How.... To go FASTER then LIGHT!?

Originally posted by Aim64C

However, "there is more than one way to skin a cat." The problem, however, is that we have to understand that there is a 'correct' and 'preferred' reference frame. From there, simultaneity follows with common sense, and FTL through classical or non-classical methods is not going to do ridiculous things like send things back in time (or other fanciful delusions). The universe is "on the same page." ... Of course - interesting in this is that the effect of special relativity is an emergent phenomena of general relativity (that all mass attracts itself and that the phenomena of gravity is limited, for whatever reason, to propagating at the speed of light... which means any object attempting to travel faster than the speed of light will encounter and 'ride' atop its own gravitational attraction, resulting in all documented phenomena of particles moving at relativistic velocities).

The Earth is eight light minutes from the Sun. According to the herd which is consensus science, gravity apparently has the magical ability of "action at a distance"...otherwise the Earth would fly out of orbit immediately. If it propagated at the speed of light, well...

So right there it is obvious that the THEORY IS WRONG. None of the sheep will admit it.

reply to post by CaptChaos

The Earth is eight light minutes from the Sun. According to the herd which is consensus science, gravity apparently has the magical ability of "action at a distance"...otherwise the Earth would fly out of orbit immediately. If it propagated at the speed of light, well...

Aren't we a crazy rabbit-squirrel today?

In theory, if it were possible to suddenly eliminate the sun's mass, then Earth would continue for eight minutes as though nothing was amiss. Indeed, we would not be able to classically observe anything happening to the sun between those eight minutes.

www.csa.com...

They compared the position of J0842+1835 on September 8, 2002, with its average position on the off-Jupiter days. Plugging this into Kopeikin's formula for the gravitational field of the moving Jupiter gave them the answer they were looking for. Kopeikin and Fomalont became the first two people to quantitatively measure the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature. They found that gravity does move at the same speed as light. Their actual figure was 1.06 times the speed of light, but there was an error of plus or minus 0.21. The results were then announced at the 2002 American Astronomical Society annual meeting in Seattle, Washington.5

Of course, this is not without some skepticism:

www.lbl.gov...

“Einstein may be correct about the speed of gravity but the experiment in question neither confirms nor refutes this,” says Samuel. “In effect, the experiment was measuring effects associated with the propagation of light, not the speed of gravity.”

Samuel was able to simplify the calculations of the velocity-dependent effects by shifting from a reference frame in which Jupiter is moving, as was used by Kopeikin, to a reference frame in which Jupiter is stationary and Earth is moving. When he did this, Samuel found a formula that differed from the one used by Kopeikin to analyze the data. Under this new formula, the velocity-dependent effects were considerably smaller.

So right there it is obvious that the THEORY IS WRONG. None of the sheep will admit it.

The theory is incomplete.

Einstein, himself, stated that the theory was unworkable without a preferred frame of reference.

There are two preferential frames of reference that work out to be the same thing. Light is the preferred frame of reference (and the space measured by it). Applying Lorentz equations to the wavelength of light as emitted by a body in motion will demonstrate that wavelength is in compliance with Lorentz invariance as well as its speed.

That, in and of itself, functions as an "aether" - a universal constant of distance (whether or not there is something "there" or not is not really important). This explains how paradoxes, such as the twin paradox, are resolved.

To illustrate the twin paradox, one only needs to consider two bodies approaching each other at a relative velocity of 50 kilometers per second. When asked how much energy will be released by the impact, we run into a problem. The energy of a moving entity is 1/2mass x velocity^2. Resolving the problem is unworkable until a "correct" frame of reference is inserted.

When you include large local bodies (such as the sun) and compensate for angular velocity, your computation becomes far more accurate to the observed results. However, very thorough analysis will show that even these "correct" frames of reference do not predict with 100% accuracy the result of a collision. The discrepancy will be slight, but still present. And it will persist, regardless of the "correct" reference frame utilized, until the preferential reference frame is taken into account.

At which point - all of Relativity's paradoxes vanish.

Even then - it is an incomplete theory. There's really no such thing as a complete theory.

reply to post by WanderingThe3rd


Cool video....
When I first saw the thread title I thought it was about cheating with one of those crazy women on Jerry Springer!

The bending of non physical abstracts such as "space" and "time" is something i do not understand.

reply to post by cruddas


You're not the only one.

Everyone struggles to some degree or another with relativity. While the equations work - I am skeptical that gravity is really the "bending" of space and/or time. I am in another crowd that believes gravity is more of an entropic function that complies with the Zero and First law of thermodynamics.

Drives like the "warp" drive require a "negative attractor" - an "anti-gravity" to function according to our current models. I do not believe such a force exists or is possible, as I believe gravity to be as I explained above - an entropic effect as opposed to a fundamental force.

Which doesn't invalidate Einstein's theories, but does place them in a different context.