Why Can't We Travel Faster Than Light?

[ToraToraTora]

....because we are already travelling through spacetime at the speed of light, there is only one speed in spacetime.

&t=6s

 

 

 

[andy-hughes]

Clare - // 

Except you aren't making any point at all.

It's an admirable strategy, I'll grant you, but it's based on nothing - even, as I noted, the explicit examples you gave are entirely wrong, let alone irrelevant - and requires no understanding at all of the material in question. "What if you turn out to be wrong in future?" is always a possible question, and therefore is -- without justification -- always a vacuous question. //

I am happy to concede that my examples may not have hit the spot.

However, my point, and it is a point I believe remains.

Let me ask you a simple question - 

Do you know everything the future holds, and what will happen to mankind a million years from now?

[ClareTG0ld]

I appreciate that it's not relevant to the topic at hand, Zacs, but I hope you don't mind if I take the opportunity to correct you on something I think you were discussing in another thread a month or so back: she/her.

 

[andy-hughes]

Zacs - // You missed their 17.06 answer then, Andy? //

No, I replied at 17.09.

If you must have a dig, try checking the thread first, it will save you looking foolish - again.

[ClareTG0ld]

// Do you know everything the future holds, and what will happen to mankind a million years from now? //

I actually do, as it happens :)

[Zacs-Master]

'If you must have a dig, try checking the thread first, it will save you looking foolish'
 

Given your record on this thread, do you mind if I ignore your advice?

[andy-hughes]

Clare - // 

// Do you know everything the future holds, and what will happen to mankind a million years from now? //

I actually do, as it happens :) //

Come on, a serious answer, for the record.

[retrocop]

Z.M. @ 1720

😝

[Togo]

Perhaps one day the new quantum computers and such will enable us to copy and paste something across the universe in the blink of an eye. Gawd elp the aliens if it comes to pass. 

[THECORBYLOON]

CLARE, can you explain (as simply as possible), quantum entanglement, where a change to one entangled particle appears to affect another entangled particle faster than the speed of light, even when light-years apart?

[ClareTG0ld]

I mean, obviously, not. But it's also a question that has no particular relevance.

Suppose you were to roll a fair, standard, six-sided die, and asked me what the next fifty rolls would be. I couldn't answer you with certainty. But I could tell you all of the 6^50 possible sequences (at least in principle -- in practice the list would be too large to fit inside Earth), and I could also tell you a few things that will definitely never happen, eg that you will never roll a seven.

This example represents the opposite extreme to, say, your bee example -- with apologies for bringing it up again, but I do have a point. In that case, the evidence of our senses tell us from the off that the "prediction" that bees can't fly is manifestly wrong, so that the theory is obviously wrong. In the dice scenario, the theory is immutable: it is in the nature of all dice with the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 that you can never roll a seven, and we don't need to gather continual evidence to confirm this (and, indeed, anyone who did claim to have rolled a 7 would be either lying or using a non-standard dice).

The point is that the nature of the statement, "the speed of light is the fastest possible speed and cannot be exceeded" is far closer to the dice situation than you seem to realise. I am not going to say that it's exactly equivalent, but it's at this point a statement about the fundamental nature of the universe. Anything that measurably exceeds the speed of light* by even the tiniest fraction would break that fundamental understanding, and break it in a way that is, at this point, almost as inconceivable about getting that seven.

*See another comment later.

[ClareTG0ld]

TCL, I'll be happy to answer that in another thread -- I'll need to refresh my own memory on it. But a short answer is that the speed of light is really the speed of "information", and no information is transmitted in an entanglement experiment.

That paragraph alone makes little sense, I know, but I promise to try and expand on it later.

[Zacs-Master]

Shouldn't that be!

no information *appears to be* transmitted in an entanglement experiment?

[ClareTG0ld]

// Anything that measurably exceeds the speed of light* by even the tiniest fraction would break that fundamental understanding ...//

To be more precise on this asterisk, for anybody who cares...

The nature of the speed of light limit isn't so much that nothing can exceed it, but nothing can cross it. Things travelling slower than the speed of light are doomed to always travel slower, but likewise anything that travelled faster than light would always travel faster. There are other reasons to believe that "tachyons" (look it up on wikipedia) aren't physical, but still, at least at this level it's fun to remember that the maths says that you travel either always at c, or always less than c, or always greater than c.

 

[Togo]

I have been waiting for a few months for the likely possibility of White Holes being possible, and the speeds generated to enable matter to be ejected, coming up on one of these threads.  

[ClareTG0ld]

// Shouldn't that be!

no information *appears to be* transmitted in an entanglement experiment? //

I'll think about it a bit more in anticipation of TCL asking it -- watch this space! -- but I do think that "is" is more accurate than "appears to be". 

[andy-hughes]

Clare - If we expected the rigours of 'relevance' to be a requirement, the site would collapse overnight!

I really believe you ate over-thinking and overanalysing a simple point from someone who is not that bothered about science, or the distant future. 

[ClareTG0ld]

Luckily for this site, at least somebody does care about science, then. Even if it were a throwaway on your part, explaining why it's so flawed at a fundamental level might be beneficial to others.

[mibn2cweus]

Time and space are are meaningless apart from an observer's frame of reference in spacetime.

[ToraToraTora]

"

I have taken all of it on board, thank you Clare.

However, I remain unmoved from my original position - we can only know what we know now, and on the basis of what we know, we can make potential predicitions, with increasing sophistication and complexity as our knowledge increases." - the sign of a moron, someone of such arrogance he can dismiss a 100 years of legends! never known such arrogance from a "music" journo!

[andy-hughes]

TTT - The veracity of my point is not diminished by your crass rudeness.

There is an ignorant contributor to the thread, but it's not me.