Probing Question: Can anything travel faster than the speed of light?

PhysOrg.com ^ | 23 March 2006 | Joe Anuta

[VadeRetro]

Straightforward Newtonian addition of velocities doesn't work to get you past c. If you plug the problem you propose into the Lorentz transformations Einstein adopted, you don't get over c. No observer anywhere thinks you're going faster than light, not even one going near the speed of light the other way.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Plus, don't even think of trying it on Amtrak.

[VadeRetro]

Straightforward Newtonian addition of velocities doesn't work to get you past c.

Actually, that does but it's wrong.

[RightWhale]

He did not postulate that. The central concern of Special Relativity, where time is taken as absolute and length is taken as absolute was electro-magnetic phenomena. These phenomena are the realm of the Maxwell equations.

He said, 'The theory of relativity is often criticized for giving, without justification, a central theoretical role to the propagation of light, in that it founds the concept of time upon the law of propagation of light. The situation, however, is somewhat as follows. In order to give physical significance to the concept of time, processes of some kind are required which enable relations to be established between different places. It is immaterial what kind of processes one chooses for such a definition of time. It is advantageous, however, for the theory, to choose only those processes concerning which we know something certain. This holds for the propagation of light in vacuo in a higher degree than for any process which could be considered, thanks to the investigations of Maxwell and H A Lorentz.'

Is appears that many have taken the speed of light in vacuo to be the limiting speed of material objects, and that this may be an error of great significance for the progress of physics in the past century. SR describes how motion of material objects may appear.

[ChadGore]

Re: John Kerry can when he spots a wealthy widow.

lol Classic!

[Larry Lucido]

If you're travelling on a train moving at 99.9999% the speed of light and you get up and walk to the front of the train, didn't you just surpass the speed of light?

No, the speed of light is how fast my cat takes my chair when I get up.

[null and void]

Bad news.

[308MBR]

Sure, God and other things not bound by the logic of this universe....excepting socialists of course.

[PatrickHenry]

As recently as the 1940s, you could find plenty of articles explaining how it was impossible for humans to break the sound barrier.

Yes, but it's a bad analogy to the lightspeed barrier. It's long been known that things can and do go faster than sound (lightning, for one obvious example, which is often seen before it's heard). For human travel, it wasn't known if our bodies could take the stress, or if our machines could either. But that was just engineering. In principle, the speed of sound wasn't really a barrier that couldn't be passed.

[Continental Soldier]

Very interesting post. Considerations of maximum speed, from Einstein to the present, have been predicated upon travel through space-time. But what if the fabric of space-time, itself, could be compressed in the path of the traveling object, so that the traveling object would always be approaching space-time, but not traveling through it? Like I said, very interesting post!

[Burlem]

Interesting you posed this question. A similiar question was asked of scientist Dr. Bill Wattenburg on his radio station Saturday Night. The answer is No.
For your info, he is on week-ends 10pm to 1:am KGO 810 on the dial.

[Lancey Howard]

"Light" is just waves of photons as processed by the human eyes and mind, right? Sure, I bet there's particles (a human conception) that travel "faster" (another human conception) than light. Of course, within the very limited context of human perception and conception, photons are supposedly the fastest moving particles, although I read a few years ago that scientists had found some particle or another that travels slightly faster.

[skimask]

"Can anything travel faster than the speed of light?"

Yes, DU tin foil hat conspiracy theories

[359Henrie]

My wife's nags?

[VadeRetro]

Yes, but it's a bad analogy to the lightspeed barrier. It's long been known that things can and do go faster than sound (lightning, for one obvious example, which is often seen before it's heard).

Probably not a good example. That's just light going faster than sound, although the lightning is probably doing so as well.

A better example would be bullets, which had been flying supersonic for some time previously. (Not sure when muzzle velocities went super, but any center-fire rifle round from the age of the smokeless-powder Mauser on does so routinely.) Even the tip of a cracking whip is going supersonic, which is why it cracks.

One particular movie from the late 40s gives a very wrong impression of the quest. It has Ralph Richardon explaining to someone that no one even knew if the air molecules could or would get out of the way of a thing trying to fly faster than sound. That was just nonsense, especially since by the time that movie was shot Chuck Yeager had already flown faster than sound, although the Air Force had not publicized the event.

[RedStateRocker]

What the 'Relative' in Relativity means is that there is no absolute frame of reference in the universe except for the speed of light. Before relativity there was the question of the ether; in other words, EVERYONE thought that there MUST be a medium for light to propagate through since light was a wave and waves mus move through something. But there were many problems with the ether, for instance measurements should show it, and the earth would be moving through it first one way and then another as it circled around the sun, etc- science went to great lengths to try to imagine the properties of this thing that light moved through.

Relativity changed all of that. It stated that ALL rules of the universe applied everywhere equally. In other words, what is "movement"? Are you moving? and relative to what?.
your train moving 99% of the speed of light relative to what? earth? the center of a galaxy? another train headed away, also at 99% of the speed of light?
So what relativity states is that neither light nor this train not the passenger on it can exceed speed 'C'.
What would be happening in your instance is that yes, you would move to the front of the train at what you would think was say 2% lightspeed, but to an observer anywhere else the train and you still do not exceed the speed of light. The reason is that *TIME* is NOT a constant.
Time *IS* a constant to us here moving at tiny non relativistic speeds but as you near the speed of light, since 'C' can't change, time does. It is a very hard concept to wrap the brain around. That train going 99% of the speed of light is not moving at all to the person riding on it. But if you rode it for a few days your time you would find your twin brother months or years older.
Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?

[free_at_jsl.com]

Lots of good scientists believe that it is certainly possible to travel faster than light -- but you can never cross the tachyon/tardyon barrier. Tachyons are in another universe and can have no interaction with ours.

[Mephari]

You would not have the energy required to accelerate even that small amount.

The closer to the speed of light (c) you are moving the more energy is required for additional acceleration.

This increase in required energy is exponential and if you were moving on this hypothetical train at 99.9999999...9% the speed of like that last tiny bit of speed needed to reach c would be equal to more energy than is available in the universe. I hope this was clear.

[Mephari]

Like = light. I sounded like a valley girl. sorry.

[adorno]

Can anything travel faster than the speed of light?

Wait a minute now!

Didn't scientists, a couple of weeks ago, tell us that the universe expanded in something less than a trillionth of a second from virtually nothing to something larger than the parts of the universe that are observable by us?

Fo that to have been true, then the espansion at the beginning was travelling many times faster than light.