Theoretical FTL

[JohnFornaro]

If an intelligent species lived on a planet with permanent cloud cover, maybe they'd never even conceptualize a broader universe.

There's an evo-bio argument that the Moon's existence and visibility caused human consciousness to evolve.

2L2L

[too lazy to link]

[sanman]

Stephen Wolfram explains Time Dilation (in his own way):

[Alex_O]

Fast flows of matter.

Abstract
The sun can be a source of superluminal signals and people can look for some correlations in the archives right now.
If nature allows matter to move faster than the speed of light, then how is this possible? And how do you find out about this?

Let's say that there are a million developed civilizations in the universe, but only one (out of a million) civilization was able to reveal the secret of FTL flights. How did she do it? Obviously, they were lucky; local astronomers saw the FTL flow of matter. Or the propagation of a signal (wave) at superluminal speed. And all other civilizations were unlucky, given the limited lifespan of a civilization’s existence.

Is this a good hypothesis? We have a term probability! Go ahead

This is, of course, physics, and this physics occurs in the universe. But somehow rarely, for example, during cosmic catastrophes, supernova explosions, etc., when extreme releases of energy appear. These could be jets, and the term lucky means that a fast jet flew nearby, safe for civilization itself.

Here's a good example based on observations from the Hubble Telescope.


Pulsar and nebula

This episode of the Hubblecast explores striking new Hubble observations of a variable star known as RS Puppis. This star is growing brighter and dimmer as it pulsates over a period of five weeks. These pulsations have created a stunning example of a phenomenon known as a light echo, where light appears to reverberate through the foggy environment around the star.

Description - https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2013/51/3263-Image.html
Observation - https://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=11715
Observation epoch = 2010 from March 25 to April 29, 468 seconds, 3 times a day

We see a nebula, there is some probability that an ultra-fast flow of matter will fly through the nebula, and people will see a trace of a “black stripe”.
It will be a solid observational fact that supervelocity motions of matter are physically possible..

But what is the probability? And what can you come up with to increase the likelihood?

For example, 100 or 1000 years ago a supernova exploded near the nebula and there was a short superluminal jet and Hubble can see a black streak. Taking into account the distance from the earthly observer to the globule and supernova, nature provides an extremely small window for Hubble.

Hubble himself looked at the globule somehow poorly - the era of observations - in 2010 from March 25 to April 29, for 468 seconds, 3 times a day. Agree that this is very little, right? There just aren’t that many stars in the vicinity of the globule; you have to wait millions of years to catch a useful signal.

The second problem is that we can see a black stripe, but only after 100 or 1000 years will we learn about the supernova explosion and this is a very big problem.

What if the superluminal flow was somehow very fast? And a developed civilization - in order to catch superlight, must build a telescope with performance characteristics 15 orders of magnitude better than Hubble’s, and allocate resources for continuous observations for a million years? And only with such investments can one expect a useful result. I omitted the questions - what is a black bar. Such a band can appear from additional dimensions of the universe and Hubble is needed for a multidimensional universe. And it takes incredible luck to detect such an event; the life cycle of an advanced civilization may not be enough, right?

We have the term probability, we have the level of development of science, and we can discuss ideas on how to increase the probability.

Possible ideas for astronomers to record natural fast flows of matter. For example, superluminal events can occur during extreme manifestations of energy on a cosmological scale, such as during supernova explosions. And nature gives people the opportunity to observe these fast phenomena through the registration of certain superluminal “signals”. Superluminal phenomena can then be reproduced in the laboratory and in practical design.

Let's make a table. Source - detector.
 

Detector	Source
Pulsar	Quasar
Pulsar	Supernova
Sun	Universe
Comets	Sun
Sensor on the planet   .	Sun

Omitting the details, we can note that our civilization has a powerful source of energy - the Sun, on which there are solar flares and times of release of high energies.

