Do you think-faster than Light-?

[Angeleyes]

Do you think a particle of matter can travel faster than the speed of light?

The answer to this question may depend on IF you think our current Science, maths explains everything about everything and can not be wrong.

Or is it a limit to our own understanding of things at this time?

What about open or closed minds,is yours open to change or is it closed and Science and math can not be wrong no matter what?

Is it possible that to travel faster than light a new Science and math may be needed to explain how and why?

Science and math say no,not possible,BUT what do you think?

Regards

Tim

[brianb]

Is it possible that to travel faster than light a new Science and math may be needed to explain how and why?

Doesn't need new science. Special Relativity forbids an object being accelerated through the speed of light but there's nothing in the science to forbid the existence of tachyons which can only travel faster than light.

If they do exist, they have an interesting property - they speed up if you tap energy from them ....

.... the only problem is that, if some variants of string theory turn out to model the universe accurately, every particle has its own "mirror" tachyon which approaches the size of the universe as the dimensions of the particle get smaller, finally being coincide with the universe for a particle of the Planck dimension. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately impractical as a method of travelling or transmitting information faster than c.

[Kit-Fox]

Without new technological or scientific progress its unlikely that we will be able to create some sort of craft that could carry people at speeds greater than the speed of light.

That doesnt mean it is impossible to do such a feat however.

And of course we do already understand how it is possible to send messages *at* the speed of light.

[michaelmorris]

By my understanding (big caveat) a thing (matter or energy) can't travel faster through space than the speed of light ©. However, space itself is not bound by this speed limit. Thus something can travel away from you at greater than the speed of light if the space is expanding at greater than C.

Weird

[Breakintheclouds]

I think you're a little unfair with using terms like 'open' and 'closed' minded, with regard to science. Science isn't a body of knowledge - it's a method for discovering knowledge. As such, there's no such thing as 'current science' - there is just a bunch of things that we have discovered using science and a (possibly bigger) bunch of things that we suspect are true. Scientists tend to be amongst the more open-minded people, and are the first to admit how imperfect their understanding is.

[hunterknox]

Science and math say no,not possible,BUT what do you think?

Is this the ITV news?

[Ogri]

I remember some years back (mid-90's I think) there was a new CPU being developed, and something strange was observed happening on the surface of the new chip when it was being tested.

When that strange thing was investigated, it was found to be a field effect, and it was found to be travelling (if my memory serves me right, but I'd only be 1 or 2 out) at about 9 x the speed of light.

There was a fair bit of publicity about it at the time.

[rblunden]

Do you think a particle of matter can travel faster than the speed of light?

The answer to this question may depend on IF you think our current Science, maths explains everything about everything and can not be wrong.

Or is it a limit to our own understanding of things at this time?

What about open or closed minds,is yours open to change or is it closed and Science and math can not be wrong no matter what?

Is it possible that to travel faster than light a new Science and math may be needed to explain how and why?

Science and math say no,not possible,BUT what do you think?

Regards

Tim

I don't think anyone would claim that our current science explains everything. Scientists are open minded to being proved wrong. However, there is pretty strong evidence in support of Einstein's theory of relativity, under which it is impossible for matter to travel faster than the speed of light relative to an observer (yes, there is the anomoly of matter travelling through space which is itself expanding faster than the speed of light.

You could use the same logic to claim anything, e.g.

Do you think fairies exist? The answer to this question may depend on IF you think our current Science, maths explains everything about everything and can not be wrong.

Or is it a limit to our own understanding of things at this time?

What about open or closed minds,is yours open to change or is it closed and Science and math can not be wrong no matter what?

My understanding is that science is a way of making the best possible sense of the world around us, given the evidence we have at present.

Regards

[Mr Spock]

Everyone knew the earth was flat, everyone knew the Earth was the centre of the universe, everyone knows Einstein is right.

All we can say for certain is that these are the facts as we know them today. We may know something completely different tomorrow.

[Angeleyes]

Thank you to every one for your reply's to this question.

The question was asked by one of my sons Teacher's.

I wanted to see what you think.

I want my son to look at this thread and formulate his own answer.

My answer to the question is simple.

Yes,i believe a particle of matter can travel faster than light even if it is only under a extremely rare conditions.

As for Science changing i believe there are things to come we can not even dream of at this time.

Regards

Tim

[greenninja]

Since I had my ZX6-R I've been doing my level best, but so far it's eluded me.........maybe this summer.

I read an interview with one physicist who stated a number of reasons why FTL travel was not possible, but the most important was that it would be "inconvenient"

[Mr Spock]

"Einstein was wrong. We prove it every time we pop the hood"

John Crichton

[lostinspace]

Since I had my ZX6-R I've been doing my level best, but so far it's eluded me.........maybe this summer.

[nbrus]

I don't believe anything can travel faster than light, because it has already been proven that time appears slow down for moving objects, such that at the speed of light, time effectively stops. I don't believe in time travel, but this effect is real.

Imagine if I have a piece of string 9 light years long ... the string is infinitely strong and infinitely rigid ... I give it a tug ... how long does it take for that motion to appear at the other end? 9 years?

[narrowbandpaul]

the wave speed through a 1d string is sqrt(T/p) where p is the 1d linear density

but yes, i get your point. Propogation obviously takes some time, >L/c

space may and does travel faster than c.....as no information is being exchanged, it is not under the control of relativistic dynamics....

this creates a horizon defining galaxies that travel subluminally and those travelling superluminally. This is called the de Sitter horizon, if i remember correctly

[narrowbandpaul]

angeleyes,

what conditions do you believe are suitable for a massive particle to travel superluminally?

[Tycho Brahe]

It also depends on what the light is traveling through, a vacuum, then the answer is no. An ultra cold cloud of sodium atoms? Yes lots of things do, especially the lads on their motorbikes!

The speed of light isnt a real speed, its some kind of physical limit. As you speed up time slows down, I like to think that the speed of light is where time stands still, thus making speed irrelevant, all travel to you is instantaneous... its only to us slow pokes in a slower frame of reference that measure time passing for you! I think the speed of light has actually been made a physical constant, so it is now a number like pi or plancks constant!

[roboticsound]

space may and does travel faster than c.....as no information is being exchanged, it is not under the control of relativistic dynamics....

What about quantum entanglement does that not permit instantaneous (i.e. faster than light) information exchange?

[Angeleyes]

angeleyes,

what conditions do you believe are suitable for a massive particle to travel superluminally?

Hi Narrowbandpaul

I am not aware of any conditions that Science knows of at this time to allow such a thing but in saying that i can not claim to know much about this .

If i had to have a wild guess i will go with a super massive black hole.

Another guess for the cooking pot may be if gravity coupled with dark matter and magnetic field can bend space itself forming what i think they call a worm hole????

To me this like asking what is outside space itself or how big is space and what was there before the big bang?????

I do hope a way can be found but i wont hold my breath lol