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What is on the other side of light? Any guesses? — Parallax Forums

What is on the other side of light? Any guesses?

HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
edited 2011-11-26 13:33 in General Discussion
Like Newtonian mechanics that hold up to .1C, we believe Einsteinian relativity holds up to the infinity aspects of the speed of light c. It's likely there's a jump that takes place over light, where the speed of light is never reached but is surpassed. We cannot predict the variables of time time travel when traveling faster than c, or causality, using Einstein's time travel equation, as it may not, and likely does not, hold true for anything at or over the speed of light. Someone will need to rewrite the rules of Physics for faster than light travel.

There's a totally different world on the other side of the speed of light remaining to be discovered. I think over light is much like over the rainbow. (Dorothy) "Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat, or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain.....", commencing with singing the song. (Over the Rainbow - Judy Garland) - Wizard of Oz, Book by L. Frank Baum, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg.

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?134707-Faster-Than-Light&p=1052973&viewfull=1#post1052973

Travel faster than the speed of light? What new laws, rules and worlds exist when traveling faster than the speed of light? Care to boldly conjecture about what might remain out there to be experienced and explored in the most remarkable outer fringes of science?
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Comments

  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2011-11-19 18:18
    ..and then there was dark.
    The End.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-11-19 18:35
    Who starts a thread by quoting his own post from another thread? Any guesses? :)

    -Phil
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2011-11-19 18:51
    Humanoido wrote: »
    Care to boldly conjecture about what might remain out there to be experienced and explored in the most remarkable outer fringes of science?

    Nope, above my pay grade.
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-11-19 20:47
    Humanoido wrote: »
    ... Care to boldly conjecture about what might remain out there to be experienced and explored in the most remarkable outer fringes of science?

    Free beer?
  • skylightskylight Posts: 1,915
    edited 2011-11-20 12:43
    Perhaps we may find the true perception of our reality in such a way that we can control or do anything we wish?
    bit like when you've had too much to drink :lol:
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2011-11-20 13:36
    skylight wrote: »
    .....bit like when you've had too much to drink :lol:

    Haha! So we're back to free beer!!
  • jdoleckijdolecki Posts: 726
    edited 2011-11-21 02:21
    Have you asked the "Big Brain" that question?
  • zoopydogsitzoopydogsit Posts: 174
    edited 2011-11-21 04:18
    I'll bite. Blips from Tachyons in your path, and their color would be blue/red depending how much faster than the speed of light you'd be going.

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

    Now here's one that will fry your brain (no pun intended). If Tachyon's go faster than the speed of light, and assume they were also created during the big bang, then is the universe even bigger than we currently believe?

    Or as a friend of mine puts it, maybe they are travelling backward from the end of the universe, so if you could have a localalized Tachyon detector you could detect the end of the universe - sort of an implementation of Douglas Adam's peril sensitive glasses?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Joo_Janta_200_Super-Chromatic_Peril_Sensitive_Sunglasses

    Actually, total blackness apart from a dot directly in your path, and it'd fry you by the radiation of anything in your path (relative to you they are now passing through you at faster than the speed of light). Then anything beyond the point straight ahead would be black as you'd be past when light reached.
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-11-21 21:37
    I think a protective surrounding force field of incredible force will be needed for the person or thing that actually traverses the faster than light barrier. When the X15 pushed the speed barrier it began to melt and had to be redesigned.
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-11-21 21:43
    That would definitely be interesting if we met up with and could see all those particles predicted to travel faster than light. Suddenly they would become visible from a FTL reference system. I don't think everything would go black. There are likely many undiscovered particles that travel faster than light and leave an emission signature. Perhaps we enter the FTL stream with a telescope tuned to these particles and take photos.
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-11-21 21:48
    There is also the possibility that moving that fast can puncture a hole in the fabric of the universe and break through the barrier of its weave which is taken to be a kind of froth. So FTL direction may be different as we think we understand it. The universe is a space time fabric can can be moved, reshaped, distorted, bent, shaped, tied, and broken. FTL is likely to affect this in some way.
  • zoopydogsitzoopydogsit Posts: 174
    edited 2011-11-22 01:26
    ok, I'll bite again.....

    But the other problem is relativistic. A collision is two objects trying to share the same space time coordinates. However if you're travelling faster than the speed of light about to colide with an object in it's own reference standing still then you would not hit it, but (and I love this) you may hit where it was at some time before. So you'd be worried about items that were in your path yesterday, not tomorrow. Planning your journey could potentially have a lower level of risk as it was history of where things were, rather than the future which is uncertain to where things will be.

