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Cant go faster the light ?Make light go faster.

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posted on Aug, 19 2005 @ 09:03 PM
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www.sciencedaily.com... This artical got me to thinking theres labs that have clamed to have goton light to go 300 TIMES faster then normal and at a normal 186,000mph (apx) that comes out to a woppion 55.800.000 yes thats a trip to mars in under an hour .
now on to a more science view .If it is true as you approch 186,000mph that time slows down then it should be IMMpossible for even light its self to brake this so called rule .Yet we still have mannaged to do JUST that .
so just what does this mean in ship tearms . Ingnoning the mass effect wich also cant be proven yet . if the speed of light is tweked to 300 times normal does that mean you can now go 299 times faster without time effects?


d1k

posted on Aug, 19 2005 @ 09:20 PM
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Where does it say they made it go 300x faster? I don't see that anywhere in the article or any of the releated articles.



posted on Aug, 19 2005 @ 09:44 PM
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The article doesn't say that.
Simcity was merely posing the question.

Interesting idea..If light is faster, then are all the other relationships to that new speed also adjusted?

There is a slightly longer article here, as well..
www.livescience.com...



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 04:33 AM
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Just as I thought, the second link posted here clarifies that it is an illusionary effect. What has actually been sped up, is the group velocity of a packet of photons of different frequencies. The individual photons still travel at the speed of light, yet the group velocity - a mathematical expression - can significantly differ from this. Information cannot be sent faster than light.



From MathPages.com:
Unfortunately we frequently read in the newspapers about how someone has succeeded in transmitting a wave with a group velocity exceeding c, and we are asked to regard this as an astounding discovery, overturning the principles of relativity, etc. The problem with these stories is that the group velocity corresponds to the actual signal velocity only under conditions of normal dispersion, or, more generally, under conditions when the group velocity is less than the phase velocity. In other circumstances, the group velocity does not necessarily represent the actual propagation speed of any information or energy. For example, in a regime of anomalous dispersion, which means the refractive index decreases with increasing wave number, the preceding formula shows that what we called the group velocity exceeds what we called the phase velocity. In such circumstances the group velocity no longer represents the speed at which information or energy propagates.

To see why the group velocity need not correspond to the speed of information in a wave, notice that in general, by superimposing simple waves with different frequencies and wavelengths, we can easily produce a waveform with a group velocity that is arbitrarily great, even though the propagation speeds of the constituent waves are all low. A snapshot of such a case is shown below. In this figure the sinusoidal wave denoted as "A" has a wave number of kA = 2 rad/meter and an angular frequency of wA = 2 rad/sec, so it's individual phase velocity is vA = 1 meter/sec. The sinusoidal wave denoted as "B" has a wave number of kB = 2.2 rad/meter and an angular frequency of wB = 8 rad/sec, so it's individual phase velocity is vB = 3.63 meters/sec.



The sum of these two signals is denoted as "A+B" and, according to the formulas given above, it follows that this sum can be expressed in the form 2cos(kx-wt)cos(Dkx-Dwt) where k = 5, w = 2.1, Dk = 0.1, and Dw = 3. Consequently, the "envelope wave" represented by the second factor has a phase velocity of 30 meters/sec. Nevertheless, it's clear that no information can be propagating faster than the phase speeds of the constituent waves A and B. Indeed if we follow the midpoint of a "group" of A+B as it proceeds from left to right, we find that when it reaches the right hand side it consists of the sum of peaks of A and B that entered at the left long before the current "group" had even "appeared". This is just one illustration of how simple interfering phase effects can be mis-construed as ultra-high-speed signals. In fact, by simply setting kA to 2.2 and kB to 2.0, we can cause the "groups" of A+B to precess from right to left, which might mistakenly be construed as a signal propagating backwards in time!

Needless to say, we have not succeeded in arranging for a message to be received before it was sent, nor even in transmitting a message superluminally. Examples of this kind merely illustrate that the "group velocity" does not always represent the speed at which real information (or energy) is moving.



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 09:22 AM
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300 times the speed of light? Been there, done that:

news.bbc.co.uk...



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 09:33 AM
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Einstein sad that it's impossible to travel with the speed of light...

make your own conclusion...


And the speed is not "changeble" it's 300 000 km/second... It's now and it will always be, I believe that it's prooven with math...


[edit on 20-8-2005 by Figher Master FIN]



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 11:32 AM
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Originally posted by Figher Master FIN

And the speed is not "changeble" it's 300 000 km/second... It's now and it will always be, I believe that it's prooven with math...


