Einstein Misquoted!

I have recently been studying Einstein's theories but am far from being an expert.

And there is one thing i am extremely curious about,and it is the speed of light quote.

Most ppl will say,"Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light."

But what Einstein actually said is,"Nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of light."

I'm wondering if this change of words has any outcome on test results,as accelerating in mere seconds is different to traveling at length.

If i understand the quote correctly,it is the acceleration not the travel that would make the object become infinite....

Can you post a link to support your claim?

It seems unlikely that several generations of scientists could have been operating under a misconception such as this.

Einstein live until the fifties. Surely, he would have noticed that people had misconstrued his intent.

The speed of light speed limit is a consequence of the two postulates of special relativity, although they do not directly state it. The two postulates are:
1, That the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference.
2, The speed of light in a vacuum is independent of the velocity of the source.

It is from those postulates, and the mathematics derived from them, that the speed limit appears. And since it is shown in the mathematics, the exact words used to describe it don’t matter. After all, mathematics is the language of physics.

Can you post a link to support your claim?

I don't have a link as i read it from The Meaning Of Relativity at my local library.

But you may find these pages helpful.

Well those links appear to deal with general relativity where special relativity is applied locally, so your really dealing with something different then what you were talking about in your post. From what I gathered by glancing at the links, its dealing with distortions in space-time causing an object to appear to move faster then light to a distant observer. Though locally, the object is still going slower then light.

Yeah,my bad,i put the wrong links up.But if you scroll up or down they take you to special relativity and other topics.

reply to post by Lethys


So, if either of the two postulates were wrong, would this mean that it may be possible to travel faster than the speed of light?

I ask this as I am certain, (apologies for not providing a source at the moment), that I recently read that the first of these postulates may be incorrect and that the laws of physics can and do change.

I know I maybe in for a bit of a roasting here but I am genuinely trying to understand a subject I am relatively new to.

reply to post by Freeborn

I know I maybe in for a bit of a roasting here but I am genuinely trying to understand a subject I am relatively new to.

Don’t worry, I won’t roast you.

So, if either of the two postulates were wrong, would this mean that it may be possible to travel faster than the speed of light?

Well it depends on in what ways they are wrong. If its only slightly wrong, then the postulate in question could be replaced by a similar one and most of the theory would still stand with only slight modifications. It is also possible in such a case, that the postulates are only approximations, and that reality may not be too much different.

I ask this as I am certain, (apologies for not providing a source at the moment), that I recently read that the first of these postulates may be incorrect and that the laws of physics can and do change.

The only such example I’m familiar with is speculation that the physical constants may not have been the same throughout the lifetime of the universe. Though in this case, I doubt that it would really effect relativity much, if at all. I’m not even sure if this would even count as a violation of any of the postulates.

Despite whether or not that is the case, we do know through experiments where we accelerated particles to velocities extremely close to the speed of light, that the speed limit of light is at the very least, not something that can be easily broken.

I’d also like to add that if relativity is indeed shown to be incorrect, it would most likely be in the same way that Newtonian physics was shown incorrect at high speeds, large masses, and at very small scales. In that case it wasn’t so much that the theory was wholly wrong, but that there were other effects that needed to be taken into consideration. Such as time dilation for fast moving objects, and particles having a wave like nature along with not having precisely defined variables like position and momentum for quantum particles.

Special relativity itself, as formulated by Einstein didn’t take quantum effects into consideration, which led to the creation of quantum field theory. The same goes for general relativity, although a theory of quantum gravity still hasn’t been completed.

So it is possible that that relativity may have a limited scope and that we haven’t yet seen the whole picture. But at the same time, this doesn’t mean that its necessarily wrong, just as relativity and quantum mechanics didn’t show that Newtonian mechanics was necessarily wrong, just incomplete. There is still so much more to learn about the universe.

There is still so much more to learn about the universe.

I agree.
I also believe that if you don't know everything about something then theories and laws (in this case) can be subject to change when new discoveries are made.

The question is though,will the academics accept such a thing or will they condemn it?
I'm guessing the latter.Too many academics have their minds closed these days that its almost as if they've turned into the church that used to prosecute them!
Anything that challenges their knowledge and beliefs is wrong!



I found some articles last night about scientists claiming to have broken the speed of light,not sure if thats true,but they're interesting to read.









I wonder how many scientists condemned these results without even experimenting in the same way to see if they got the same outcome....

