Faster than the speed of light?

[Mr deez]

A massive deal to scientists..

Faster than light particles found, claim scientists | Science | The Guardian

I know it's a fundamental scientific belief from Einstein, but why would it be such a big deal that things move faster than light?

Because things move so quick they change before humans can comprehend them does not mean they are moving back in 'time' surely?

 

[dingodan]

Im not sure if Im going to explain this very well, but I will try.

Basically the theory of relativity deals with the relationship between space and time.

Since space and time are relative we now refer to space-time rather than as two seperate things.

The relationship relates to speed through space and the passing of time and the relationship is inverse.

This means that the faster you go through space, the slower you experience the passage of time.

Imagine two continuums from 1 - 10, one representing speed (through space) and the other representing the passage of time.

As one increases the other decreases, increase your speed through space, and you are decreasing the passage of time.

10 on the speed (space) scale represents lightspeed, because when speed is this fast time stops. Time does not pass at lightspeed (time = 0). As speed decreases the passage of time increases, meaning that were you to slow speed to say half lightspeed, 5, the passage of time increases to 5.

We, as humans living on earth, experience only a very franctional speed (we never move through space very fast) so our experience of time is pretty standard even if we get on a fast jet there is no measurable difference to our experience of time. We could consider ourselves experiencing space @ a 1 and thus time at a 9, meaning we experience time pass very quickly.

This discovery, of particles travelling beyond the speed of light, is strange because once time has stopped it cannot slow any further. If we set speed through space to 11 on our scale (i.e. faster than the speed of light), then time must be -1 on our scale (in theory moving backwards).

Crazy stuff.

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There is a good article on this subject here: A Trip Forward in Time. Your Travel Agent: Einstein. - New York Times

"If you take a plane east around the world you will come back 59 nanoseconds younger than if you had stayed home"

"The record holder for this type of travel, he said, is the Russian astronaut Sergei Krikalev, who came back from 748 days orbiting in the Mir space station a full one-fiftieth of a second younger than he would have if he had stayed on the ground."

 

[Mr deez]

Im not sure if Im going to explain this very well, but I will try.

Basically the theory of relativity deals with the relationship between space and time.

Since space and time are relative we now refer to space-time rather than as two seperate things.

The relationship relates to speed through space and the passing of time and the relationship is inverse.

This means that the faster you go through space, the slower you experience the passage of time.

Imagine two continuums from 1 - 10, one representing speed (through space) and the other representing the passage of time.

As one increases the other decreases, increase your speed through space, and you are decreasing the passage of time.

10 on the speed (space) scale represents lightspeed, because when speed is this fast time stops. Time does not pass at lightspeed (space = 0). As speed decreases the passage of time increases, meaning that were you to slow speed to say half lightspeed, 5, the passage of time increases to 5.

We, as humans living on earth, experience only a very franctional speed (we never move through space very fast) so our experience of time is pretty standard even if we get on a fast jet there is no measurable difference to our experience of time. We could consider ourselves experiencing space @ a 1 and thus time at a 9, meaning we experience time pass very quickly.

This discovery, of particles travelling beyond the speed of light, is strange because once time has stopped it cannot slow any further. If we set speed through space to 11 on our scale (i.e. faster than the speed of light), then time must be -1 on our scale (in theory moving backwards).

Crazy stuff.

The reality is we can never understand the nature of the universe - eventually, whatever science believes as 'fact' will change.

Time is a concept so why does space & speed have anything to do with it?

As we can apparently measure the speed of light, is it any surprise that 'unknowns' are quicker?

Is Einstein the new flat earth theorist?

 

[dingodan]

The reality is we can never understand the nature of the universe - eventually, whatever science believes as 'fact' will change.

Time is a concept so why does space & speed have anything to do with it?

As we can apparently measure the speed of light, is it any surprise that 'unknowns' are quicker?

Is Einstein the new flat earth theorist?

Time is not an isolated construct, its not a product of our mind and its not linear. If you and I took two watches and sychronised them and you shot off into space for a trip to mars and back, and lets say you hit significant speeds (any decent proportion of light speed), when you return my watch will be ahead of your watch.

Infact if you went fast enough for long enough, you could come back to a world 10 years into the future, while you have hardly aged at all. Hence the sci-fi stories of that kind of stuff.

This fundimental relationship between space and time is what is so amazing about special relativity, but its hard to get your head around at first.

 

[Nottseagull]

Infact if you went fast enough for long enough, you could come back to a world 10 years into the future, while you have hardly aged at all. Hence the sci-fi stories of that kind of stuff.
This fundimental relationship between space and time is what is so amazing about special relativity, but its hard to get your head around at first.

Or hard to get your head round at all, to the extent that I don't actually believe that time would pass at a different speed, however high a velocity I was travelling at. The laws of physics should be the same throughout the Universe, therefore the time measurements should be identical. Sorry, Einstein!

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Or hard to get your head round at all, to the extent that I don't actually believe that time would pass at a different speed, however high a velocity I was travelling at. The laws of physics should be the same throughout the Universe, therefore the time measurements should be identical. Sorry, Einstein!

It is proved though, by setting atomic clocks (measure time to tiny fractions) at the same time, leaving one on earth and flying the other around in an airplane for a bit, when the plane landed, the clock on the plane was showing an earlier time than the one that stayed on the ground.

Remember the key word here is 'relativity' - i.e. everything is relative to the observer. There's an analogy to do with trains - if you're on a train moving at 100 mph, and a car travels alongside at 100mph, viewed in isolation the car will appear stationery to you, but travelling fast to an observer on the side of the road.

