Why is it Impossible to Travel Faster then the Speed of Light?

reply to post by paranoiaFTW


Mass is essentially the gravitational force by "a spark of energy" curving the space around it. Therefore, you could loosely say that whenever we detect a force, we have detected mass. The difference between the "dark mass" in space and the matter that we see is that the dark mass in space does not have the "three standard forces"(actually just two) that are required to make them matter, and thus "seeable."

There is no need for a Higg-Boson, if mass is already defined as a force.
Negative mass, if there is such a thing, then is that spark of energy pushing the space around it away or "outward."

When it comes down to it, matter is represented by four "things," which are space, energy, force, and consciousness. It can roughly be defined as, matter is consciousness "forcing" energy to curve space.

Hi np6888,

what's the NT mean?


HADES

Originally posted by paranoiaFTW
Why is it impossible to travel faster then the speed of light? Well, I have learned that its because light is mass-less so it doesn't "weigh" anything, thus it requires no energy to accelerate to the speed of light. An object with mass is impossible to bring up to the speed of light because it would require an infinite amount of energy. But why is it impossible to have less then zero mass? Mass comes from somewhere, and has been thought to perhaps come from the higgs boson particle. What if, just like matter, the higgs has a counter part, anti-higgs. Wouldn't it has a negative mass?

No, that's not quite how it works.

Now, if it came in contact with its counter part, they would destroy each other, but the higgs Boson particle is a particle, so can't it be removed? If you remove it, and then embed anti-higgs, wouldn't it have a negative mass? If it did we would be able to accelerate it to faster then the speed of light?
It might just be my lack of knowledge that makes me jump to that conclusion, so I was just wondering if anybody knows why this is impossible.

The central problem is that we do not know about any particle which has "negative" inertia, that's what's really necessary to make something travel "faster than light" in an conventional sense.

All the anti-particles appear to be opposite in all sorts of quantum properties---except mass and inertia.

There are two effects of mass: resisting motion, and creating gravity.

We are very sure about the first, except for in relation to gravity. Antiparticles have positive inertial mass with respect to forces.

As far as the second, it's likely its the same way but we don't have definitive experimental proof.

The other way to travel "faster than light" is with some kind of "warp drive", which means that you don't really travel faster than light in your own local reference frame, but you somehow arrange the geometry of space to work so that for distant outside observers, it has the effect as if you did. It's a circumvention. Unfortunately we also do not know any physical means of creating this warp bubble either, but it is slightly more plausible and so that's why Gene Roddenberry used the idea for Star Trek.

reply to post by FTL_Navigator


I was going to ask you what is light's relativistic mass, but I realized it depends on its frequency(correct me if I'm wrong though.)

nt means no text.

My simple answer.....because your question is absurd.

It just IS impossible. In fact, just asking the question creates so many paradoxes it truly amazes me. Anywhere you go, you'll hit a brick wall(in physics) with this question.

Although I do find it fascinating that perhaps warping space-time we could "seem" to travel faster than light, it's absurd to think that we actually would be travelling that fast. I don't know exactly what would happen if one managed to reach TSoL. I'd guess if FTSoL is possible, it'd result in either A) eternal existence or B) instant nonexistance.

A2D

Someone remind me to never open a science and technology post again, my brain hurts. Very interesting and well thought out reply's in here tho, thank you all for the information.

I tried to think of something intellectual to reply about the subject, but my brain nearly exploded lol.

Cherry

reply to post by Agree2Disagree


It used to be thought that it was impossible to go faster then the speed of sound, and physics is based around exceptions and amendments. To rule out FTL travel is insane, after all, outside this Universe there would be completely different laws of physics.

reply to post by paranoiaFTW


OUTSIDE THIS UNIVERSE? I'm sorry but I'm standing on the ground that the Universe is an open system and there is nothing beyond it that it isn't already reacting with.

I don't think it's insane to rule out FTSoL...not at all really. I'm gonna go ahead and stand with Einstein on this one and say that the SoL is all that is attainable for matter. Faster than that????...out of the question in my mind.....

A2D

Originally posted by paranoiaFTW
reply to post by Agree2Disagree

 

It used to be thought that it was impossible to go faster then the speed of sound

No, that's wrong.

All you have to do is explode a big bomb, or fire a large gun, and you have things traveling faster than the speed of sound.

There is a difference between achieving a technological hurdle (building a vehicle that travels faster than sound) and a theoretical hurdle (IE, traveling faster than light.)

Moving faster than the speed of sound was such an engineering challenge, it's natural to think that most lay-men and experts alike figured it would never be done. Obviously, they were very wrong. But there's a HUGE difference with the speed of light. It's theoretically impossible.

You can't travel faster than light, and decades of rigorous experiment continue to prove that postulate to be correct.

When/if you ever accelerate ANYTHING faster than C, then let us know. Until then, people really need to can it with the "300 years ago people once though that we would never... *fly, breathe underwater, have organ transplants, travel faster than sound* etc". All those things ARE NOT theoretically impossible. Traveling faster than light IS theoretically impossible. There's a big fat difference, my friend.

reply to post by paranoiaFTW


Einstein says no...www.physorg.com...

but I don't believe him.

here is a part of the article...["Theoretically, strange things happen when you exceed the speed of light," Schneider added. Time travel, for one thing, and a breakdown in cause and effect. Schneider uses an example of hitting a target with a gun that shoots bullets faster than the speed of light. "Some observers would see the bullet hit the target before they saw the shooter fire the gun," he said. "Since one of the guiding principles of relativity is that all physical laws are the same to all observers, this violation of causality would be a big problem."]

