Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

[crashman]

I read one of the science articles that there are particles called tachyons that can travel 1.7 times faster than the speed of light. I think this is fake. whats your input guys?

sorry for my broken english.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

link?

 

[spoirier]

Tachyons are the famous invisible pink unicorns of physics.
Of course, in water or anything where the speed of light is <c, some particles can go faster than light, but always <c.
This book does not seem very serious as it mixes so much things. Does it give a reference of some more serious stuff on this point ?

 

[crashman]

I read the book 'Our Secret Planet' author by Christian Von Nidda. I know its bullshit. Theres no such thing as faster than the speed of light. If theres any, time travel is possible.

 

[spoirier]

If it was true, it would already be mentioned there. It's not.

 

[Anthile]

 

[KazeCraven]

Did someone change the wiki page today?

Because it's here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tachyon04s.gif

Edit: Oh wait, this is a hypothetical particle.

 

[BigApplePi]

Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

Certainly. Your mind is faster. When you think of an object light years away and come back to Earth you mind has traveled light years faster than light. Beat that!

 

[citrusbreath95]

Scientifically, so far, no, as isnt this the basis on many theories, one famous being the Theory of Relativity as space and time distort to accomadate where time does not (they cannot accelerate/keep up with light as it's the fastest thing at the moment)...though I wouldn't automatically reject the idea as we're learning new things in science each day. A long time ago did we envision a nuclear reaction just from splitting atoms? Or did we think of antimatter? No, we learned it along the way as science progressed, so so far nothing is greater, yet I still have faith we may find something, and this something would make even imaginative concepts such as time travel possible, though, that could be very far into the future, or it could only be a year from now (wouldnt it be great to personally discover such a thing?)

 

[Madoness]

Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

Certainly. Your mind is faster. When you think of an object light years away and come back to Earth you mind has traveled light years faster than light. Beat that!

Okay, I'll apply the same logic.
I went to China, Russia and Canada under a second....!

This logic rocks!

Dmn... it doesn't work that way.... I wasn't there was I?

 

[Architectonic]

They should change the name of the field from "theoretical physics" to "hypothetical physics".

 

[Polaris]

Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

Certainly. Your mind is faster. When you think of an object light years away and come back to Earth you mind has traveled light years faster than light. Beat that!

*chuckle*

I was going to reply "my synapses".

 

[BigApplePi]

Okay, I'll apply the same logic.
I went to China, Russia and Canada under a second....!

This logic rocks!

Dmn... it doesn't work that way.... I wasn't there was I?

You may have thought you done it but it doesn't count unless it's quality time. Thimk quality. Also if yer going to pass thru China you have to show us some souvenirs.

 

[walfin]

I was going to reply "my synapses".

Only way electrons can be faster than photons, then.

 

[Latro]

According to special relativity, a particle which has imaginary (in the mathematical sense) mass must necessarily move faster than the speed of light in order for the total energy associated with it to be a real number (the implications of imaginary energy are probably even more confusing than imaginary mass). "Tachyon" is the term given to such a particle. Whether such a thing exists is unknown, but if it did exist it couldn't really interact with real matter in any way, and so it is not really very interesting for practical application.

 

[Madoness]

You may have thought you done it but it doesn't count unless it's quality time. Thimk quality. Also if yer going to pass thru China you have to show us some souvenirs.

I have some "original" Niice's and Adibas's that are made in China.... is that enough?

 

[Alice?]

Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

Certainly. Your mind is faster. When you think of an object light years away and come back to Earth you mind has traveled light years faster than light. Beat that!

Hehe,

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/de...speed-of-thought/?searchterm=speed of thought

 

[Madoness]

Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

Certainly. Your mind is faster. When you think of an object light years away and come back to Earth you mind has traveled light years faster than light. Beat that!

Actually.... do a one quick experiment.... Bring a person to a dark room with his or her eyes closed.... and then turn on the lights... if he or she did know what was in the room just before the light hit, then the thought would be faster, if not, then no.... our thoughts are slower.

I know it is unfair, as we cannot know what is before the light is on so we'd see..... I'd give a second before the light would be turned off again and ask later how many things would he or she remember. To determine the speed on thoughts.

Given that a normal person would remember maximum of five things on an average in short term memory. Then if answers would be maximum of 4 correct ones, given also, a thought would be maximum on 700 milliseconds. We could calculate how much light would have been travelling and how many thoughts are been processed correctly, we could determine how much slower really our brain is just because we would have to first analyze thoughts before accepting new one.

 

[Anthile]

Trouble travels also multiple times faster than light.

