speed of light

[B2019]

so do you think we can travel at the speed of light?

einstiens rule of E=MC² basically states that it is imposible to get to that speed.

also, would we be able to travel so fast that we can see things before they actually happen?

(E=MC² states taht we cant go aster than light, because as we speed up, we gain more mass. there will be a "max speed" that anything can travel, as we will get so heavy, it will start to slow us down)

[Sorrow]

Well, when flying at the speed of light you would need an infinite amount of energy since you yourself have got infinite mass all of a sudden. so... that's not gonna work

flying at the speed of light or faster then will probably be a weird experience, I think you won't be able to see anything.
or maybe fast flashes of what's already a few trillion miles behind you.

[zombie@computer]

faster than light travel is impossible, though you can get around it. String theory, worm holes, event horizon (the movie) things like that. Dont see that happen very soon, but omg it would be very cool to live in that time

[B2019]

well u could take the futureama aproach, move at allmost the speed of light and then make the whole universe move at the speed of light, therefore causing u to travel to places in half the time!

but when i say see the future, i mean that if you see someone move from one side of the room to the other at such a speed, u would see it before it happened! therefore, predicting the future, but does that then mean we dont have free will??
freaky :S

[mrmonkah]

If you travel faster than the speed of light, time goes backwards to the observer.

Imagine moving away from a clock gradually getting faster until you break to speed of light barrier. At first light traveling from the clock would reach you no problem, and the clock would seem to 'tick' as normal. BUT, when you begin to go faster than the speed of light, you are catching up with light that left the clock earlier so you seem to be seeing the clock go backwards. (More likley you wouldnt see anything)

However, like others mentioned before. Traveling faster than light needs infinate energy. Worm holes, loop holes, big holes what ever, its just theoretic and so not entirely plausable, yes even Hollywood got it wrong!

Never say never though, perhaps one day!

Dan

[Mr. Happy]

well u could take the futureama aproach, move at allmost the speed of light and then make the whole universe move at the speed of light, therefore causing u to travel to places in half the time!

but when i say see the future, i mean that if you see someone move from one side of the room to the other at such a speed, u would see it before it happened! therefore, predicting the future, but does that then mean we dont have free will??
freaky :S

Researchers have already observed light pulses exiting a test chamber before they entered, thus seeing something before it happened. However, the light wasnt move faster than c, it was a result of relativity of observers.

I remember reading somewhere, or maybe it was a lecture, that anyhting can move faster than light. It just can't reach]/i] the speed, because nothing can move [i]at the speed of light except electromagnetic waves. So, if there was something that inherently always moved faster than light, it would, but nothing can accelerate to that point.

[Sorrow]

tachyons and stuff right? or?

[Mr. Happy]

Yeah, tachyons sound right

[slayera]

Even traveling at the speed of light it will still take over 4 years to travel to the next solar system, Alpha Centauri. Then another 6 years to the next closest and it just get worst from there. IIRC the chance of even finding solar system with a planet within 10 LY or more is slim to none. Alpha Centauri is a trinary system and the next 2 are red dwarfs, next is binary, and so on.

So we better find a loophole somewhere if we really want to start traveling the stars, that or live for a very, very long time.

[ferret]

if Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away, and you are traveling at 99.5% the speed of light (since the speed of light is unattainable), then 4 years would pass for the travelers but 40 years would pass on earth.

After coming back on the 8 year round trip it will be 80 years in the future. Everyone you know will be dead!

and even if they did that, there would be no way to communicate while in motion, and it would take transmissions 4 years to get back home once they arrived at Alpha Centauri.

wow, my head hurts

[Mr. Happy]

...and the apes will have taken over.


j.k

I think well find a way to construct wormholes in the next couple hundred years. Cant be that hard

[Sorrow]

actually travelling through them and retaining your real self when coming out the other side is the second hurdle then.

[TKAzA]

okay so technically if you travel faster than light you can go forward, what about if you do that in reverse, technically you can go back in time, then again the theory of relativity states you can not be in 2 space times at once or you will break the space time - there for time travel is a no go

Speed of light well on this im pretty much its not possible
If you was to board a ship that had FLT travel and you travelled for 1 month on the ship
That 1 month FTL time when the time back on earth would be normal
that being said, you would age one month and you family on earth would age years, there for making it seem like time travel and there for breaking the theory of relativity

[Mr. Happy]

It wouldnt break the theory of relativity. That is the theory of relativity, that every thing is...relative. We've actually experienced it using atomic clocks in supersonic speeds in high altitude flights, they measured that a few nanoseconds or so less time had passed on the jet.

Time travel, into the past, has been proven to be possible within the generally expected theories of physics iirc. Just gotta figure out how to move stars.

Are you sure that being in two places at the same time breaks the rules of relativity, or is it conservation of matter/energy?

EDIT:

You can't have a negative velocity, moving at c in 'reverse' isnt possible, even conceptually.

[ferret]

sadly there will never be any time travel to the past.

time can only move in one direction: forward

it can only dilate because of different reference frames