speed of light is:

299,792,458 m/s which converter to mi/h is
670,616,629 mi/h which converted to mi/s is
186,282 mi/s.

I was rounding off to the nearest thousanth, but if you want to get spastic about it then the true speed is 186,282.4

Actually the Speed of Light is a definition and not a true measurement, as it is defined in terms of seconds, which are relative only to man and not an absolute value.

In quantum mechanics certain effects may be transmitted faster than the speed of light. The EPR paradox deals with effects at a distance. Also, hypothetical particles dubbed tachyons have been proposed by some particle physicists and are said to travel faster than the speed of light, but they have yet to be observed.

However, most faster than light observations are mostly lab anecdotes, and have no applications for moving mass or information across distances.

Originally posted by Templarum
I was rounding off to the nearest thousanth, but if you want to get spastic about it then the true speed is 186,282.4

Actually, you rounded to the nearest thousand the first time. Had you rounded to the nearest thousandth you would have given the number 186,282.40 . Now who's being spastic!

Actually the Speed of Light is a definition and not a true measurement, as it is defined in terms of seconds, which are relative only to man and not an absolute value.

In quantum mechanics certain effects may be transmitted faster than the speed of light. The EPR paradox deals with effects at a distance. Also, hypothetical particles dubbed tachyons have been proposed by some particle physicists and are said to travel faster than the speed of light, but they have yet to be observed.

However, most faster than light observations are mostly lab anecdotes, and have no applications for moving mass or information across distances.

And so far, as you said, all those particles are just hypothetical. Once, and if, they're detected will have some new physics. Poor Einstein!

[edit on 3/19/2005 by cmdrkeenkid]