Beating the speed limit

[Ray McCarthy]

There are solutions to beating the limit of Light Speed. Unfortunately many "break" causality. It's a safe bet that Time Travel isn't possible. Certain ways of folding space-time, and certain limited kinds of wormholes don't contravene Relativity (you are not actually travelling faster than C, you have changed the distance) or Causality (you can't use it to go back in time). We don't even have decent theory or idea how to do it. Wormholes seem to require materials that don't exist and more energy than is possible.

It's not stopped people doing experiments which are analogous to the problem that we do know how to model ...

Physics uses warp theory to look beyond relativity
It's not really Warp drive.
This article was originally published in the January 2016 edition of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s E&T magazine.

 

[J Riff]

Nice. More energy than is possible, that's the ticket. Just watched Ikarie xb1, which deals with time dilation, way back in 1961. If we had started accelerating then, we may be at C by now.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The fact that there's no way to currently bring together quantum and gravitational theories in a single theoretical model suggests that we either don't know - or misunderstand - something fundamental about the universe.

Additionally, I seem to recall reading research a few years ago that suggested that universal constants may not actually be constant after all...

 

[Nick B]

I think it is great folly to believe we know enough to think we can lay down universal laws and constants. Who knows what discoveries and new theories are round the corner, or to be found a thousand years from now.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

no way to currently bring together quantum and gravitational theories in a single theoretical model suggests that we either don't know - or misunderstand - something fundamental about the universe

Absolutely. We know there is something we don't understand about Gravity, though we understand its effect better than Newton or Kepler did (they just had the magical force and didn't dream it affected light. The discrepancy between observations and theory with Mercury puzzled folk till it was shown that Einstein's relativity (Gravity affects time, distance and thus light) predicted Mercury's orbit exactly).
Relativity and Quantum Mechanics get to closest connection with "Quantum Electrodynamics", but not connected.

It's also interesting that Maxwell's Equations (I had to learn it at College, Relativity was just an interest) predicted C being a constant and speed of light/Radio in a vacuum, 20 years before Michelson-Morely measurement of speed of light. Maxwell published an early form of those equations between 1861 and 1862. The more exact modern version of them are called "Quantum Electrodynamics". Deviations from Maxwell's equations are immeasurably small except in (unsurprisingly) special "quantum mechanics" experiments with photons.
They are easier to deal with than relativity and you can make meta-materials with negative properties compared to bulk materials. A Ka-Ku band separator uses such a meta-material on some commercial dual band satellite dishes. Hence you can do microwave and optical experiments (or computer models) with meta-materials to test ideas about folding "space-time" or show that causality is unlikely to be breakable etc. That's what the people in the article are doing with computer models. Likely they are using Quantum Electrodynamic equations and not actually the Classical Maxwell's Equations (which are good enough for all every day RF and Optics).

 

[J Riff]

Have you considered writing SF Ray?
What people perhaps don't account for, is how these forces can be used by creatures that are radically different from humans, on radically different planets. Maybe they have absolutely no problem approaching C, physically, and have no particular issue with radiation that would cook us in a heartbeat.
Maybe they have no trouble sleeping a few years while they travel, without complex machinery to keep them alive. Etc. All good SF ideas. If everyone was like us and couldn't travel far in space, we'd have no giant alien monster bugs flying around in invisible ships, controlling everything, as they are obviously doing.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Have you considered writing SF Ray?

I write Both kinds of Fiction, SF and Fantasy.
My SF is semi-hard and I have five novels awaiting edits / proofreading from someone. I have plans mapped out for more.
I have on 1992 Fantasy I will re-write. I have an Urban fantasy that beta reader thought had SF but actually the science / Computers is all real stuff! Only the people and magic and demi-humans etc is fictional.
Two other fantasy done and one nearly done.

 

[RJM Corbet]

There are solutions to beating the limit of Light Speed..