You can come up with two sensors - a solar activity sensor and some kind of sensor like a glass with water and a Brownian particle. The video camera observes the track of the particle in the glass and there is a useful short time interval - from 8 minutes. We need to catch the correlation between the sensor on the shadow side and the sensor on the sunny side. To increase the probability, if a superluminal signal from the sun is somehow faster than the speed of light by many orders of magnitude, a sensor on the shadow side must measure the track of a Brownian particle at certain picosecond intervals. It is clear that a shadow sensor can be built on different physical principles. It's a good idea that both sensors should be very fast.

Another example.

Let's say that a conventional particle of matter can make superluminal motion. What can the observer see? For example, observing the aurora, the flow of solar wind in the atmosphere of the planet. It could be some kind of tracer. Like in this video.


There is a frequency of flashes and there is a track length of light and dark.

The sum of light lengths and times does not exceed the speed of light limit. I mean, if you count the timings according to the light part of the tracer path, then everything is fine. Superlight only due to the dark part, as the sum of the light and dark parts.

Is the idea clear? If the particle flies slowly, then the observer sees a continuous, bright track.

Another example is a basketball bouncing on a glass, transparent floor. The observer is below, under the glass. He sees the ball only at the moment it touches the floor. This is an example of some kind of multidimensional physics, where there is a multidimensional reality. While the ball is in the air, the observer may think that the ball has entered another dimension, another reality. But by studying the contact patch of the ball with the floor and timings, you can come up with an idea about the physical properties of reality in additional dimensions. The task comes down to studying the track - the marks of the ball on the glass/screen.

And the last example is that it is possible that the planet is not a very convenient place for observations. Perhaps we should put sensors on the Moon. And after a hundred/thousand years of continuous observations of various physical phenomena, at high frequencies, a reliable result can be obtained.

Summary.
People have the Sun, and if superluminal flows of matter are possible, then you can look for correlations in the archives of solar astronomy + other archives where there is data from fast sensors. And perhaps faster solar activity sensors are needed. Faster than known ones by 15 orders of magnitude.

This example is completely unsuitable.
The eruption of fire on the Sun was filmed by a Novosibirsk astrophotographer - look at extraterrestrial footage

It took him about an hour to create the footage.

It is clear that the exposure time should be approximately 15 orders of magnitude less.

[CoolScience]

Is this a good hypothesis?

No. A good hypothesis is falsifiable. Your hypothesis boils down to "maybe some FTL stuff already exists and is moving around." This is simply too broad and poorly defined to be a scientific hypothesis.

The rest of what you said before this is just wild assumptions as a pseudo-justification for the hypothesis, they don't add anything.

The rest of your post after this is a combination of irrelevant nonsense, and demonstrations that you have never bothered to do basic research on the topic of what FTL means in the context of special relativity, and other basic relevant topics.

FTL means literal time travel. you seem unaware of this, and make a bunch of arguments that make no sense as a result. a particle travelling backwards in time from a distance would like like it is just travelling backwards no "faster camera" would detect this as interesting, it would just look like something moving in the opposite direction, you would need to have something tell you about the illogical reversal of causality, which a line moving through a nebula wouldn't.

Also, it is trivial for a particle beam (such as that from a pulsar) to "appear" to be moving FTL, but this is just like motion of a shadow, the pulsar is rotating, and the fact that tracking that motion along a surface many lightyears away is FTL along that surface is simply meaningless, it just means that each particle was travelling below the speed of light, but in different directions for many years.

[Alex_O]

Is this a good hypothesis?

No. A good hypothesis is falsifiable. Your hypothesis boils down to "maybe some FTL stuff already exists and is moving around." This is simply too broad and poorly defined to be a scientific hypothesis.

Yes. My idea is based on solid physics and solid observational facts.

1st observational fact. There is a developed civilization on planet Earth that has scientific knowledge. And the known civilization is a new version.

2nd observational fact. From the history of science it is known that all modern knowledge was created based on the results of astronomical observations.

3rd observational fact. The mystery of fast, applied space logistics, travel faster than the speed of light, has not yet been revealed.

4th observational fact. Prominent theories report that engines for moving matter at superluminal speeds, in practical designs, require the use of very high energies, equivalent to stellar masses.

I made a bold generalization and justified the research program. This is a proposal for falsification.