Oh,and i also found this interesting article titled,

WHERE DR. EINSTEIN WENT WRONG
Finding the Virtual Velocity of Light, Solving the Mystery of the Failed Michelson-Morley Experiment

I’ve read the first part in the “Where Dr. Einstein went wrong” article. The article is terrible, it makes little sense, and gets a great deal incorrect.

Everyone made the incorrect assumption that C was the "velocity of light." Today, science still calls the velocity of light C. But not so. It was only an integration constant to make Maxwell's equations match the measurements.

Wrong. In the case of electromagnetic waves, C is NOT an integration constant. the speed of light was not given its value in order to make it consistent with experiments. It was a theoretical prediction of the equations.

He then starts talking about something called virtual velocity. While the concept of virtual velocity exists, it isn’t what he is talking about. His concept don’t even have anything to do with velocity, nor does it make sense. Time zones would not have had any effect on attempts to measure the speed of light. It is even more ludicrous to think that the scientists at this time wouldn’t have been familiar with them.

He then claims in part 2 that Max Plank prevented Einstein’s papers on special relativity from going through the normal peer review process since Einstein had just won the Nobel prize. In reality, he didn’t win the Nobel prize until 1921, well after both special and general relativity had been published. Even if Max Plank did for some reason stop the normal peer review process, the so called “errors” still would have been caught, considering the many critics of the theory at the time. I stopped reading at that point.

The question is though,will the academics accept such a thing or will they condemn it? I'm guessing the latter.Too many academics have their minds closed these days that its almost as if they've turned into the church that used to prosecute them!

There are plenty of scientists who would be open to the idea of Einstein being wrong if sufficient evidence was presented. Even if most of the older scientists were too closed minded to accept it, the younger generation of scientists are always more open minded and willing to accept new things. All it would take was for the older generation to retire and the younger generation to take control.

I found some articles last night about scientists claiming to have broken the speed of light,not sure if thats true,but they're interesting to read.

As for those examples, first let me say a few things. First, the media often misrepresents to true nature of scientific experiments and results. Second, while it is impossible for particles with mass to travel at or faster then light, in certain ways, such as the group velocity, light can surpass the speed, although no information can be transferred faster then light.

Half of those articles admit that the experiments don’t show Einstein to be wrong, and none of them deal with information traveling farther then light. In one of those articles, the experiment, it is questioned whether or not the results really mean what the experimenters are claiming. It isn’t just the results that may be incorrect, it can also be the interpretation of those results.

It is from those postulates, and the mathematics derived from them, that the speed limit appears. And since it is shown in the mathematics, the exact words used to describe it don’t matter. After all, mathematics is the language of physics.

Been thinking about this and wondering....

If you're in a car,say a Bugatti Veyron,you could do 0-60 in 2 & a half 2nds.Wouldn't the velocity be different to when you traveled at a steady 60mph for 15min? Do you use more energy in those 2 & a half 2nds than you do in those 15min?

Or am i completely wrong here? lol.

If you're in a car,say a Bugatti Veyron,you could do 0-60 in 2 & a half 2nds.Wouldn't the velocity be different to when you traveled at a steady 60mph for 15min? Do you use more energy in those 2 & a half 2nds than you do in those 15min?

I’m not quite sure what you mean here but I’ll try to answer. Velocity is a vector quantity that represents the speed an object is traveling and the direction it is traveling. If the car is traveling to say, the east, at 60 mph, its velocity would be the same regardless of whether it was steady or was at 60 mph for an instant while still accelerating or deaccelerating.

When the car is accelerating, energy is being converted from the chemical bonds in the gasoline into kinetic energy for the car. The heavier the car is and the faster it is moving, the more kinetic energy it has. In an ideal environment, once the car has reached 60 mph and has stopped accelerating, no energy would be used to keep it traveling at that speed. Though in reality, the car must spend energy to counter the energy lost to resistive forces like friction and air resistance.

Please be sure to state that it's the speed of light in a vacuum that cannot be exceeded, as that point is what the field is all about. I didn't take note of anyone correcting that throughout the thread, so I felt I should bring that point up. I'm not trying to be critical, but it is a crucial detail that should be understood.

But to your original point, yes, accelerating up to the speed of light would blow equations towards infinity - it makes sense from a thought experiment too, especially when you consider a huge hunk of mass, such as myself