Although the standard model is amazingly effective in expressing all the known forces and particles -- except gravity -- in one equation, which predicted the Higgs particle long before it was found -- 96% of the (known) universe consists of dark matter and dark energy which the standard model cannot (yet) touch. Let alone gravity. So -- as Brian Turner says -- 'c' and other constants may really not be final, just as Newton's physics was not.

The anthropic model: 'c' and the other constants work for us, because this is the only universe we could exist in. Ours is not only the best of all possible worlds, but the only possible world (universe) -- for us.

If it was even very slightly different, we couldn't be around?

So, Ray McCarthy, while sci-fi writers are always trying to devise a way to beat the speed of light, the real question may be how to get around the constant 'c' -- which, as you observe, actually just happens also to be the speed of light? In our universe, that is.

 

[Droflet]

Hyperspace anyone? It's only a theory but it's a working theory. To achieve light speed, and beyond, most bright minds agree that you have to leave our limited space time continuum. Just a thought.
And welcome back RJM. Long time no hear.

 

[RJM Corbet]

And welcome back RJM. Long time no hear.

Thank you for remembering me!

 

[Droflet]

Hey, old Chronners never leave, they just let life get in the way. I'm sure many of us remember you.

 

[mosaix]

Did I hear (or did I imagine it) that there is a particle that does travel faster than the speed of light? At the same time I think I heard that it is passing through the barrier from sub-light speed to faster that light speed that is not possible but it is possible to have a particle already traveling faster than the speed of light. Although that raises the question of how that speed was attained without traveling through the barrier in the first place.

Perhaps I dreamt it.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

It's a safe bet that Time Travel isn't possible.

This article was originally published in the January 2016 edition of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s E&T magazine.

Time travel isn't possible, he says, and quotes a future magazine that must have fallen out of a passing time machine...

 

[RJM Corbet]

The image of the 'light-barrier' isn't really accurate. It's really the 'C' barrier? Einstein's E=MC2 uses 'C' as a constant. The fact that 'C' turns out to be identical to the speed of light, is not actually necessary to the equation. There may be a physics that goes beyond E=MC2, but it hasn't been found yet, and in the meantime E=MC2 has worked very effectively to describe the 4% of the spacetime universe covered by the standard model of physics, from micro to macro. However E=MC2 fizzles out at the event horizon of a black hole. And then there's the remaining 96% of the universe consisting of dark matter and dark energy. So rather than looking at how to 'break the light barrier' it should be how to find an equation to improve on E=MC2? Good luck

 

[Ray McCarthy]

And then there's the remaining 96% of the universe consisting of dark matter and dark energy.

Those are proposals to "fix" the Universe model, fudges, because the expansion of the observable universe and movement (inc rotation) of galaxies doesn't match current theory otherwise. There is no other evidence that dark matter and dark energy exist. Physicists would be quite happy to have a new model (not involving "strings", "Dark matter" or "Dark Energy") that matches existing observations and has a testable prediction. String Theory, as far as I understand it, has no testable predictions. Relativity neatly INCLUDED all of Newton and accounted for why Newton and Kepler had the wrong orbit for Mercury. Relativity predicted that clocks on satellites or on top of mountains would run different to sea level (you can see this yourself with a second hand atomic clock and a handy mountain, UPS and van) and also that stars would bend passing light.

The fact that 'C' turns out to be identical to the speed of light, is not actually necessary to the equation.

Maxwell in I think 1865, proposed that Radio Waves and Light were the same and his equations determined that it had the maximum speed C in a vacuum. Maxwell was pretty much inspired by Faraday's work.
The Michelson–Morley experiment was performed over the spring and summer of 1887 showed that the speed of light was a constant, the speed of the Earth had no effect on the speed of light, neither additive, nor subtractive, confirming the unlikely result of Maxwell's Equations.

It's actually in the nature of Light or Radio Waves that the invariant maximum speed is actually the C in the Mass <-> Energy relationship. Light has zero mass. Anything WITH mass needs infinite Energy to be accelerated to Light Speed.

