Slash wrote:

Milito wrote:Sorry but on what theory is this possible? because i was pretty sure none rejected the fact that the speed of light was the limit.

Traversable wormholes (that can also be man made with sufficient mass/energy), Lagrange Point lateral acceleration within a massive gravity well, Alcubierre drives, Lorrentz invariance all point to a hole in Einstein's theory. If you know anything about quantum physics you know that c is relative to the observer and not an absolute "speed limit". Just because there isn't sufficient energy to prove it doesn't mean it can't be done. One day Planck scale ramp ups will be common and the proof will be at hand. Nehme is not a quack and photons do travel faster than the speed of light.

To attempt to argue the math required to prove any of this in a forum of this nature would be idiotic at best. The character map would have a heart attack trying to type the first base equation.

DAMN SLASH...you must have read my mind...

I was about to start pulling out my old books!

Gotta love wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_covariance

Slash wrote:

Milito wrote:Sorry but on what theory is this possible? because i was pretty sure none rejected the fact that the speed of light was the limit.

Traversable wormholes (that can also be man made with sufficient mass/energy), Lagrange Point lateral acceleration within a massive gravity well, Alcubierre drives, Lorrentz invariance all point to a hole in Einstein's theory. If you know anything about quantum physics you know that c is relative to the observer and not an absolute "speed limit". Just because there isn't sufficient energy to prove it doesn't mean it can't be done. One day Planck scale ramp ups will be common and the proof will be at hand. Nehme is not a quack and photons do travel faster than the speed of light.

To attempt to argue the math required to prove any of this in a forum of this nature would be idiotic at best. The character map would have a heart attack trying to type the first base equation.

Hate to disagree with you but his theory is still standing. Photons are not made up of matter so are not included in the rule that matter cannot travel FTL. Alcubierre and Hyperspace Drives DO NOT cause an object to accelerate past the speed of light. Alcubierre (or warp) drives create an artificial bubble of regular spacetime around the ship and compress/warp space outside that bubble, allowing the vessel to cover vast distances but not actually exceed the speed of light. Hyperspace drives shunt the ship into a fourth dimension (hyperspace), where distances are shorter than real space. The ship can cover small distances in hyperspace that are relative to much larger ones in regular space. They then drop out of hyperspace at the point that corresponds to their target in normal space, giving the illusion that they have travelled FTL when their speed has actually remained a constant.

-Istalris-

Istalris wrote:Hate to disagree with you but his theory is still standing. Photons are not made up of matter so are not included in the rule that matter cannot travel FTL. Alcubierre and Hyperspace Drives DO NOT cause an object to accelerate past the speed of light. Alcubierre (or warp) drives create an artificial bubble of regular spacetime around the ship and compress/warp space outside that bubble, allowing the vessel to cover vast distances but not actually exceed the speed of light. Hyperspace drives shunt the ship into a fourth dimension (hyperspace), where distances are shorter than real space. The ship can cover small distances in hyperspace that are relative to much larger ones in regular space. They then drop out of hyperspace at the point that corresponds to their target in normal space, giving the illusion that they have travelled FTL when their speed has actually remained a constant.

-Istalris-

Istalris, please read where I wrote:

If you know anything about quantum physics you know that c is relative to the observer and not an absolute "speed limit".

All of the mentioned theories could allow a traveler to beat a beam of light shone from the earth to a distant point. Whether that is actually traveling faster than the speed of light is moot since the result ends up being the same. I guess the proper summary would be "traveling to a point faster than light's speed".

Yeah, Slash is correct. It doesn't matter if you travel faster than the speed of light. It would be better if we can move ourselves to another place faster than the speed of light in our dimension/space-time continuum without going at the speed of light. For example, I jump through a wormhole that is 5000 miles long. My starting position is near Earth and my end position is 5000 light years away from Earth. By the rate traveling in our dimension, it would be way faster than the speed of light, even though we are not going at the speed of light.

pwnage wrote:Yeah, Slash is correct. It doesn't matter if you travel faster than the speed of light. It would be better if we can move ourselves to another place faster than the speed of light in our dimension/space-time continuum without going at the speed of light. For example, I jump through a wormhole that is 5000 miles long. My starting position is near Earth and my end position is 5000 light years away from Earth. By the rate traveling in our dimension, it would be way faster than the speed of light, even though we are not going at the speed of light.