From the first observational fact it follows that in the universe there are many developed civilizations.

From the history of the development of civilizations on planet Earth, a strict observational fact follows that any civilization has a life cycle duration.

From astronomical observations there are many observational facts about the manifestation of extreme energy flows.
I add 2+2 and get the conclusion that we all need a lot of luck. That the universe is large, the lifespan of civilizations is short - and there is a theory of probability. That someone will simply be unlucky to discover the secret, since the stars are poorly positioned in the sky.

  And then, I'm just trying to increase the probability. Recently, people have expanded their horizons of knowledge by observing pulsars in the light of relic gravitational waves.

This is an observational fact, and I boldly discuss the cosmological list of natural Sources and Detectors of superluminal flows of matter (or signals) and unexpectedly, but extremely logically, I find our Sun in this list.

And everything becomes extremely simple - there are extremely high manifestations of energy on the Sun and the earthly observer has exactly 8 minutes. Not 100 or 1000 years, as in the case of the black stripe against the background of the light echo in the nebula, but 8 wonderful minutes. And you just need to build two types of sensors, but they must be very fast sensors.

And you need to choose a good place to locate the sensors, because a superluminal signal from a Solar flare can simply fly past the Earth, for example, perpendicular to the Earth-Sun vector. The moon is a good place for a sensor, especially this one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/524522_Zoozve

Zoozve! The very good place for FTL sensor.

The rest of what you said before this is just wild assumptions as a pseudo-justification for the hypothesis, they don't add anything.
The rest of your post after this is a combination of irrelevant nonsense, and demonstrations that you have never bothered to do basic research on the topic of what FTL means in the context of special relativity, and other basic relevant topics.

==
There are some very good messages here in this thread from flux_capacitor starting from the post
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=13542.msg1701797#msg1701797

The negative gravity speculation was just that, but speculating that dark matter
  ...

Good catch! In the next posts I will detail this idea of primordial antimatter lacking, parallel universes and negative gravity in cosmology. A cosmological model exists, exactly behaving how you said, and has been published though peer review with recent (2014-2015) progress.

In these posts, flux_capacitor actually described the history of the development of science that is trying to uncover the mystery of superluminal fast flights.

FTL means literal time travel. you seem unaware of this, and make a bunch of arguments that make no sense as a result. a particle travelling backwards in time from a distance would like like it is just travelling backwards no "faster camera" would detect this as interesting, it would just look like something moving in the opposite direction, you would need to have something tell you about the illogical reversal of causality, which a line moving through a nebula wouldn't.

I'm not trying to discuss time travel. But I can show the idea of a sensor for recording time waves that can transmit impulse from the future to the past. But this will be offtopic.

Also, it is trivial for a particle beam (such as that from a pulsar) to "appear" to be moving FTL, but this is just like motion of a shadow, the pulsar is rotating, and the fact that tracking that motion along a surface many lightyears away is FTL along that surface is simply meaningless, it just means that each particle was travelling below the speed of light, but in different directions for many years.

Revisiting a Core–Jet Laboratory at High Redshift: Analysis of the Radio Jet in the Quasar PKS 2215+020 at z = 3.572
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/10/2/97

Here, we analyse archival multi-epoch VLBI imaging data at five frequency bands from 1.7
 to 15.4  GHz covering a period of more than 25 years from 1995 to 2020. We constrain apparent proper motions of jet components in PKS 2215+020 for the first time. Brightness distribution modeling at 8 GHz reveals a nearly 0.02 mas yr−1 proper motion (moderately superluminal with apparently two times the speed of light)...

Are you talking about this? The apparent motion in the image at the telescope's focus (or the phase velocity of the EM wave) can be faster than the speed of light, and as the article showed, there is valuable information in this data.

[CoolScience]

Is this a good hypothesis?

No. A good hypothesis is falsifiable. Your hypothesis boils down to "maybe some FTL stuff already exists and is moving around." This is simply too broad and poorly defined to be a scientific hypothesis.

Yes. My idea is based on solid physics and solid observational facts.