 

[Hawkeye]

The expansion of space gives the illusion of distant galaxies moving faster than the speed of light.

 

[BigApplePi]

I don't know where this energy equation comes from, but is the equation the reason the speed of light has a limit?

Because if we can break the equation in real terms, we can exceed light speed. What assumptions went into the making of this equation?

 

[Latro]

I don't know where this energy equation comes from, but is the equation the reason the speed of light has a limit?

Because if we can break the equation in real terms, we can exceed light speed. What assumptions went into the making of this equation?

The assumptions of special relativity. The central such assumption is the constancy of the speed of light irrespective of one's frame of reference, which has HUGE support from experiment.

What that equation tells us though is that as we approach light speed from sub-light speed as a particle that has mass, we get more and more energy, and in fact gain energy without bound. This is a problem, because mathematically the implications of there even being infinite energy in the universe are extremely problematic.

 

[BigApplePi]

The assumptions of special relativity. The central such assumption is the constancy of the speed of light irrespective of one's frame of reference, which has HUGE support from experiment.

What that equation tells us though is that as we approach light speed from sub-light speed as a particle that has mass, we get more and more energy, and in fact gain energy without bound. This is a problem, because mathematically the implications of there even being infinite energy in the universe are extremely problematic.

Or we could conclude that those particles with any mass at all must be slower than light-speed. I know some "wavi-particles" are said to have no mass. That would leave the equation as 0/0 or not applicable and therefore okay. I don't recall if electrons and photons have zero mass, not that I know what either of those are.

Wait a minute. Did I misunderstand that equation? I thought E = mc²?

 

[Yossarian]

"Tachyon" is the term given to such a particle. Whether such a thing exists is unknown, but if it did exist it couldn't really interact with real matter in any way, and so it is not really very interesting for practical application.

Unless you are Adrian Veidt and you need a clever way to obstruct Dr. Manhattan's foresight!


Tachyon's yes, faster than light, move backwards in time.

The theory is that events that happen are as much contingent on their final destination as they are on there origin, almost like there is no cause and effect, the effect is the cause, and vice versa.

Let's say light leaves the sun and eight minutes later hits my car. When light left the sun at the beginning, at the same time there were tachyons flying backwards in time from my car to the sun. Had there not been tachyons, there would be no light beam, and had there been no light beam, there would be no tachyons. Time is a continuity, past, present, and future are all contingent on one another. Another way of saying this is that everything that happens is predetermined.

It really is very similar to the way Dr. Manhattan perceives time in Watchmen if you have ever seen the movie! He can see at time and space and subatomic events and because of this he perceives all time as a single unified and unchangeable thing. It is only when Adrian Veidt sends fluxs of tachyons at Dr. M that he loses this perception.

Tachyons do not have mass, the main deterrent in preventing faster than light travel. Thus they get around the problems associated with traditional relativistic equations such as needing infinite energy to propel them (another way to think of this is that as an objects mass nears the speed of light, it's mass increases exponentially, hence the necessity of the infinite energy)

To my knowledge tachyons have not been isolated and are still very much "unicorns".


Another interesting question, since as you approach or exceed the speed of light, distances between objects for you actually shortens (not just seemingly, it actually does), could you reach a speed where you are actually everywhere at once because the distance between things in relation to you is 0?

 

[walfin]

Another interesting question, since as you approach or exceed the speed of light, distances between objects for you actually shortens (not just seemingly, it actually does), could you reach a speed where you are actually everywhere at once because the distance between things in relation to you is 0?

There must be a being like that. God.

 

[Latro]

Or we could conclude that those particles with any mass at all must be slower than light-speed. I know some "wavi-particles" are said to have no mass. That would leave the equation as 0/0 or not applicable and therefore okay. I don't recall if electrons and photons have zero mass, not that I know what either of those are.

Wait a minute. Did I misunderstand that equation? I thought E = mc²?

It does, just when the object is at rest, which you can see by putting in v=0. That equation allows you to track the object's energy as its velocity changes while considering relativistic effects. For small v, the energy change is about the same as the kinetic energy that objects gain in Newtonian mechanics (which, once you know the object's rest energy is mc^2 (which doesn't come from Newtonian mechanics anyway), would predict its total energy to be m(c^2+(v^2)/2)). For large v the differences grow more and more significant.

 

[Jah]

Short answer:
According to General Relativity, No.
According to Quantum Theory, Maybe.

The question about the car driving at 10 mph slower than the speed of light (c - 10mph, then turning on the light. The light would, according the GR, move at the speed of light, c.
Which would mean that relative to the car it would move 10 mph faster than the car.