    Even motionless particles in your path may actually have no effect, as they are now (in your time reference) hitting you faster than the speed of light, and therefore act to you like Tachyons we think we observe in our time reference. It's probably the real Tachyons you'd need to worry about as they are now travelling closer to your time reference and may be more of a nusence.

    Meanwhile you'd have to plan your trip really well as the big stuff (planets, stars, etc) would have the ability to stop your journey quickly. And as you'd only detect them by the light (of some kind) reflected off them then you'd hit them before you saw them. Could be a bit of a party stopper.

    I'm not sure of the physics you'd imagine behind a forcefield. The only forces that I can imagine that you'd hijack to cause a forcefield are electrostatic and electromagnetic forces. That is use a laser to boil off electrons from the object about to collide with you so it has the same electical charge as you have to deflect it from your path. However you have to be close for the deflection to occur, and thus you'd still likely to collide at any significant speed. Probably the only practical forcefield is large amounts of matter (water, lead, nickle iron, etc) the more the better, but will only be good for particles, a planet or a star may be better. But the more mass the more fuel/etc. Assuming you had some way to accelerate them close to then exceeding the speed of light without infinite amounts of fuel (then again let's not put reality into the discussion).
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-11-22 07:23
    Well, even if you had the infinite amount of energy needed to reach the speed of light you wouldn't be able to go faster.. because there is no time at the speed of C, and thus there would be no time _in_ to continue accelerating..

    -Tor
  • xanatosxanatos Posts: 1,120
    edited 2011-11-22 20:01
    Those pesky tachyons... From the little I understand about them/it, their mass INCREASES as they SLOW towards the speed of light. Their rest mass is achieved at infinite velocity, which means they ... Or it ... exist at every point in the universe simultaneously... at rest. So perhaps there is only one... And it's everywhere.

    YMMV... :-)

    Dave
  • frank freedmanfrank freedman Posts: 1,983
    edited 2011-11-22 20:29
    xanatos wrote: »
    Those pesky tachyons... From the little I understand about them/it, their mass INCREASES as they SLOW towards the speed of light. Their rest mass is achieved at infinite velocity, which means they ... Or it ... exist at every point in the universe simultaneously... at rest. So perhaps there is only one... And it's everywhere.

    YMMV... :-)

    Dave

    Are you trying to imply that God is a tachyon?
    or
    That a tachyon is God???
    FF
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2011-11-22 20:39
    "Scotty, if we reverse the polarity of the deflector shield, can we send out a tachyon pulse and disrupt the tractor beam long enough to break free?"

    "Damnit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not an engineer! You pressed the wrong button again!"
  • lanternfishlanternfish Posts: 366
    edited 2011-11-23 00:51
    If Newtonian physics is our yardstick up to 0.1C. And Einsteinian physics the remaining 90%. Can we theorise a possibility that all the previous could contribute 10% to some new physical/mathematical theories that allow FTL without some or most of the restrictions of Einsteinian physics. And if so are we able to even imagine "what is on the other side of light" because of the current doctrines? Could it be akin to sanatos' post #15?
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-11-23 03:25
    But AFAIK Einsteinian physics hasn't been verified to just 90%, it's more like 99.9999991% (speed of particles in the LHC).. so there's awfully little room left.

    -Tor
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-11-23 04:11
    We probably don't want to get hung up on the speed of light ultimatum. Maybe it's just us. We can go slower and faster but not "at." Then some more thought and we know one thing easily travels at the speed of light. Light. So if light can travel at the speed of light and light can travel slower than the speed of light, then can light travel faster than the speed of light?
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-11-23 05:46
    @Humanoido:

    Light cannot travel slower than light, or more correctly, slower than C. Light (photons) can _only_ travel at C. Massless particles have one speed, and that is C.

    That light travels "slower" in non-vacuum isn't actually the photons traveling slower than C, it's the photons that keep getting absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms on the way. So it takes longer to go from A to B because there's a small moment where the photon isn't a photon, it's instead a momentarily increased energy level in atoms it meets on the way: An electron jumps to a higher shell (this absorbs the photon) followed by a drop. When the electron drops back a photon is emitted. This takes a bit of time. But the photon always travels at C. (Note that there are other ways of describing the 'scattering' that happens when photons hit matter in non-vacuum, but whatever way it's described it always means that the photon itself always travel at C. It can for example be described in a way that says the phase velocity changes. The photon speed is constant though).