[edit on 20-8-2005 by Figher Master FIN]



It's actually not proven, it's assumed to be true. Cosmologists define the amount of free energy in the universe (from observations of the background microwave radiation, etc.) and from here you can actually derive (I'm an engineer so I can't but a good theoretical physicist could) the speed of light.

This is related to the permittivity of free space which engineers take for granted as 300 Ohms.

Now, the question is, WHY is it 300 Ohms, and not 1,000 or 50?

I posed this question to a professor in the physics department here recently, and we decided that earlier in the age of the universe, when the background energy was higher, that the speed of light would have been different.

Today's accepted definition of "vacuum" has something to do with the baryon count of the universe (ask a particle physicist).

So I am convinced, that the speed of light is not actually a constant over the lifespan of the universe, but, in fact variable based on the average energy content of the universe.

In theory, one could invent a device that would modify the particle content within some sort of box. If one were truly to be capable of shielding a small cube foot of space from ALL energy (even gamma rays, etc.) super cooling, and extracting ALL particles from the space, and THEN send in a beam of light, one would expect (my personal theory) that the speed would in fact be DIFFERENT than it is in a "standard" vacuum.

Of course, that's just my theory so you can ignore it if you wish. On the other hand Dr. Gleiser told me if he ever wins the Nobel prize for this he's going to buy me lunch ... hope it's a good lunch!



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 02:11 PM
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I remember hearing something recently about the "Big Rip", or "Tear", as opposed to the "Big Crunch" which has been abandoned awhile ago because of the fact that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate. Eventually, the article in national Geographic says, space and time will stretch so much that they will actually tear apart, hence the name the "Big Rip". I'm curious, and Grad Student, you could probably help me with this: If spacetime is constantly stretching as the article assumes, what effect will this have on the speed of light? Would it be constantly decreasing?



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 04:59 PM
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I can tell you without reading the article (and I just did) that it's the group velocity. There's no restriction on the velocity of this, and it isn't all that difficult to make it go above the speed of light, as vor78's link shows. It's complex, but it does make sense.

zhang - space expands, light travels through space. So, in relation to something that space is moving in relation to, light could easily be moving faster than the speed of light. Often times it seems that high red shifts are results of light moving faster than the speed of light, when really light traveled the speed of light and space itself just grew.

grad_student: The permittivity of free space is 8.85x10^-12 F/m. The impendance, however, is 377 Ohms, or exactly 120 times pi (3.14159 and so on and so forth) and is, iirc, the square root of the permeability divided by the permittivity. The way those two numbers relate is relaly cool.

EDIT: I love being right.

[edit on 8/20/2005 by Amorymeltzer]



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 05:33 PM
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Originally posted by spacedoubt
The article doesn't say that.
Simcity was merely posing the question.

Interesting idea..If light is faster, then are all the other relationships to that new speed also adjusted?

There is a slightly longer article here, as well..
www.livescience.com...



they would have to to keep in the constant. If a new adjustment is made to the speed of light, there are many other equations that would stand to be modified. Am I correct? or would the whole idea of Eisensteinen theories have to be reworked?



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 07:38 PM
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Originally posted by Amorymeltzer

grad_student: The permittivity of free space is 8.85x10^-12 F/m. The impendance, however, is 377 Ohms, or exactly 120 times pi (3.14159 and so on and so forth) and is, iirc, the square root of the permeability divided by the permittivity. The way those two numbers relate is relaly cool.



Yea right whatever, close enough. 377 is the correct figure you are right, I was doing a couple of things at the same time. It's a coincidence that it's a multiple of pi. If the baryon count were any less or more it would not correlate so cleanly ...



posted on Aug, 20 2005 @ 07:41 PM
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Originally posted by FLYIN HIGH

Interesting idea..If light is faster, then are all the other relationships to that new speed also adjusted?



You are correct to the exten that if the speed of light can be shown to be not equal to what we think it is it changes other formulas. However, during your lifetime, and during the next 10 million years we will continue to see the same maximum light speed. Assuming the universe continues to expand, gradually, we will see a decrease in baryon count. This will modify the speed of light (in a vacuum).

If we could freeze a scientist, and keep him around for 1 billion years, he would definately see a different speed of light constant.



posted on Aug, 21 2005 @ 05:40 AM
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Not Even In The Fine Print


Originally posted by d1k
Where does it say they made it go 300x faster? I don't see that anywhere in the article or any of the releated articles.

That's because it's not there. The source article refers to changes in propagation speeds in a fiber optic medium.

The article is vague and doesn't give numbers.

The thread seems based on speculation about the possibility of achieving higher velocities for light in a vacuum, but that's not what the article is about.







 
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