Is Light faster in Light?

Originally posted by Toasty
What about quantum entanglement? Isn't that instantaneous, independent of distance?

Ahh The age old entanglement issue

Well you may be surprised to know that quantum entanglement is in fact in use today as way of creating secure connections of synchronous encrypted information.

There is an interesting thought experiment about sending information faster than light and it goes like this.

If it was possible to create a stream of entangled particles and split them into there opposite halves, sending one stream out into deep space at light speed, while the other half would be captured in a light circuit and effectively frozen.

Then after a long time and I do mean long such as a few million years or so, when the particles that has been sent out into space would have travelled significantly far.

What would happen if you were to alter the quantum spin of the particle that was captured in a light circuit? As the particles are entangled instantly the other particle in deep space would take on the same quantum spin as the ones that remained on earth... Instantly....

With this technique it is seems theoretically possible to violate the law of relativity and send information faster than the speed of light.

“Absolute simultaneity is a hypothetical coincidence of two or more events in different points in space for all observers in the universe. It is shown in the theory of relativity that there may be always observers for whom simultaneity won't correspond to the same moments in time and therefore simultaneity is always relative.” – Taken from wikipedia

All the best,

NeoN HaZe

Originally posted by ragster
A theory I have never heard before but would like to have more information on it. If someone ws traveling at the speed of light, and as of now it would not be possible but just saying, and was to turn on a flash light, wouldl that be faster the himself, or would both both himself and the light beam hit an object at the same time.

I think that, theoretically, the light would always arrive first. Because matter is too dense to travel as fast as light. Regardless of the speed, at the same speed, light is the winner.

This is a question that bogles my mind to even think about, I know outside the box it might be posible, I do not just want a complete shoot down by a genious, but for someone to really think about the possibilities of this.

I don't think it is feasible - to travel at the speed of light - in the human body's form. Only 'nude.'

Meaning shedding one's fleshly robe and becoming light, too. Pure light.

Then it is down to probably being only a matter of logistics, you know?
Right bat channel at the right bat time.

I'll put it simply.

Scientists don't know what the hell light is. It's just speculation. They try to simplify it but things don't seem to fit.

Lightspeed is a dangerous thing..
I think Red Dwarf (UK Sci-fi Comedy) had it spot on in one of their earliest episodes (1980s?)....

They are travelling at a speed faster than light, and a character calls up the computer AI (also a major character).. who happens to be the computer for the whole ship... navigation etc. included.
As the computer told him (not in exact words) "I don't have time to help you. It's no easy task navigating at these speeds. When we're travelling at the speed of light, by the time I see something, we've already gone through it."

The OT is a very interesting question. I would imagine that the light WOULD NOT travel faster... Speed is controlled by resistance. Be that friction (physical resistance) or whatever. Without friction, travel would be instantaneous. We are only just beginning to understand smaller and smaller elements. If memory serves me correct, have we not found that there are particles smaller than protons and neutrons? I'm sure there must be something smaller than that.

The speed of light is measurable, hence we have a speed given. Therefore, there must be some kind of resistance holding it back. As show in earlier posts by the fact that light travels faster in a vacuum. There must be things that we cannot yet detect that are providing resistance to the light. There's all kinds of interesting and wonderful things that we have not yet discovered.

But take throwing a ball off the front of a train for an example. Throw the ball as hard as you can. If the resistance caused by the wind is large enough, then that ball may move forward momentarily before being thrown back. If your hand didn't move (and presuming you were strong enough), then it would be like the ball didn't even move. For it to have moved away from your hand, you must have provided a force stronger than the resistance (the wind), which was worn down and then reversed by the opposite force (the wind).

At the present moment, using current technologies, we have no way to control the speed of light. Hence if you were travelling at light speed, your flashlight would produce only enough power to travel at the speed of light, and be unable to overcome the resistance. It would stay in the flashlight, much like the ball stays in the hand.

Now, if you were travelling at the speed of light in an enclosed ship... the flashlight WOULD shine, as the speed of light would be relevant to the speed of the interior, which is stationary (as a whole). But the light would not be able to escape the 'ship'.

On another note. Travelling at the speed of light must create some kind of truer vacuum through those resisting unknown particles (just like the vacuum created behind a car travelling at high speed)... so with that gap, it may be theoretically possible for the light to travel faster than the known speed of light if shining backwards, or if you had a ship following that ship, drafting in that (what I will call for namessake only) true-vacuum. Much like an F1 car will draft behing the other car to get an advantage.

Measure the Speed of Light with Technology you own at home:

MeasuringTheSpeedOfLightWithChocolateChips

FindingTheSpeedOfLightUsingMarshmallows


I will sell the kits later on, but my sales agent is working on the ads and packaging

[edit on 1/24/2007 by a1ex]

"I'll put it simply.

Scientists don't know what the hell light is. It's just speculation. They try to simplify it but things don't seem to fit."

We don't know what light is? Come, now - you must really need to do some research to make such a bold statement. Would you also say we don't have any idea what an electromagnetic wave is?

After cdrn's post in my other thread about time dilation, (s)he has me thinking further about this light inside a light topic and in what way would exiting the contained environment (which is travelling at c) be affected by time dilation. Would it's velocity adapt to the new (faster) time frame, and slow down the light? Or would it continue at the original velocity (self + environment) on the basis of relativity. If it continued, then it would shine. If it returned back to the 'normal' time frame, then no it would not.

~ something that can only be found out if an experiment could be run ~

[edit on 25-1-2007 by x08]

i have akways wondred about the old e=mc2. energy = mass x speed of light squared but if the speed of light is the universal constant and cannot be exceded then how do you get speed of light squared? or do i read this whole thing wrong?