    -Tor
    edit: Added a sentence
  • xanatosxanatos Posts: 1,120
    edited 2011-11-23 18:30
    frank freedman wrote: »
    Are you trying to imply that God is a tachyon?
    or
    That a tachyon is God???
    FF

    Actually no implications exist, only the observation of the energy states and associated velocities. While I do indeed possess spiritual views, I rarely bring them into scientific observations or speculations. I reserve that for other forums! :-)

    I would go out on a limb here and volunteer that I doubt that a particle could be equated with what we conceive of as an ultimately sentient being, but perhaps, if such a being exists, it is composed entirely of tachyons, exists everywhere in the universe simultaneously, and at all points in time infinitely past and future.

    This is not, however, even remotely related to my original post. :-)

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    dave
  • frank freedmanfrank freedman Posts: 1,983
    edited 2011-11-23 19:08
    xanatos wrote: »
    Actually no implications exist, only the observation of the energy states and associated velocities. While I do indeed possess spiritual views, I rarely bring them into scientific observations or speculations. I reserve that for other forums! :-)

    I would go out on a limb here and volunteer that I doubt that a particle could be equated with what we conceive of as an ultimately sentient being, but perhaps, if such a being exists, it is composed entirely of tachyons, exists everywhere in the universe simultaneously, and at all points in time infinitely past and future.

    This is not, however, even remotely related to my original post. :-)

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    dave

    Sorry :<) could not resist. To good of a set up to resist taking advantage of the humor value.......

    Frank
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2011-11-23 21:06
    Heres a real life paradox
    '
    Lets say you travel through time into tomorrow and recorded some data on your laptop's hard-drive.File saved as "time trip"..Then you return back to "today" and you start to review this data...
    '
    Would there be anything in the file? since the file was made tomorrow? and not today? The event has not happened yet...Could you even find the file?...since it was made tomorrow?
    '
    Can you record what has not happened yet?
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-11-23 21:37
    $WMc% wrote: »
    ...Could you even find the file?...

    If using a microsoft product, probably not.
    Not then.
    Not now.
    Not ever.
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2011-11-23 21:54
    ElecticAye
    '
    I see you don't understand how to use windows....Thats ok
    '
    Lets say it was a MAC/linux machine.
  • lanternfishlanternfish Posts: 366
    edited 2011-11-24 00:20
    A large men only store with all the widgets, gadgets, components ..... we have ever needed, wanted, desired .... with a good bar & restaurant?
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2011-11-24 01:01
    $WMc%
    Heres a real life paradox
    '
    Lets say you travel through time into tomorrow... and recorded some data on your laptop's hard-drive.File saved as "time trip"..Then you return back to "today" and you start to review this data...

    That's some interesting real life you are living there. So far I have only managed to move forwards in time, sometimes faster than I like...
    Would there be anything in the file? since the file was made tomorrow? and not today? The event has not happened yet...Could you even find the file?...since it was made tomorrow?

    1) If you took the laptop forward and backward in time with you then presumably the data is there on the hard drive in the same way that you remember that you were there in the future. [See end of post]

    2) If you left the laptop behind and entered the data on the laptop you find in the future then I guess the data is not there when you get back.
    Can you record what has not happened yet?

    One might assume "no". Which implies that having been to the future you cannot remember it when you get back. And neither could the laptop contain any record of the future. Which is all pretty much like saying you can't go backwards in time.

    One might assume "yes". In which case all hell breaks lose:)
  • xanatosxanatos Posts: 1,120
    edited 2011-11-24 05:03
    The whole time travel thing... Say you have a portal in your living room through which you can step forward or backward in time. Now say you set it to go back in time just a minute. You step through and you are now in your living room one minute before you stepped through. You see yourself at the controls, setting the time and getting ready to step through. Then, you see yourself turn around, which you remember doing... but now, you see yourself looking back at you.

    1. Do you now suddenly remember yourself seeing the future you on the other side of the room?

    2. If your past self is so astonished to see future-self in the room suddenly that they turn away from the portal and fail to go through, does future self suddenly vanish?

    3. What if you both step through the portal together? Would there now be three future selves and a past self?

    4. Assuming that 3 above works, and I continued this self-replication, could I actually get some of the home repair projects done that I am so in need of doing, and need about 10 of me to complete??? :-)

    Dave
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2011-11-24 09:03
    @Heater...Yep
    '
    @Dave...You better send the frig. through the portal so you'll have enough beer and grocery's for "yourselves"
    '
    lol...!!!
  • ratronicratronic Posts: 1,451
    edited 2011-11-24 09:43
    Doesn't all of this violate the Prime Directive?
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