At 12:24 AM 11/4/2009, John Berry wrote:
If Einstein is right you can't go faster than C.
But IMO he wasn't right and SR is full of flaws.
If the mass does not increase as the speed of light is reached and
if the fabric of space goes on the journey too then any speed is possible.
Sure. But mass does increase as the speed of light is approached,
that's experimentally verified. Time dilation is also verified. Any
material exceptions known? Basically, if the speed of light is
constant for all observers, all the rest falls out from that.
However, to the observer, watching the mileposts go by on the road,
and assuming that there is a mile between each of them (they couldn't
possibly put them in the wrong place, eh?), there is no limit to the
velocity. Maybe this is what Horace was talking about. However,
passing by them, the observer would notice that the distance between
them was less than a mile, as their apparent approach velocity approaches c.
That's because of time dilation. From my superficial understanding,
Einstein had this thought: what would the universe look like to a photon?
It would happen all at once, all time compressed, every place the
photon reaches, it reaches, from its own "frame," simultaneously.
FTL travel would have to involve something different than ordinary
acceleration; therefore, why bother with acceleration at all? I think
we are stuck with the universal speed limit for accelerated matter,
but, hey, there's always the transporter! Go any distance, get
anywhere, instantly. Just convert yourself into light. How you get
back to matter I'll leave as an exercise for the student. From the
point of view of the observer, you'd travel at the speed of light.
But from your point of view, it would be an instant from conversion
to light until reformation of matter. You'd need repeaters or some
way of restoring the lost energy or of preventing transmission loss,
perhaps some quantum effect.
Besides, even if you could accelerate beyond the speed of light,
perhaps there is some quantum flip that would take place as you
approached it, travelling at near-c would be fatal, from the flak of
all the matter you'd have to pass through, all of it travelling
"toward you" at near-c. A brick wall, to you. All the light
blue-shifted into gamma radiation, etc. Nasty. The penalty for
approaching the speed limit? Disintegration. It's not a Do Not Pass
the Speed Limit, it's Do Not Push the Edge kind of speed limit.
I do not expect we will find a way to move anything faster than light
in a vacuum. We can slow light down to a crawl, even, or even appear
to stop it, (isn't that what matter is?), but when it's free, it goes
its own way, instantaneously. The speed limit is from our point of
view, for others. In fact, we don't travel at all.
Buckaroo Banzai had it right: wherever you go, there you are.