As I show below this is false, it is not based on facts, and even if this wasn't false, it still remains unfalsifiable.

1st observational fact. There is a developed civilization on planet Earth that has scientific knowledge. And the known civilization is a new version.
...
From the first observational fact it follows that in the universe there are many developed civilizations.

The first fact would be true but irrelevant, the following statement later is false. This does not logically follow. It does remain irrelevant.

2nd observational fact. From the history of science it is known that all modern knowledge was created based on the results of astronomical observations.

False. The vast majority of knowledge is not from astronomical observations, and of particular relevance to the topic of this thread, special relativity was developed from, and has been thoroughly tested by purely ground based experiments. (astronomical observations confirming it also exist, but are not what got the theory started.)

3rd observational fact. The mystery of fast, applied space logistics, travel faster than the speed of light, has not yet been revealed.

This is false because it implies the false claim that FTL is possible. It is not, it cannot be "revealed" because it does not and cannot logically exist/

4th observational fact. Prominent theories report that engines for moving matter at superluminal speeds, in practical designs, require the use of very high energies, equivalent to stellar masses.

Also false, actual physics theories say that FTL is impossible, creates logical contradictions due to time travel, and no amount of energy can ever make it possible.

I made a bold generalization and justified the research program. This is a proposal for falsification.

No, you said a bunch of nonsense, and suggested an experiment that is not possible to perform, would not provide positive evidence if the observation you were looking for was seen, because the observation can be more easily explained without FTL, and there is no way to ever get negative proof, just infinite "it is random so just keep looking." This is what not falsifiable means, you cannot prove a negative, so there is no way to prove your claim wrong by your claimed experiment. (It is instead wrong by being nonsense and inconsistent.)

  And then, I'm just trying to increase the probability. Recently, people have expanded their horizons of knowledge by observing pulsars in the light of relic gravitational waves.

The probability is zero. You are begging people to waste time doing research that is fundamentally illogical and inconsistent, and cannot produce the result you wish for.

In these posts, flux_capacitor actually described the history of the development of science that is trying to uncover the mystery of superluminal fast flights.

Complete misrepresentation. further posts down pointed out misunderstandings flux_capacitor had. Again you are staring by assuming FTL exists. This is False.

FTL means literal time travel. you seem unaware of this, and make a bunch of arguments that make no sense as a result. a particle travelling backwards in time from a distance would like like it is just travelling backwards no "faster camera" would detect this as interesting, it would just look like something moving in the opposite direction, you would need to have something tell you about the illogical reversal of causality, which a line moving through a nebula wouldn't.

I'm not trying to discuss time travel. But I can show the idea of a sensor for recording time waves that can transmit impulse from the future to the past. But this will be offtopic.

What about the bolded statement above is unclear? If you are discussing FTL, you are discussing time travel. Ignoring this fact, just means that you refuse to have a logical discussion. The details on why FTL is time travel can be easily found through your favorite search engine.

Revisiting a Core–Jet Laboratory at High Redshift: Analysis of the Radio Jet in the Quasar PKS 2215+020 at z = 3.572
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/10/2/97

Here, we analyse archival multi-epoch VLBI imaging data at five frequency bands from 1.7
 to 15.4  GHz covering a period of more than 25 years from 1995 to 2020. We constrain apparent proper motions of jet components in PKS 2215+020 for the first time. Brightness distribution modeling at 8 GHz reveals a nearly 0.02 mas yr−1 proper motion (moderately superluminal with apparently two times the speed of light)...

Are you talking about this? The apparent motion in the image at the telescope's focus (or the phase velocity of the EM wave) can be faster than the speed of light, and as the article showed, there is valuable information in this data.

Without clicking through, this seems to be referring to the type of effect that I was. Things that are very much NOT FTL can produce effects that would appear to be FTL if you do a naďve calculation. Even if you had a super camera happen to detect an "FTL" thing, it only means it is some effect like this, and would not demonstrate the actual existence of FTL.

edit: fixed missing "not"

[RSE]

You can't go faster than light. On the other hand, what is the absolute maximum speed of light?

