about faster than light travel

Now that I think about, faster than light travel seems impossible for this reason:
Say I could travel faster than light from NY to London. I would appear in London while I was still visible in NY, no?
But is that impossible or just something that's so weird it would take a lot of getting used to?

ahhhh... the future (sigh)

[Edited on 8-5-2003 by quango]

Yeah, well it is impossible to travel faster than light because if you do you will travel back in time. Not sure how it works but scientists have proven it.

Do you have an article NavalSpecWar?

Read his Galaxy series...cross between sci-fi and God...Most people assume they operate in two seperate planes/ can't co-exist but he proposes that Angels are eternal because they are quantam beings (faster than the speed o' light)...read it...it has boring parts but it is very well proposed as an idea (yes I know it is intended as fiction but it seems quite plausible...I'm not doing the theory justice here....)

Back in time... sure, why not?

As you approach the speed of light time slows down. You shrink.

if yu were to travel faster then the speed of light you would not go back in time you would just be moving faster then the speed of sight not time, if you moved 200,000 miles in a nano second you would still be going forward in time, not backwards, the basic theory of moving faster then the speed of light makes you travel bacwards in time is flawed, it mixes 2 different types of measurement that shouldnt be mixed

Qoute:
Now that I think about, faster than light travel seems impossible for this reason:
Say I could travel faster than light from NY to London. I would appear in London while I was still visible in NY, no? by quango

actually if you left at the speed of light you would arrive in london slightly after you left NY, you would still be bound by the theory of speed, and all spead is based on distance and time, you would arrive 0.00000001 seconds after you left NY so you would still be going forward in time, like most measurements, there is always a smaller measurements, Eg. take the smallest lenth of time you can think of now there is still space in betwen those points
and that space could be divided by ten, if you travelled 10000000 miles in that space of time would it be faster then the speed of light? yes it would but you would still be moving forward, right?

i really need to learn how to spell, duh

I know that Einstein wasn't infallible, but he said if you travelled faster than the speed of light, you'd arrive before you left.

Or you could have just edited your statement. but it works either way.

If you travelled from point A to point B faster then the speed of light. You would get to point B before you left point A. You could see your self before you left since the light (image of your self ) will get there after you get there.

That is how you go back in time if you go faster then light.

To go back or forward in time you need a Deloren and a flux capacitator. And the genius of someone like Christopher Loyd. HEE HEE...!!!

There was a young lady named Bight,
Whose speed was faster than light,
She left one day in a relative way,
And returned the previous night.

Think about it. When talking about small distances, faster than light travel might not involve time travel backwards. But lets say you were going to Andromeda. If you moved faster than the speed at which protons were moving between those two points, it would be possible to arrive before the light beams which we consisted of on earth reached Andromeda. Does this mean however that one would be invisible once one got there? Or that there would be some strange reconciliation of the light beams that we left and that we found?

the thing that gets me is that the speed of light is not a constant thing. scientists have managed to slow the speed of light (and speed it up as well i think).

i'm no scientist, but i don't think you would go back in time if you go faster than light. i think you would still arrive at point B after you left point A, but the time it took would be so incredible small that it would just appear that you arrived befor you left, but then again when you use astronomical scales the differance would be much more noticable. using NY to London is a bad example really.

Don't forget about the principle of relativity

The principle of relativity: The laws of physics must be the same in all inertial frames of reference.

The constancy of the speed of light: The speed of light in a vacuum has the same value, c=3.00*10^8 m/s in all inertial frames, regardless of the observer or the velocity of the source emitting light.

In relativistic mechanics, there is no such thing as absolute length or absolute time. Furthermore, events at different locations that are observed to occur simultaneously in one frame are not observed to be simultaneous in another frame moving uniformly past the first.

In otherwords, everything is relative

Also, traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible given the current understanding of physics.

If traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible, how is that light can't escape a black hole. This vaccum is space shows that there is a lot that we don't understand. Mabey our understanding of physics is only relative to this reality/Dimension

Originally posted by abstract_alao
If traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible, how is that light can't escape a black hole. This vaccum is space shows that there is a lot that we don't understand. Mabey our understanding of physics is only relative to this reality/Dimension

yep that makes alot of sence, maybe our physics only relate to our universe which is part of a multiverse

This is because the curvature of space-time.

A black hole has incredible mass. Here, the curvature of space-time is so extreme that, within a certain distance from the center of the black hole, all matter and light become trapped.


[Edited on 14-5-2003 by SeaBass]

[Edited on 14-5-2003 by SeaBass]

so whatever force is causeing the blackhole to "suck" up light and matter, it's has to be moving fater than the speed of light.

Originally posted by abstract_alao
so whatever force is causeing the blackhole to "suck" up light and matter, it's has to be moving fater than the speed of light.

From what I've been taught a black hole consits of an enormous amount of matter packed into the size of a pea. That pea is so incredibly dense that the gravitational pull of it can suck in light. There are other theories too, like a black hole leading to another galaxy or universe.