Faster than Light!

[ALZU]

Apparently, quantum tunneling allows subatomic particles to break the laws of physics WTF?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...-of-light.html

[♔Jean-Luc Picard♔]

Interesting. This could lead to some very useful applications in space exploration if it can be generated to move something of significant mass.

[ALZU]

I believe it would be catastrophic, something like Event Horizon (the movie).
It says an astronaut would reach his destination before leaving which is giving headakes because I cant understeand it

My brain is like WTF??!!

[Playfishpaste]

No it doesn't.

Quantum tunneling is simply using spacetime efficiently, not circumventing it's rules.

[Killerbee]

It says an astronaut would reach his destination before leaving which is giving headakes because I cant understeand it

What they mean is the following :

We, people, and most things on earth are dark figures, that only "reflect" light, instead of making it. This light is being sent to all places in the universe. Even though light is fast, the universe is gigantic, so it even takes light a long time to arrive at a place. This explainse why we can still see stars, who don't even exist anymore. So an astronaut, who went faster than light to a planet , could still see himself, as the light he "reflects" is still on the way to that planet.

So if you would go to a place a gazillion light years away, and you'd have the best teloscope ever, you'd be able to see in the past, as the light that was sent then, is still on it's way to that planet.

Hope you understand it a bit

Btw, this is all what my teacher fysics told me

Oh, FFS. You can't break the laws of the physics; that's why they're the laws of physics.

But didn't they once think that the speed of sound couldn't be broken ?

[MaximiIian]

But didn't they once think that the speed of sound couldn't be broken ?

No. That's preposterous. It's been observed, even before we calculated the speeds of sound and light, that light travels faster than light. Lightning being seen before it's heard, et al.

[ALZU]

What they mean is the following :

We, people, and most things on earth are dark figures, that only "reflect" light, instead of making it. This light is being sent to all places in the universe. Even though light is fast, the universe is gigantic, so it even takes light a long time to arrive at a place. This explainse why we can still see stars, who don't even exist anymore. So an astronaut, who went faster than light to a planet , could still see himself, as the light he "reflects" is still on the way to that planet.
So if you would go to a place a gazillion light years away, and you'd have the best teloscope ever, you'd be able to see in the past, as the light that was sent then, is still on it's way to that planet.
Hope you understand it a bit
Btw, this is all what my teacher fysics told me

Got it perfectly at ther third read thx

Oh, FFS. You can't break the laws of the physics; that's why they're the laws of physics.

Yes but these laws are made by phisics, and they can be rewritten if proven wrong. Earth was a cube over elephants over turtles in a giant sea, until the idea was prooved to be retarded.

[Snoopy]

Oh, FFS. You can't break the laws of the physics; that's why they're the laws of physics.

The laws of physics are a THEOREM of Science, despite the name. That does NOT mean it is a Theory (it has been proven right on every occasion and hasn't been disproven), that means it is essentially considered a fact UNTIL something arrives to disprove it (in this case, something going faster than light, or a fossil of a human in the Cambrian period for Evolution). Laws are not rigid in science, because otherwise things cannot be outdated by future discovery, and we cannot advance in the slightest (you can only go so far with partially flawed theories)

[Morkonan]

Apparently, quantum tunneling allows subatomic particles to break the laws of physics WTF?

No. Quantum tunneling, spooky action at a distance, quantum teleportation, etc.. do not "break" the rules of physics. In many cases, they're simply misunderstood. At best, they use "tricks" but, AFAIK, no true information exchange has yet to be recorded at speeds exceeding light. A mass-bearing particle or otherwise information bearing particle can not travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum in normal space.

Everyone wants that idea to be falsified though. But, it seems pretty consistent. If it was falsified, that could give rise to certain dilemmas and we'd have to take a really big eraser to the theoretical physics blackboard. It'd make all the front pages of the newspapers though. Maybe, even before it happened!

[Simetrical]

Big deal. A few scientists claim that maybe they found a contradiction of special relativity. It's not published, it's not peer-reviewed, it's not reproduced elsewhere. It's probably just an attempt to get media attention. Scientists always try to get attention with flashy claims that will impress the plebs. Published research is generally the important thing.

[Morkonan]

Big deal. A few scientists claim that maybe they found a contradiction of special relativity. It's not published, it's not peer-reviewed, it's not reproduced elsewhere. It's probably just an attempt to get media attention. Scientists always try to get attention with flashy claims that will impress the plebs. Published research is generally the important thing.

/agree

But, it's also two years old so.. I imagine it'd be all the rage at the talkshows by now if they had truly established the claims in the article.

[MaximiIian]

Apparently, quantum tunneling allows subatomic particles to break the laws of physics WTF?

Oh, FFS. You can't break the laws of the physics; that's why they're the laws of physics.
Quantum tunnelling is a scarcely-understood idea, and really it just bends spacetime and uses relativity effectively.

[Admiral Piett]

I think that the material shooting out of quasars are usually faster than speed of light if I'm not mistaken.