The underlying question is - What sort of vacuum really exists - a classical or a quantum vacuum?

We know, through experimentation, that the speed of light varies with the density of matter it goes through. from C in a vacuum to virtually zero in a Base-Einstein condensate.

Now a Classical vacuum has no matter in it, period.

But a quantum vacuum has energy in it, referred to as zero vacuum energy, which is expressed as virtual particle/anti-particle pairs randomly coming into existence and then annihilating each other almost instantaneously. (This is sometimes called "quantum foam".) The question at hand is - does the random, near instantaneous, creation/destruction of these particle cause a tenuous medium? IF so, does this "medium" itself set the speed of light, C, that we observe? And if that is the case, could some method of suppression of the zero vacuum energy lead to a much greater speed of light? (And therefore a much greater maximum creatable speed?

[CoolScience]

You can't go faster than light. On the other hand, what is the absolute maximum speed of light?

An important distinction is that what you can't go faster than is the universal constant called c, the speed of light. It is the speed that light travels in vacuum, but light itself is not the key thing.

The underlying question is - What sort of vacuum really exists - a classical or a quantum vacuum?

This question makes no sense, please don't try to talk about quantum stuff if you haven't properly studied it. It is really not something you can learn from just casual reading, and you will make yourself look bad if you try.

We know, through experimentation, that the speed of light varies with the density of matter it goes through. from C in a vacuum to virtually zero in a Base-Einstein condensate.

Your first sentence was a clear lead in to this incorrect statement. The universal constant is completely unaffected by the dielectric properties of materials. Looking at your posting history, you have been told this before 4 years ago, so why are you repeating this wrong claim?

The previous post brings up the issue of – What is the maximum speed of light?

Before I get all the demands that the speed of light is a constant ( C ), one must note that the speed of light is a variable, depending on the density of the medium.  The denser, the slower.  This variability has been experimentally proven, over and over again.

No, you are confusing 2 distinct things, the speed of light in vacuum, which is a universal constant, and the speed of electromagnetic wave propagation in a material, which is completely irrelevant to this thread. See this video below if you want additional explanation:

Now a Classical vacuum has no matter in it, period.

But a quantum vacuum has energy in it, referred to as zero vacuum energy, which is expressed as virtual particle/anti-particle pairs randomly coming into existence and then annihilating each other almost instantaneously. (This is sometimes called "quantum foam".) The question at hand is - does the random, near instantaneous, creation/destruction of these particle cause a tenuous medium? IF so, does this "medium" itself set the speed of light, C, that we observe? And if that is the case, could some method of suppression of the zero vacuum energy lead to a much greater speed of light? (And therefore a much greater maximum creatable speed?

The answer to basically every question here is some form of no. The vacuum does not have magic properties that you are assigning it, the entire concept of vacuum energy is that you cannot have less energy than that. It is the ground state, and literally by definition it cannot have energy removed from it. ("suppressing" it is the same thing as saying you are lowering the energy below the lowest possible, simply a nonsensical concept.)

[gaballard]

CoolScience, you are doing god’s work on these threads. Thank you for bringing a hearty dose of reality to the conversation.

[RSE]

If one looks at the title of the thread, it says “Theoretical FTL”, so my comments are concerning the question.

The definition of light is C . Every discussion of FTL is based, one way or another, on modifying spacetime itself. Warp drive concepts, for example are based on gravitational distortion of spacetime. I merely pointed out another, novel, way to distort spacetime.

You see, everyone commenting on my posting have the underlying concept that C is a constant. My view is that all “constants” in physics are merely an “answer” to a deeper, unexplored level of understanding. So, to my view, the question is not what C is, but why C is.

Are there any pointers to this in existing physics? Actually, there are. If one goes back to the Maxwell’s Equations boundary conditions, C=1/the square root of (the permittivity * the permeability of a vacuum), both the permeability and the permittivity of a vacuum are considered constants, so C was considered a constant, as well.