Albert Einstein formulated the theory of special relativity by 1905, deriving the Lorentz transformation and thus length contraction and time dilation from the relativity postulate and the constancy of the speed of light, thus removing the ad hoc character from the contraction hypothesis. Einstein emphasized the kinematic foundation of the theory and the modification of the notion of space and time, with the stationary aether no longer playing any role in his theory. He also pointed out the group character of the transformation. Einstein was motivated by Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism (in the form as it was given by Lorentz in 1895) and the lack of evidence for the luminiferous aether.

This allows a more elegant and intuitive explanation of the Michelson-Morley null result. In a comoving frame the null result is self-evident, since the apparatus can be considered as at rest in accordance with the relativity principle, thus the beam travel times are the same. In a frame relative to which the apparatus is moving, the same reasoning applies as described above in "Length contraction and Lorentz transformation", except the word "aether" has to be replaced by "non-comoving inertial frame".

Einstein wrote in 1916:

Although the estimated difference between these two times is exceedingly small, Michelson and Morley performed an experiment involving interference in which this difference should have been clearly detectable. But the experiment gave a negative result — a fact very perplexing to physicists. Lorentz and FitzGerald rescued the theory from this difficulty by assuming that the motion of the body relative to the æther produces a contraction of the body in the direction of motion, the amount of contraction being just sufficient to compensate for the difference in time mentioned above. Comparison with the discussion in Section 11 shows that also from the standpoint of the theory of relativity this solution of the difficulty was the right one. But on the basis of the theory of relativity the method of interpretation is incomparably more satisfactory. According to this theory there is no such thing as a "specially favoured" (unique) co-ordinate system to occasion the introduction of the æther-idea, and hence there can be no æther-drift, nor any experiment with which to demonstrate it. Here the contraction of moving bodies follows from the two fundamental principles of the theory, without the introduction of particular hypotheses; and as the prime factor involved in this contraction we find, not the motion in itself, to which we cannot attach any meaning, but the motion with respect to the body of reference chosen in the particular case in point. Thus for a co-ordinate system moving with the earth the mirror system of Michelson and Morley is not shortened, but it is shortened for a co-ordinate system which is at rest relatively to the sun.

 

[Serendipity]

Oh dear... we're onto the old thorny quest for the Theory of Everything....

One thing that perhaps might be helpful to realise about the gravitational and electromagnetic laws, is that their forces are proportional to one over the distance squared. A simple mathematical theorem shows that any forces not proportional to one over the distance squared is unstable in a three dimensional universe. So my (ever so humble) suggestion would be to start with looking at three dimensional space and work out what can be stable in it and therefore what can exist in it. It may be possible that there is more than one 'island of stability', in which case it is likely that there is no way of unifying the forces into one theory.

If nothing else, this suggestion is food for thought...

 

[Ray McCarthy]

gravitational and electromagnetic laws, is that their forces are proportional to one over the distance squared. A simple mathematical theorem shows that any forces not proportional to one over the distance squared is unstable in a three dimensional universe.

Possibly even inherently illogical for any other arrangement.
There is something basic we obviously don't understand. Dark Energy and Dark Matter are unwanted fudges stuck in till someone figures it out. Galileo was actually wrong about mostly everything, though he was going the right direction. Kepler, his contemporary was far more "right". Newton refined Kepler's work as Einstein refined Maxwell's work inspired by Faraday's experimental work (Faraday was a fantastic scientist and engineer hampered by being rubbish at Algebra etc. He had amazing insight and it wasn't till after his death that some of his suggestions that no-one at the time believed were found to be true).
We don't seem to have made a lot of progress since the beginning of the 20th C., a hundred years ago.

Quantum mechanics gradually arose from Max Planck's solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem (reported 1859) and Albert Einstein's 1905 paper which offered a quantum-based theory to explain the photoelectric effect (reported 1887). Early quantum theory was profoundly reconceived in the mid-1920s.