Ok, since you've been persistent with the wormholes let's clarify a couple things. Wormholes are far from proven, sorry but sci-fi isn't discovery channel. And even given their existence, they don't imply FTL travel, just a shortcut between two distant points.

To Slash:
The relativity from c to the observer is not quantum physics, it's from the special relativity theory. Quantum mechanics is a theory that works on the microscopic level, and yes, it's very chaotic. Most quantum physicists have encountered infinities in their equations, thus giving us 'hints' of possible FTL travel, wormholes (space-time ruptures), but this also predicts, in theory, the possibility to be walking on the sidewalk and the next instant be lost in the middle of mars. See why i don't take it's craziest theories too seriously? .

Let's try to keep quantum physics aside from special relativity, since they've never been very friendly to eachother, they're like water and oil. On the other hand, we could exploit a bit of super string theory, yet i haven't heard of FTL on this theory this far, and it's the only one that combines both theories in an unified theory, (at least it does if you consider all 5 string theories to be "particular cases' of one, ). Oh, and also if we believe there are 11 dimensions (rather than 3 and time).

I have to agree with you, to discuss the mathematical proof on a forum of this nature would prove rather difficult to even begin to write down the equations, and i don't hold a physics degree hate to say, yet i'm a math student about to graduate and i've worked with some of these equations in particular, that's why i'd like to see a little more than "names" and some references worth looking up. (Wikipedia is not that kind of reference) that suggest the possibility of FTL travel.

I have to agree some of these theories 'allow' to travel to a point faster than a beam of light taking a shortcut, were they true.

What do I know? I'm just an aerospace engineer making six figures.

You're the one that stated there weren't any theories. I roll some off and you get all pompous with your emoticons. Yes, I erred when I used the word quantum by I was still correct that the speed of c was relative.

Learn to argue without sounding like a jerk, okay?

How did i sound like a jerk?. I didn't mean to if that's the case, and i apologize if i did.
All emoticons were directed to the theories, and none to you. Hope you re-read my post and take it's true meaning, rather than feeling insulted by a misunderstanding. I'm not versed at forums, and i agree that the lack of feeling to a post may give it a different interpretation. Again, i'm sorry.

It's alright. Maybe I was a bit harsh, but that's what I do. Back to the arguing.

mistole wrote:

OneWingedAngel wrote:my question
does anyone think faster than light space travel will ever be possible?

I would have to answer yes to this question.

Reason being is that in just the last 150 years humanity has been able to make such significant strides in areas such as atomic theory and application, nuclear medicine, and quantum mechanics theory, its just a matter of time until this stage of travel is made palpable to the masses. The culmination of Moore's law has made so many things possible that simple computational power of a calculator is more then what an entire building had 50 years ago. Imagine in another 50 years what we will be capable of...

The only thing that worries me is the lack on interest outside of the scientific and intellectual community and the seeming apathy of the masses when it comes to stages of development outside the day to day movement of their lives.

That sounds good on paper, but realistically it was only in 1903 that we had the first powered airplane flight and 58 years later the first man in space, 8 years after that the first man on the moon. That was 1969. Now 40 years later the rate of technological space development has slowed considerably. With all the troubles with the world economy, I don't expect any major innovations in aerospace anytime soon.

Travel at the speed of light? Not anytime soon. I would lay the odds on a global nuclear holocaust happening before the discovery of an effective means to travel at the speed of light. Light travel speed may end up as just another dream of science fiction, like cold fusion.

O_O

*Reads all 29 posts*

I understand it a little bit...But I got a major head ache from it...

I wonder when, or if, the economy will ever straighten it self out or if we nuke ourselves to death first...