 October 5, 2011 - 8:33pm | A recent anomoly has scientist scrambling to find out if the lightspeed barrier is no more a barrier than the sound barrier. I personally have always felt the explanation in Relativity a bit forced and am hoping this pans out to prove that the lightspeed barrier is just another concoction of self-limiting scientific minds. The greatest minds in the world once said that the speed of sound couldn't be broken. It was dubbed a "barrier". We now have a lightspeed barrier that has all the hallmarks of being an artificial limitation set by limited thinkers. If this is so, the physics relying upon it would be fundamentally flawed and may explain why quantum physics and many other mysteries don't pan out when compared to relativity in many areas. Many scientist today even question the assumptions made in relativity. Even the very theory of time dilation may be called into questiion So if it turns out that we only need to keep pushing faster and faster to get past light speed, what would it take to achieve faster than light travel without some spacefold, void, slipstream, warp or wormhole technology? What if we can just keep accelerating to get there? What if time doesn't move forward in lightspeed as much as is claimed, if at all? What would it mean for space travel and how we get about and the time relationships? View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 October 5, 2011 - 8:42pm | Dont count time dilation out- thought they proved it by putting an atomic clock on an airliner and flying it around the world and measured the difference against a control clock. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 5, 2011 - 11:30pm | I don't know about the clock you're referring to, but Magellan lost a day in circumnavigating the earth because, as Wikipedia explains, "they traveled west during their circumnavigation of the globe, opposite to Earth's daily rotation." Inversely, if you travel the other way around the earth, (as Magellan did) you will lose a day, because the days were shorter for you in that you saw 2 days and nights, but the clock only experienced one. This is an illusion, nothing more. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
October 6, 2011 - 1:23am | The dilation I was speaking of wasn't the observed dilation of two objects at a distance from each other or running in opposite directions or circumnavigating the globe (all of which are confirmed illusions), but of traveling at a high rate of speed and arriving to your destination at a different time than your speed and time traveled permits. The one that says if you traveled through the galaxy at light speed, you and your decendents will have only experienced 100 years of travel. But the galaxy will have aged 10,000 years. As far as I know, that theory is based solely upon Relativity, not upon quantum mechanics. From all I've read recently, it appears to me that dilation of this sort is as much an illusion as any of the other forms of dilation. Since that theory is based upon the concept of nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light, it assumes that time also travels at the speed of light. But if they find that there are particles that travel faster than the speed of light, then the theory that time travels at the speed of light is out the window and so are all the calculations based upon it. I'm convinced that time is not bound by the speed of anything, because the mechanic that induces time is a bunch of particles with no measurable speed of transmission (read: unknown) and acted upon, willy nilly by every other non-mass particle of its kind (The particle makes up every other particle in the universe; larger particles exist because of the big bang that was created by the non-mass particles acting upon each other until the singularity was formed and finally released its energy, clumping particles together into semi-permanent bonds). A particle of this sort acting here has no more relevance to time than a particle acting there. It simply acts out of which action time exists, but does not guide or restrict the flow of time. Time exists not because of the forward movement of a particle of light, but because particles move. The exact speed of those particles doesn't matter at all. I am, therefore I exist. <- You are here. He is there -> I am, therefore I exist. Both are coexisting in the same moment of time no matter how far apart they are from each other, though the light from one appears to relate an earlier time to the other. The object traveling at the speed of light between them, therefore, also does not age any slower, nor does the time between those two objects speed up as that object moves at the speed of light. It is, therefore it exists. At one moment it is here and at another moment there, and you, it and the other guy are all still experiencing the exact same moment at the exact same time. You just don't know it yet. Sure, the it traveling at the speed of light will see your all's moment sooner than either of you see each other's moments because it's experiencing the light before it reaches either of you, but by that time, the moment has already passed for all of you. Of course, they'll just say that time travels as fast as the neutrinos they found, and then they readjust again when they find something else traveling even faster a hundred years from now, unless someone completely disregards the thought that time travels at the speed of light. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