But in the late 1990’s, methods were discovered to change the values of permittivity and permeability, both in sign and in value, for a very narrow electromagnetic wavelength. Snell’s Law of refraction in optics inverted for negative values, as did Cherenkov radiation (it went forward instead of backward), and the other Maxwell’s Equations boundary condition, the right hand rule (which says that all components of an EM wave will travel in the same direction) did the opposite, part of the photon went towards the observer, while the rest went away (left handed effect). All of these were experimentally tested, found to occur, and the results published.

So what about C? Does C=1/the square root of (the permittivity * the permeability of a vacuum) actually describe anything? If one lowers the permittivity * the permeability of a vacuum for a particular wavelength, how fast will light go, through that lowered area? One attempt was made to test this in 2004. I read the paper, and the methodology did not test a photon through a field, but a different effect using 2 misaligned transmitter/receivers 90 nanometers apart, which was not a velocity through a field experiment (it, of course supported C as a constant).
So I point out we still don’t know. Is C dependent on that Maxwell’s Equations boundary conditions? Or is it independent? Either way, why? Does Relativity consistently describe under all possible conditions, or is it like Newtonian mechanics, valid under certain circumstances, but not ALL circumstances?

I mentioned zero-vacuum energy, considering the possibility that it described Permittivity and permeability from another perspective.

[CoolScience]

The definition of light is C .

Again, this is false. light is defined as propagating electromagnetic waves. they travel at the universal speed limit  c in vacuum and travel slower than the universal speed limit in materials.

Every discussion of FTL is based, one way or another, on modifying spacetime itself. Warp drive concepts, for example are based on gravitational distortion of spacetime. I merely pointed out another, novel, way to distort spacetime.

No, you pointed at something that we know from experiment does not distort spacetime and claimed that it distorts spacetime.

You see, everyone commenting on my posting have the underlying concept that C is a constant. My view is that all “constants” in physics are merely an “answer” to a deeper, unexplored level of understanding. So, to my view, the question is not what C is, but why C is.

You are denying the definitions of the words you use to make these statements. c is the universal speed limit, and it has been experimentally observed to be constant.

Are there any pointers to this in existing physics? Actually, there are. If one goes back to the Maxwell’s Equations boundary conditions, C=1/the square root of (the permittivity * the permeability of a vacuum), both the permeability and the permittivity of a vacuum are considered constants, so C was considered a constant, as well.

C now stands apart from that though, and we know that even in the unlikely case photons are discovered to have mass and travel slower than c in vacuum, the universal speed limit of c would be unaffected.

But in the late 1990’s, methods were discovered to change the values of permittivity and permeability, both in sign and in value, for a very narrow electromagnetic wavelength. Snell’s Law of refraction in optics inverted for negative values, as did Cherenkov radiation (it went forward instead of backward), and the other Maxwell’s Equations boundary condition, the right hand rule (which says that all components of an EM wave will travel in the same direction) did the opposite, part of the photon went towards the observer, while the rest went away (left handed effect). All of these were experimentally tested, found to occur, and the results published.

The fact that permittivity and permeability change in materials has been known for a lot longer than that. It never changes the fundamental vacuum constants (and really is just a simpler way to describe the effects from motions of charges in the material without directly modelling the charges.) negative permittivity similarly just means the material behaves weird, not the magic you seem to assign it (I am not going to even try correcting correcting your statements in detail, too many misunderstandings it seems you have to even start.)

So what about C? Does C=1/the square root of (the permittivity * the permeability of a vacuum) actually describe anything? If one lowers the permittivity * the permeability of a vacuum for a particular wavelength, how fast will light go, through that lowered area?

The vacuum values do not change in the presence of materials. Nothing can change the vacuum values, you might as well say you have a magic wand that turns off gravity, but you aren't doing physics at that point.

One attempt was made to test this in 2004. I read the paper, and the methodology did not test a photon through a field, but a different effect using 2 misaligned transmitter/receivers 90 nanometers apart, which was not a velocity through a field experiment (it, of course supported C as a constant).
So I point out we still don’t know. Is C dependent on that Maxwell’s Equations boundary conditions? Or is it independent? Either way, why? Does Relativity consistently describe under all possible conditions, or is it like Newtonian mechanics, valid under certain circumstances, but not ALL circumstances?