[edit on 14-12-2009 by rusethorcain]

Originally posted by FTL_Navigator
reply to post by Kaytagg

 

Prove me wrong then, I can prove light has mass, it is done in every highschool for basic physics.

Think outside the square and read your history books.

If light did not had mass then infrared frequencies would not excite molecules and create heat through interaction??

HADES

I support this. Everything that is in between Height length and width (space) Must have mass.

Light is a consequence of a interaction between energies. If not there would be no light.

reply to post by np6888

Agreetodisagree said...
"My simple answer.....because your question is absurd.

It just IS impossible. In fact, just asking the question creates so many paradoxes it truly amazes me. Anywhere you go, you'll hit a brick wall(in physics) with this question."
__________________________________________________________

But this says yes...

www.scienceblog.com...

[In the past few years, scientists have found ways to make light go both faster and slower than its usual speed limit, but now researchers at the University of Rochester have published a paper today in Science on how they've gone one step further: pushing light into reverse. As if to defy common sense, the backward-moving pulse of light travels faster than light.]

[To understand how light's speed can be manipulated, think of a funhouse mirror that makes you look fatter. As you first walk by the mirror, you look normal, but as you pass the curved portion in the center, your reflection stretches, with the far edge seeming to leap ahead of you (the reference walker) for a moment. In the same way, a pulse of light fired through special materials moves at normal speed until it hits the substance, where it is stretched out to reach and exit the material's other side [See "fast light" animation].] 2 --excerpts from article







[edit on 14-12-2009 by rusethorcain]

reply to post by paranoiaFTW

Tell that to a black hole where not even light escapes, light can accelerate in a black hole and you got speeds that would pass the barier of what the normal limit is for light speed and it's all due to gravity, because gravity is so masive in a black hole it would pull anything inside, light lincluded. Some sugested it can eat up the fabric of space , bend it, this gave the notion of traveling to another point by such an event. People in general state that it's not a hole but the idea came that it has such a powerful grasp on anything that near the singularity point it would eat up and distrotr space it's self.

Does anyone know HOW they measure the speed of light in a vacuum? I couldn't find an article about how it is done exactly.

My theory is that light and sound are just energy frequencies(which I believe has been brought up before) travelling through emty space, and their speed is slowed down whenever they come into contact with matter, by following the curvature of the space in each of those pieces of matter.

[edit on 14-12-2009 by np6888]

reply to post by Agree2Disagree


Well, the multiverse theory states otherwise.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


You're ignoring my point, the universe is existing at a faster rate than the speed of light, otherwise, everything would fall apart, it's existing at a infinite fraction of time.

If time can exist, then so can a speed faster than light.

reply to post by Kaytagg


To me theoretically impossible just means a barrier that has yet to be broken. Whenever we can't do something we label it as impossible, maybe something goes faster then light, and we just don't have a way to detect it yet. Maybe our equations are just wrong. Maybe a different set of principles apply to objects that go really fast, just like what happens at a quantum level.

Originally posted by lordtyp0

Boo on number 2

things can only have an effect after a cause. The speed it occurs is irrelevant to that. Similar to the touted paradox of "If you travel faster than the speed of light to pluto, you can watch yourself leave" well.. you are only watching an image, like a video recording. You are not actually on earth, you simply beat the image of you leaving to pluto.

"violations of causality" really mean that something was left out of the equation. The beating information thing is more of a time paradox. Not one of velocity.

Boo on pseudo physics.

Suppose you send a message to OP who is standing a few million miles from you. The message consists on turning on a flash light and pointing at him. When OP sees it, he will reply by turning on his own flashlight and pointing it at you.

If you could travel 100 times faster than light on OP's reference frame, you could potentially send the message, travel the million miles faster than light, and tell OP that you sent the message before he even got it.

BUT, on your reference frame, you cannot travel faster than light(second postulate), the message will get to OP way before you ever reach him.

If you can understand that, once you read that link I posted you would see why in some weird reality OP could potentially reply to your message before you ever sent it.

And yes, I left something out of the equation: Time. But do you really want to complicate yourself even more when velocity alone gives you trouble?

PS. With your Pluto example you are violating the second postulate by assuming you can travel ftl on your own reference frame. If this is the case special relativity no longer applies to anything you are saying thus you must have your own theory buried somewhere(unless you are referring to wormholes, which I doubt). Mind sharing it?


[edit on 14-12-2009 by daniel_g]

reply to post by lordtyp0


If you think about it.... my simple example has illustrated what you have been saying...all you have to do is extrapolate my hypothetical situation to your example and it is the same..
unless of course I have misunderstood what you have been explaining.. (which is very possible, as I am an uneducated individual...)

reply to post by GORGANTHIUM


That starts getting into "quantum physics" catagory type thingys.....lol