October 6, 2011 - 5:16am | What I was speaking of is the effect that when an object speeds up time appear to slow down for it. The closer your speed is to C the more noticeable that effect. NOVA or somebody wanted to test this but since speeds obtained on earth are not even close to a significance of C the used hyper accurate atomic clocks and put one on a jet liner. The result was an incredibly small fraction of a second but there was a difference between the two clocks. Its not much but it is experimental data that supports the theory. I'd be curious to find out if Nasa recreated this expedient with the space shuttle since it reaches speeds exceeding that of jetliners the results ought to be more pronounced, if only still a small fraction of time. NOTE: its not an issue of where and what direction that you travel the condition the theory gives is speed. A jet liner must fly around the world simply because it can't leave orbit. The experiment was not to explore why Magellan lost a day, which he actually did not lose a day since he never made it back, but anyways the experiment was to test whether time does indeed appear to slow down when you speed up. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 6, 2011 - 5:35am | Magellann lost a heck of a lot more than just a day! |
October 6, 2011 - 5:49am | Magellann lost a heck of a lot more than just a day! Exactly. I'd not rush to judgement on this as the OPERA experiment is only one unconfirmed bit of data- the article notes that many scientist are skeptical that the experiement is "not suffieciently free of error" If it pans out it could revolutionize physics, sure, but I think the correct stance is to use caution with this. I can think of examples of early rush to announce ground breaking break throughs that have not panned out. Nonetheless nice catch Ascent. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 6, 2011 - 6:08am | There are always skeptical scientists. And there are always scientists proven wrong. There were scientists who said the sound barrier couldn't be broken. There were scientists who said man would never fly. There were scientists who said a 100 inch telescope was impossible. There's always someone. That doesn't mean anything. Note that the article doesn't say the whole scientific community is skeptical. Yes, Magellan ONLY lost exactly 1 day, because he only traveled around the world once during that trip, and didn't land at a different port when done. It's an illusion, guys, nothing more. I'm not declaring it myself. If you've taken it as anything more than an illusion, then you have read more into it than is claimed. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 October 6, 2011 - 6:27am | I think what Inigo was referring to was the fact that IIRC, Magellen didn't actually complete the trip. His ship did but he died along the way. The experiment with the the clocks that jedi described did measure a difference in the time experienced by the different atomic clocks. One flew east and one flew west (and none flew over the cuckoo's nest :) ) thus maximizing their speed difference (with and against the rotation of the earth). There was, IIRC, actually a bigger effect from general relativistic effects since as jedi points out jets don't fly very fast but once that was accounted for the special relativity effect was definitely observed. I don't know if they ever put anything up on the space shuttle but to exactly repeat the experiment you'd need two shuttles going opposite directions and since we can't launch a shuttle westward, at least that part was never done. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Personally, I think the biggest mark against it is the data point from SN1987a. That would seem to imply that even though you got FTL travel on the small scale of the CERN collider, over longer interstellar distances it doesn't pan out. However, as Ascent points out, scientists have been wrong in the past and it could be very exciting. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
October 6, 2011 - 6:45am | Technically, Magellan never went around the world but he did loose something far more significant than a day. You are correct the some scientist will always be skeptical of something and this is better than everyone believing the same dogma however, one experimental result does not make Einstein a mormon. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I simply think its premature to declare the speed of light invalid. EDIT:that's moron not Mormon that you auto correct! I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 6, 2011 - 6:48am | Joshua commanded the sun to stop, has anyone accounted for that?  In the News Frontier scientist are experimenting with time dilation. A brand new ship, the TimeSync has been commissioned to make a Void jump from the frontier sector to the edge of the known galaxy. From their they will calculate a jump to the nearest galaxy, Cepa-54a. Good luck, may the wind always fill your wings. |
October 6, 2011 - 6:51am | Perhaps its more correct to say that Magellan lost all of his days? I never realy got why he gets the credit for circumnavigating the globe, don't we usually crown the last man standing? My history teachers pontificated on why when I questioned this but I 've always suspected that it was English propaganda and possibly Magellians second in command was of another nationality. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 6, 2011 - 2:26pm | Magellan wasn't English, he was Portugese and the king of Spain, Charles I, was the financier. Okay, the ship lost a whole day. It's the one who sets out to prove a theory, not the last one standing, who gets the credit. It was a co-command (Both Magellan and Faleiro were both named commanders of the same fleet.) Nothing in my posts on translight travel said that the experiment proved anything. Reread and start again. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
October 6, 2011 - 4:52pm | If an astrogator can calculate a jump 10+ ly I'm sure if he was given enough time could calc a jump any number of light years. Why limit yourself to the frontier? There are sathar to hunt. I bet Sector 6 is doing just that as I type. In fact (whats that noise?).... I'm wond a;lsji8uik,a' ;. po52h helllllllllllllllllllllllllpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp |
