I have people to serve with them
and before I have done my deed,
I cannot.
Just because we do not know how something
works does not mean it will work while we do not
its true nature! Nothing is impossible my ass.
Only a blind idealist would so that.
There is a truth out there that is totally independent of us.
It is not part of us, it is a maverick.

Even Einstein has proven himself wrong a number of times, so to say any of his theories is absolute is rather ridiculous. No matter as how fundamental the mass-energy equation is perceived to be in this day and age, it can and most probably will become obsolete in the future.
Seeing the progress humanity has made in even only the last 20 years, achieving extremely high velocities, and ultimately - the speed of light, might be possible in the /not so near/ future.

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the tigers have found me
and I do not care.

Voted no, however we can (and will be able to even in the future) accelerate small particles to speeds close to the speed of light.
I dont think we will ever be able to accelerate something with a mass to the speed of light. But we will keep being able to accelerate particles closer and closer to it.

One step at a time fellow dreamers.
One step at a time.

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"“That's the difference between me and the rest of the world!
Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!” "

If you can go faster than light (or it would be more correct to say to transmit information at a faster than light speed) you can also go back in time. So they're both impossible or both possible.
I say they're both impossible and voted no.

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What I like in Trivial Pursuit style. Pick your category:

Wouldn't we explode in space, or something if we go too fast? I heard that somewhere.

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"If you think being eaten by a carnivorous tree is something that only happens to someone else, then think again."
--Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde

As far as we understand right now, exceeding the speed of light, (in a vacuum,) is impossible within the universe we know. While some of the more esoteric theories in quantum physics suggest ideas which would allow "faster than light" travel through some loopholes in the mathematics that have been modeled, true acceleration to and greater than c cannot happen.

However, there has already been experiments in which things did happen at a speed greater than the speed of light. This was a test using electron spin, and was a test for quantum entanglement. The paired electrons were separated and then the spin of one was changed and it's mate changed its spin instantaneously.

The other theoretical particle that people try to use to show that faster than light speeds can be achieved is the tachyon. This can exist, to my understanding, due to the fact it comes into being already moving at speeds greater than that of light, and therefore does not need to accelerate.

I might be off, it's been a long while since I did any seroius studying on relativistic and quantum physics.

According to everything we know, attaining light speed is not possible.
But who knows when another crazy mathematician or researcher will prove that it is, or change the way we look at things?
For all the research out there, our understanding of the universe is still pretty narrow.

A rare thread about science, my answer is yes.

I think almost anyone who studied relativity theory would know this : In special relativity a particle (that has mass) needs infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, and it doesn't forbid the existence of a particle with velocity greater than C,neither does general relativity. However,even if a hypothetical particle like that exists, as far as i know, it has a four-dimension-momentum,an imaginary proper time and can not slow down its velocity to lower than C. Further more, such particle can not transmit any information, and we won't attain anything from it.

If you still wonder why i chose yes,lol it s because the question itself."Faster than light"? There are at least 4 cases i can think of right now that we can easily surpass "light speed" :

1.In a medium with an adequate index of refraction n, velocity of light would be C/n, this is what i would think of 3 years ago.(some one forgot about the medium!)

2.Speed of shadow/light spot projected on a distant object.Though the movement of the shadow can be delayed due to the time light takes to get there, but a shadow geometrically defined still has unbounded speed, however, no transmission of information can be made.

3.Phase velocity and group velocity can be made (by us) to exceed C, with out any information transmitted.Lol

4. Anything comes toward you at nearly the speed of light and you measure its apparent speed without taking into account the diminishing time it takes light to reach you from the object."we attained it, a speed faster than light, yay " o_o






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From a certain reference frame, we humans are moving at least 1000mph because the earth spins that fast.

From a different reference frame, we are moving as fast as the earth moves around the sun +/- the speed of earth's rotation.

From a different reference frame we are moving as fast as the solar system +/- the speed of the earth's orbit around the sun +/- the speed of the earth's rotation.

Our solar system is already moving 560,000mph
The milky way is moving 370 miles per second through space.

I'll put it this way.
If we move 3/4 the speed of light, and the plane we are moving on moving 3/4 the speef of light in the same direction, we are then moving faster than light. Therefore, in relative sense moving faster than light may already have been acheived.

What we need to do is find a way to relate micro and macro physics so that they don't conflict with each other.

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"“That's the difference between me and the rest of the world!
Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!” "

That's definitely false.

The formula you have to apply is:

In your example the result is that in relative sense we are moving at 24/25 the speed of light.

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What I like in Trivial Pursuit style. Pick your category:

Well, although that s not exactly what i mean by the 4th case, but i can correct it : suppose we are observers on Earth, we saw 2 terrestrial bodies approaching each other with velocity 3/4c relative to the earth. Then what is the rate at which the distance between 2 objects is decreasing ? it s simply 3/2c and it correctly reflects the change of the distance between them.
Why ? because 3/2c here is not the so called "relative speed". Relative speed is the speed of one object with respect to a frame of reference in which the other object is at rest - as in this case,the speed of one celestial object measured by the observers on the other.
Rather,3/2c is the "closing speed", the rate of the change of the distance between the 2 objects, remember that in the given frame of reference, there is no existing material object nor even a photon that moves with that speed.
There seems to be quite a good number of people who are interested in relativity theory here Its interesting to discuss with you guys in such a motivating thread

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity#Composition_of_ve locities

I can't explain better than this than the closing speed (u in the formula) is 24c/25 and not 3/2c.

In particular: In special relativity, this is no longer true (Ndr: what you said about closing speed). Instead, an observer on the tracks will measure the velocity of the baseball as \frac{v+u}{1+\frac{vu}{c^2}}. If u and v are small compared to c, then the above expression approaches the classical sum v + u.

I'm not an expert on the field, but I'm assuming that your mistake is that for the observer on Earth time is "flowing normally" while for stuff which is going to velocities near c time is "flowing slower".

Last edited by reid1 at 12:40 pm, Aug 29 2009

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What I like in Trivial Pursuit style. Pick your category:

No i m sure that the closing speed in the example is 3/2 c =_=

What you are referring to, the velocity in a given frame that is expressed in termed of other velocity in a different time frame (and thus we can derive the Lorentz transformation) , well,it is not what i tried to explain at the previous post, closing speed doesn't relate to the time frame of the other object, and i never said that the time frames are the same between the two. To clarify it :

In problems involving the motion of two objects, A and B, there is a distinction between :

1. The rate of change of the distance between A and B, as
measured in some coordinate system S unrelated to the motion
of A and B. (This is what i called "the closing speed" between
A and B, as measured in coordinate system S). And, no material object actually moves with this speed.

2.The rate of change of the distance between A and B, as
measured in a special coordinate system S in which A is at
rest. (This is what i called "the relative speed" between
A and B)

In Galilean physics, there is no difference between closing speed and relative speed, because distance and time are on the same scale regardless of motion between the two frames of reference. Later, Einstein theorized that the scale of space time is changed with motion to preserve the speed of light between frame, and thus the difference between closing speed and relative speed arises. Please, understand.
And for more information although i don't think it is well written, but the difference is mentioned.

Edit : wah, okay, it looks like im partially guilty of giving false hope to those vote yes. In truth, i only voted yes because the question is vague and, what we mean by "faster than light" is still controversial.As far as i know, with out distorting space time (i.e. making a worm hole) and teleportation ( sending a blueprint for an object faster than light as advance information, and then reconstruct the object), for a material object (with mass) to be able to travel faster than light speed in vacuum is impossible.

Last edited by silencer at 10:10 pm, Aug 29 2009

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I do think it's possible, given enough time and that we don't blow ourselves up with nuclear warfare before we ever progress that far.

I like to think that humans can do anything, although that might be my Homo Sapiens hubris talking. Yay, Icarus!