The term "theory of relativity" was based on the expression "relative theory" (German: Relativtheorie) used in 1906 by Max Planck, who emphasized how the theory uses the principle of relativity. In the discussion section of the same paper, Alfred Bucherer used for the first time the expression "theory of relativity" (German: Relativitätstheorie) ....
The theory of relativity transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century. When first published, relativity superseded a 200-year-old theory of mechanics created primarily by Isaac Newton.

In the field of physics, relativity improved the science of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, along with ushering in the nuclear age. With relativity, cosmology and astrophysics predicted extraordinary astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes and gravitational waves.
The theory of relativity was representative of more than a single new physical theory. There are some explanations for this. First, special relativity was published in 1905, and the final form of general relativity was published in 1916. Special relativity applies to elementary particles and their interactions, whereas general relativity applies to the cosmological and astrophysical realm, including astronomy. Special relativity was accepted in the physics community by 1920. This theory rapidly became a significant and necessary tool for theorists and experimentalists in the new fields of atomic physics, nuclear physics, and quantum mechanics. Conversely, general relativity did not appear to be as useful. There appeared to be little applicability for experimentalists as most applications were for astronomical scales. It seemed limited to only making minor corrections to predictions of Newtonian gravitation theory, till the 1960s

 

[RJM Corbet]

Yes, but the all embracing E=MC2 says that energy (measured in joules, or watts or something) is equal to mass (measured in ... something) multiplied not by the 'speed-of-light' squared -- but by 'C' squared. C happens to be 300km/sec or whatever it is -- but it could be the speed of a squirrel on a wheel. It wouldn't matter to the equation. It just comes out that way?

'Light' is not just visible light either, or course, but all electro-magnetic radiation and the 'light-barrier' is the limit to the speed of all and any information.

Certainly someone will someday come up with an equation that goes beyond E=MC2. But until then ...

 

[Ray McCarthy]

but it could be the speed of a squirrel on a wheel. It wouldn't matter to the equation. It just comes out that way?

No, it's intimately related to speed of light / radiowaves. Point a laser / radio transmitter behind and in front of something going at 0.5C and to EVERYONE, on the something, OR behind the something or beside it OR in front, the light / radio signal STILL is travelling at 1 C, not 0.5C and 1.5C as you'd expect.

Maxwell discovered this was implied by his equations. Einstein built on that work. Energy = Mass x Speed of Light Squared is part of a family of equations.
Light will apparently "slow" in a solid like glass (bends at junction of mediums), or passing a star (causes it to bend). What is actually happening is a lot more complicated. C is a constant and a maximum and inherently the speed of radio or light in a vacuum, no matter the speed of the object emitting it or the speed of the observer. Obviously SOMETHING has to change. So the wavelength changes for the observer (red ward for receding and blue ward for approaching). Hence if you have spectral lines from sodium, hydrogen, helium etc in starlight, you can tell how fast towards or away from you the star is moving (Blue shift, Red shift). However it's not accurate because gas and dust can cause a red shift.

 

[RJM Corbet]

No, it's intimately related to speed of light / radiowaves. Point a laser / radio transmitter behind and in front of something going at 0.5C and to EVERYONE, on the something, OR behind the something or beside it OR in front, the light / radio signal STILL is travelling at 1 C, not 0.5C and 1.5C as you'd expect...

Yes I am aware of this, and am being a bit facetious, playing devil's advocate a bit here.

But, at risk of labouring the point: 'C' is the constant that makes E=MC2 function. It's because 'C' doesn't change, that light-speed doesn't change. It's the constant 'C' which dictates that any particle having any mass at all, approaches infinite mass as it approaches 'C'. Light, being massless, 'uses-up' all its timespace and so travels at the speed 'C'.

Something like that, I believe?

'E' & 'M' are 'timespace factors' that can be agreed upon by all observers.
'C' is the constant that relates one to the other?

All the best for your writing in
2016,Ray McCarthy