[Lovejoy]

There is not a theory in the universe I would be happier to debunk than the 'faster than light speed limit'. Unfortunately, this do not seem to be it.

[Killerbee]

I really doubt that. Anyone can see that thunder perceptibly follows lightning, and it's not too hard to observe the phenomenon in more terrestrial situations as well. Just stand a few hundred feet away from someone and watch them do something noisy, like set off a firecracker. You should notice a definite lag if you're paying attention.

That's true, but i meant that the speed of light couldn't be broken by something mankind created : A car, airplane, ...

Oh, and though I'm still really young, and don't have any insights on time etc, i really doubt it's possible to actually go back in time.

[Morkonan]

That's true, but i meant that the speed of light couldn't be broken by something mankind created : A car, airplane, ...

It really has nothing at all to do with some as-yet-unknown technology mankind or some alien civilization has come up with. It's simply not possible to do.

I'm not a physicist or a student of physics, just a hobbyist who enjoys the general subject. Someone else may be able to explain it better, I'm sure about that! But, I'll try to lay out a simplified version suitable for amazing your friends and impressing girls.... I'll try to explain it appropriately but that understanding might depend upon how much math you have had:

You've heard of E=mc², right? That's Einsteins famous formula. (The amount of energy represented by an object is its mass times the speed of light squared.) Well, we're going to use some ideas that come out of that to explain why something with mass can not travel faster than the speed of light. This means that, in our reality in real space and not in any science fiction book or residing within someone's playful imagination, it is not possible to for anything with mass to travel faster than the speed of light no matter how big of an engine you could ever possibly strap onto it.

An object with any mass has traveling at a velocity (speed) has "momentum." That idea is represented as mv or mass times velocity.

An object's inertia is proportional to its mass. Inertia keeps the object moving in the same direction until some other force is applied which then causes acceleration. That force "adds energy" to the object which increases it's speed, right?

You push things to make them go, the more you push, the faster they go, the more energy they have.

All of this energy is represented as the object's "kinetic energy." That is it's momentum times its velocity divided by two. Which is.. (gotta go to images..)



Now, from that formula, you can also figure out how much energy you would need to accelerate an object at rest with mass (m) into motion of velocity (v). So, if you know those numbers you can plug them in and get a correct answer just like with any other equation.

BUT, that only works with Newton's version of relativity. That doesn't work with Einstein's relativity which is the more exact notion. Newton's works just fine for doing everything from launching rockets into space to throwing a baseball from here to the other side of the Milky Way galaxy... it's just not entirely correct.

There is something called the Lorentz transformation. That appropriately describes the contraction of space and dilation of time in the direction of relative motion under good old Einstein's rules which seem to be exactly appropriate for determining this kind of thing.

This is the good part so.. pay attention.

In order to translate a Newtonian version of the amount of energy necessary to accelerate an object to the speed of light (look at the first formula) we must include Lorentz's equations and put Einstein's special relativity stamp on it to make it official! Here is the equation:



Notice the similarities with the first equation? See the extra bit? Do you recognize Einstein's famous "E=mc²?" Yup, told ya we would use it! OK, this is where it becomes pretty obvious you can't accelerate anything with mass to the speed of light according to Einstein's relativity which, so far, appears to be entirely correct.

"c" is the speed of light in a vacuum.
"v" is the object's velocity
"m" is the object's mass
"E" is the energy represented

What happens in the equation as the object's velocity approaches the speed of light? See the " v²/c² " portion in the bottom. Well, it starts to approach 1. What happens when it reaches 1?

When it reaches 1, that would be the object traveling at the speed of light. What happens in the denominator then? 1-1=0, that's what happens!!!!! What does that mean? Well, that means that we'd be dividing by zero, doesn't it? See how the denominator would be zero? Dividing by zeros is bad, mmkay. Very bad.

What happens in that equation if all that gobbity-gook in the denominator is "0" (Zero)? Easy - We get "Infinity" for the answer to E. What does that mean? It means it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object that has mass to the speed of light.

How much energy is that? Well.. an infinite amount. How do you get an infinite amount of energy? What store sells that in our Universe? What company manufactures infinite energy engines? The answer is, you simply don't obtain it no matter what you do.

No matter what you strap onto a brick, no matter how powerful the engine, no matter what technology you use to push that brick, eventually there will come a point in time where no amount of energy available will be able to accelerate that brick to the speed of light. It's... simply... not... possible.

Of course, things are subject to change. But, it doesn't appear this is one of those things.

(Note: I'm just a fan of physics, not a student of it. So, there are some problems with the equations that, while in no way material to the discussion, a physicist/advanced student/etc may have issue with. But, they're just fine for a general explanation.)

[Ummon]

I remembered incorrectly!

It was E = Υv, the other explains why the object must have no mass to reach light speed.

[Doctor]

Reminds me of the Pons and Fleischmann...

[Ummon]

Well, in a way:

Y (gamma) = 1/sqrt(1 - (v/c)²), so it was just the equation to which I applied it that was incorrect.