So to you, travelling around in your spaceship, time would appear to pass at the same rate it always passes. If you were travelling at the speed of light you could go to bed, have a sleep, get up, have a cup of tea, go back to earth and find that the world is thousands of years in its future. That would be a mind-f***.


So Dingodan, I know that time slows when objects move faster, but has it been 'proved' that it stops at the speed of light, i.e. that that is the absolute speed?

 

[dingodan]

Or hard to get your head round at all, to the extent that I don't actually believe that time would pass at a different speed, however high a velocity I was travelling at. The laws of physics should be the same throughout the Universe, therefore the time measurements should be identical. Sorry, Einstein!

@ the universe

 

[dingodan]

So Dingodan, I know that time slows when objects move faster, but has it been 'proved' that it stops at the speed of light, i.e. that that is the absolute speed?

If you apply the principles of special relativity, and consider that light is a) very fast and b) does not age (pass through time), it makes sense.

The question is, how do we know that light does not pass through time. That is more complicated to answer. My understanding is that no time passes (for the photon) between when it is emitted and when it is absorbed. In fact I think that the implications of the way light works are that there is no time or distance between point A (emission) and point B (absorbtion), despite what we experience. But this starts to go over my head at this point tbh.

 

[Brightonfan1983]

Im not sure if Im going to explain this very well, but I will try.

Basically the theory of relativity deals with the relationship between space and time.

Since space and time are relative we now refer to space-time rather than as two seperate things.

The relationship relates to speed through space and the passing of time and the relationship is inverse.

This means that the faster you go through space, the slower you experience the passage of time.

Imagine two continuums from 1 - 10, one representing speed (through space) and the other representing the passage of time.

As one increases the other decreases, increase your speed through space, and you are decreasing the passage of time.

10 on the speed (space) scale represents lightspeed, because when speed is this fast time stops. Time does not pass at lightspeed (time = 0). As speed decreases the passage of time increases, meaning that were you to slow speed to say half lightspeed, 5, the passage of time increases to 5.

We, as humans living on earth, experience only a very franctional speed (we never move through space very fast) so our experience of time is pretty standard even if we get on a fast jet there is no measurable difference to our experience of time. We could consider ourselves experiencing space @ a 1 and thus time at a 9, meaning we experience time pass very quickly.

This discovery, of particles travelling beyond the speed of light, is strange because once time has stopped it cannot slow any further. If we set speed through space to 11 on our scale (i.e. faster than the speed of light), then time must be -1 on our scale (in theory moving backwards).

Crazy stuff.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a good article on this subject here: A Trip Forward in Time. Your Travel Agent: Einstein. - New York Times

"If you take a plane east around the world you will come back 59 nanoseconds younger than if you had stayed home"

"The record holder for this type of travel, he said, is the Russian astronaut Sergei Krikalev, who came back from 748 days orbiting in the Mir space station a full one-fiftieth of a second younger than he would have if he had stayed on the ground."

Phew. For a minute there I thought you were going to mention the 9/11 conspiracy again!

 

[Brightonfan1983]

So Dingodan, I know that time slows when objects move faster, but has it been 'proved' that it stops at the speed of light, i.e. that that is the absolute speed?

Is it this?: it's a theory, and until yesterday it was thought impossible for things to travel at or beyond the speed of light; ie. it couldn't be 'proved', it was just the logical extension of the theory.

 

[m20gull]

There's nothing in special relativity that prevents faster than light travel. You cannot however accelerate something from below to above as it would take an infinite amount of energy.

 

[Gazwag]

I thought this was going to be another kll song thread.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Mind-boggling stuff

 

[Kazenga <3]

too early for this

 

[sten_super]

Is it this?: it's a theory, and until yesterday it was thought impossible for things to travel at or beyond the speed of light; ie. it couldn't be 'proved', it was just the logical extension of the theory.

This is what the results suggest (if they can be verified and repeated) - that the speed of light, which was previously thought of as the maximum speed, is in fact not so.

edit to add: Of course these particles were only travelling ever-so-slightly faster than the speed of light. So we're not looking at time travel just yet! But the point is that these results (again, I can't stress enough, if verified) suggest that it is possible to achieve a speed faster than light, and at the moment we don't know how much faster than light it may be possible to go.

I love this quote from the article;

Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered.

 

[beorhthelm]

I know it's a fundamental scientific belief from Einstein, but why would it be such a big deal that things move faster than light?

Because things move so quick they change before humans can comprehend them does not mean they are moving back in 'time' surely?

im not sure it will mean much practically, and the time travel thing is just for sensationalism. at the atomic level relativity means f*** all so it doesnt seem to me out of the question that at the speed of light or faster a different set of rules migth be required. its known that some form of interaction can occur faster than light (quantum entanglement, proven though experimentation) just not how, so theres been an elephant in the physics lab for some time.

love this quote, for its frank langauge
"If we do not have causality, we are buggered." - Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University

 

[shaolinpunk]

What I'm interested in by all this is are there likely to any practical applications to all this?

Warp speed, anyone?

 

[withdeanwombat]

If Sky Sport had aligned itself to the new particles would I have had the time to reverse my decision on buying a season ticket ? Or would I have needed to attach myself to the particles travelling the other way ?

 

[Brovion]

I too liked the "If we don't have causality we are buggered!" quote, but from my first reading of the article I don't see how the experiment counters that? After all there was still a 'cause' (the neutrinos being emitted) and an 'effect' (the neutrinos arriving at the measuring device). All that's happened is they got there a bit quicker then they were expecting. They didn't arrive before they were emitted did they?

 

[Max Paper]

So did Biff get knocked out at the enchantment under the sea dance or not?