At least, that is if I have understood the theory correctly.

 

[Latro]

Short answer:
According to General Relativity, No.
According to Quantum Theory, Maybe.

The question about the car driving at 10 mph slower than the speed of light (c - 10mph, then turning on the light. The light would, according the GR, move at the speed of light, c.
Which would mean that relative to the car it would move 10 mph faster than the car.

At least, that is if I have understood the theory correctly.

Light in a vacuum moves at c relative to anything. So it moves at c relative to someone watching the car passing by and at c relative to the person in the car. Yes, this is counterintuitive. Experiments, and also Maxwell's equations if you assume that they apply after relativistic coordinate transformations, show this, however.

 

[Jah]

Ah.

Light is always moving at the speed of light relative to the point of observation.

That means that if you drive a car at 10 mph slower than the speed of light you'd see the light leave your car at the speed of light, whereas an observer from the outside would see the light as moving away from your car at 10 mph.

This is because the time of the person in the car is relatively slower than that of the person who is standing still.

As per the twin-paradox (where one twin stays on earth while the other leaves in a space ship traveling at near the speed of light. When the space-twin returns after what to him seems like 10 seconds, a ridiculous amount of time will have passed for his earth-twin, which will now be much much older, possibly dead from old age.)


Then there is the possibility of faster than light travel, in a sense, but since we measure speed in distance per unit of time, and time stops at the speed of light, it is also impossible.
As you can have somebody moving at the speed of light relative to the person in the car, that moves at the speed of light, which to somebody who stands still seem like c + c.

Then also, because of the time-paradox, the person who is traveling in the first car will seem to stand completely still in time relative to the still-standing person. While the same goes for the person traveling at the speed of light relative to that person in car no.1 .

(But won't this also imply that the person who is standing still is relative to the person traveling also moving in c, only in the other direction ?)



Btw. Thanks Latro, for pointing out my mistake, it helped me realize how the theory really works..

 

[Vrecknidj]

It all depends upon what you mean by "fast."

Dave

 

[pjoa09]

Is there such thing faster than the speed of light?

Certainly. Your mind is faster. When you think of an object light years away and come back to Earth you mind has traveled light years faster than light. Beat that!

cheers.. awesome..

 

[Jah]

Velocity is measured in distance over time. right ?

What about when you reach the speed at which your time stops relative to the observer ?

(That is, since we have proven experimentally (in the 70ies with atomic clocks flown around the earth) that something moving in relation to something standing still will move slower in time, there is logically an ultimate boundary to when you stop moving in relation to the standing object, at which point it ceases to be able to measure you in m/s since you don't move in time, relative to the observer, though relative to your observation you will always be the object against which all other measurements need to be measured.)

Perhaps the speed of light is only a measure of how fast we can apprehend it...

example:
If a person moves away from earth at X m/s (Santa Claus perhaps with supersonic/superphotonic reindeer), then the light from earth will pass him in C relative to him, right ?
Which means that relative to him Light moves faster away from earth than the speed of light...


I've been wondering, if he moves in a way that relative to some observation point in space, directly towards it, between earth and this observation point, he moves at a speed faster than light.
Will this then wipe away a series of light traveling from earth towards the observer, making earth blink out for a moment for the observer at the point ?

 

[citrusbreath95]

If one were to outrun the speed of light, what would one find? Wouldn't it be utter darkness, as light itself needs to come into contact with that area? If not, wouldn't this mean that perhaps something faster than light does indeed exist, to complete the balance of things, if light was missing from the equation?

 

[miyuki]

no. that i mean.. not that people know of (proven). as they say, you can go forward in time, but you can't go backwards!

i read about tachyons, but i forgot all about what it really was. heh. i'm such a novice.

but maybe. i think so.
i think it's possible, but not in this dimension. so we'd have to abandon all the rules we know. exciting.

i always wonder, is light the (or, a) key? to eternity? or just another dimension?

if you go faster then time, would you go backwards into time? apparently the hypothetical tachyons do this. which makes me think of this one Buddhist saying ... the 9th bull.

Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning!
Dwelling in one's true abode, unconcerned with that without --
The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red.

sorry o.o, i'm not backed by strong logic. but working on it. one step at a time ... or should i even? -eyes roll up-

 

[nexion]

Jokes aside, that is a real principle. Quantum entanglement is an amazing thing.

To answer the question, it is theoretically possible, as quantum physics is still a young field, and most everything researched in it so far has blown conventional physics out of the water. However, I seriously doubt it. To go the speed of light requires no mass, so would going faster require negative mass? I just don't see that as possible.