Recent articles in Scientific American have talked about traveling faster than light.

Scientific American ^ | 03/20/05 | Jorge

[KevinDavis]

Einstein's special theory of relativity predicts that nothing can exceed the speed of light. But special relativity applies when spacetime is flat. When spacetime is curved, the theory applies only "locally"--that is, over regions of spacetime small enough to be considered flat. Consider the analogy of a plane that is tangent to a sphere. The flat geometry of the plane is a good approximation to the geometry of the sphere when the size of the plane is very small compared to the sphere's radius of curvature.

[det dweller too]

Well, there have been many experiments with the earth and sun. It has been proven that the earth tracts to the actual location of the sun, or about 2 degrees ahead of the apparent location that we see as the sun. I remember reading on some website a few years ago that if there were any significant lag in the planetary reaction, that the planets would spiral out of their locations. Think about it! Have some ball orbit a center point and then move the force acting on the ball so that it is pointing a few degrees off the center point. what happens to the path of the ball?

[DrDavid]

I was thinking of sending them into a convenient black hole. Who said anything about installing manual controls on the ships?

Sounds a bit like the B-Arc to me.

[Drammach]

Earth is expanding, along with the rest of the universe..
That is, in relation to the distance from the "center" of the universe, our galaxy, solar system, etc..

It's not the mass, but the space-time coordinates.

[expatguy]

Never say never. Anything can be done.

How about saving Terri?

[Drammach]

If you did this, you would have no where to stand, until the universe returned to it's position ftom when/where you started your time travel.

It's travel through space-time, not just time..

Everything is in motion, so any sort of "time" travel would always have to take into account that not only time has changed, but the space-time coordinates of the place ( or point) one wishes to be in that time frame..

[XBob]

"t's travel through space-time, not just time..
Everything is in motion, so any sort of "time" travel would always have to take into account that not only time has changed, but the space-time coordinates of the place ( or point) one wishes to be in that time frame.."


that's the point I am making.

Time travel is impossible, because to travel in time (even one atom only), the whole universe must be moved.

[Trityn]

I am familiar with the works of Van Flandern and his finite speed gravity inducing orbital decay. I've not done the calculations myself nor verified the work but his arguments are compelling. Either way, Gravity Probe "B" should provide some conclusive data and it will be very interesting to see the results.

[Quix]

AMEN!

[Quix]

It seems like every week, at least every month, we are that much closer to

THX 1138.

Under appreciated flick, imho.