Referencing random papers without titles or links is useless. Most of the rest of these questions don't even make sense. C is a fundamental aspect of the universe, and general relativity holds everywhere.

I mentioned zero-vacuum energy, considering the possibility that it described Permittivity and permeability from another perspective.

As I already explained, it is irrelevant and your claims about it are nonsensical.

[laszlo]

Why is this thread not locked? It started 16 years ago with 2 totally false assumptions. Between then and now it's been a constant stream of wishful thinking and poor understanding of science with the occasional physics hero offering corrections (I'm look at you meberbs and CoolScience).

The title is also wrong - there is no theoretical FTL. In fact, theory and observations tell us that c is the universal speed limit. What this thread is about is fictional/speculative FTL.

It's time to grow up and realize that wishing won't make it so - and kill this thread.

[rsdavis9]

Why is this thread not locked? It started 16 years ago with 2 totally false assumptions. Between then and now it's been a constant stream of wishful thinking and poor understanding of science with the occasional physics hero offering corrections (I'm look at you meberbs and CoolScience).

The title is also wrong - there is no theoretical FTL. In fact, theory and observations tell us that c is the universal speed limit. What this thread is about is fictional/speculative FTL.

It's time to grow up and realize that wishing won't make it so - and kill this thread.

It probably belongs in the cold fusion thread. I really wish that cold fusion was real...

[colbourne]

I think this thread is meaningful , even if the chances of achieving FTL in our life times is remote.

Travelling faster than light is easily possible with respect to the people on the spaceship due to time dilation. If going to a star 4 light years away, will only require travelling at 0.71 of light speed , to reach in 4 years (ignoring acceleration and deceleration phase). Going faster allows travel to stars at more than light speed , for the people on board.

There are other ways of potentially achieving FTL travel by warping space which do not break any rules.

Since this thread was created CERN has shown that it is unlikely for anti-matter to have a negative mass (for the particles tested), but there may be other particles e.g. dark energy that could meet the requirements.

[Slarty1080]

I think this thread is meaningful , even if the chances of achieving FTL in our life times is remote.

Travelling faster than light is easily possible with respect to the people on the spaceship due to time dilation. If going to a star 4 light years away, will only require travelling at 0.71 of light speed , to reach in 4 years (ignoring acceleration and deceleration phase). Going faster allows travel to stars at more than light speed , for the people on board.

There are other ways of potentially achieving FTL travel by warping space which do not break any rules.

Since this thread was created CERN has shown that it is unlikely for anti-matter to have a negative mass (for the particles tested), but there may be other particles e.g. dark energy that could meet the requirements.

Traveling faster than light relative to any inertial reference frame is not possible. And any information being conveyed by whatever means faster than the speed of light does break rules as it will violate causality.

I would also like to believe that FTL travel is possible. But unfortunately it is not. Sadly the universe is not made that way. It is a bit like wishing that there was a place north of the North Pole. There is no such place and the reasoning is similar

[colbourne]

The point I was making is that , really the only frame that matters is that for the people on board the spaceship.  For them travelling to a star 10 light years away can be achieved in less than 10 years at anything better than 0.71 light speed due to time dilation.

[Slarty1080]

The point I was making is that , really the only frame that matters is that for the people on board the spaceship.  For them travelling to a star 10 light years away can be achieved in less than 10 years at anything better than 0.71 light speed due to time dilation.

Yes this is true in theory. Although in practical difficulties are vast and should not be underestimated. Even a very high performance fusion drive would not be sufficient.

[CoolScience]

The point I was making is that , really the only frame that matters is that for the people on board the spaceship.  For them travelling to a star 10 light years away can be achieved in less than 10 years at anything better than 0.71 light speed due to time dilation.

I get what you are saying, but for most people that isn't the only frame that matters. Given enough energy and magnetic damping and such to prevent being squashed by the acceleration, and the trip could be a day each way without breaking physics. Most people will not like everyone they know aging 20 years while they are gone. Can't even hope to have a coherent civilization except around the nearest stars, though there is some value in expanding life out beyond that, the dream people have of FTL is more than that. What you describe is not what FTL means, and such trips would belong in a different thread.

Also, there is a thread on here somewhere slightly more productive about what it would take for FTL to be consistent with what has already been observed. The short answer was basically the FTL speeds would have to be a limited amount of FTL limited so there is a single frame where all FTL is purely forward in time. There is no reason to expect such a frame and it would be extremely surprising for such a frame to exist, since Relativity was postulated based on there being no such frame and non-intuitive relativistic predictions were found to be correct afterwards.

[Twark_Main]

I think this thread is meaningful , even if the chances of achieving FTL in our life times is remote.

Travelling faster than light is easily possible with respect to the people on the spaceship due to time dilation. If going to a star 4 light years away, will only require travelling at 0.71 of light speed , to reach in 4 years (ignoring acceleration and deceleration phase). Going faster allows travel to stars at more than light speed , for the people on board.

There are other ways of potentially achieving FTL travel by warping space which do not break any rules.

Since this thread was created CERN has shown that it is unlikely for anti-matter to have a negative mass (for the particles tested), but there may be other particles e.g. dark energy that could meet the requirements.

Traveling faster than light relative to any inertial reference frame is not possible. And any information being conveyed by whatever means faster than the speed of light does break rules as it will violate causality.

I would also like to believe that FTL travel is possible. But unfortunately it is not. Sadly the universe is not made that way. It is a bit like wishing that there was a place north of the North Pole. There is no such place and the reasoning is similar

Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." 

The one thing we know for certain about our current understanding of physics is that it is definitely wrong (due to the non-unification of SR and QM). In the real, correct physics—yet to be discovered—we don't yet know for sure whether such things are still forbidden (IMO most likely, btw), or whether there are sneaky loopholes.

The same thing cannot be said for latitude, which is a man-made concept and completely understood.

[edzieba]

I think this thread is meaningful , even if the chances of achieving FTL in our life times is remote.

Travelling faster than light is easily possible with respect to the people on the spaceship due to time dilation. If going to a star 4 light years away, will only require travelling at 0.71 of light speed , to reach in 4 years (ignoring acceleration and deceleration phase). Going faster allows travel to stars at more than light speed , for the people on board.

There are other ways of potentially achieving FTL travel by warping space which do not break any rules.

Since this thread was created CERN has shown that it is unlikely for anti-matter to have a negative mass (for the particles tested), but there may be other particles e.g. dark energy that could meet the requirements.

Traveling faster than light relative to any inertial reference frame is not possible. And any information being conveyed by whatever means faster than the speed of light does break rules as it will violate causality.

I would also like to believe that FTL travel is possible. But unfortunately it is not. Sadly the universe is not made that way. It is a bit like wishing that there was a place north of the North Pole. There is no such place and the reasoning is similar

Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." 

The one thing we know for certain about our current understanding of physics is that it is definitely wrong (due to the non-unification of SR and QM). In the real, correct physics—yet to be discovered—we don't yet know for sure whether such things are still forbidden (IMO most likely, btw), or whether there are sneaky loopholes.

The same thing cannot be said for latitude, which is a man-made concept and completely understood.

Advancement of science does not mean "chuck everything we know, everything is wrong, anything is possible". Scientific advancement is a process of being less wrong with each new theory, but that means the previous theory was correct within the tested parameters.
Thus far, every test we have performed and conceived has pointed towards superluminal travel not being possible, with theories that predict that superluminal travel would introduce division-by-zero or infinites making testable predictions that have proven correct. A theory that allows for superluminal travel would somehow also need to reconcile with every test we have performed to examine physics thus far (i.e. observable reality), and every test thus far has left no avenue for superluminal motion.

The idea that because the standard Model may eventually be succeeded by a more comprehensive theory and thus superluminal travel is possible makes about as much sense as saying Newtonian physics was superseded by SR & GR so maybe objects can fall upwards - previous evidence does not suddenly become invalid.