How can we know if the human body will be able to stand travel close to the speed of light? I think it will be machines or intelligent robots who will be the pioneers of long distance travel to the stars. When I come to think of it, squishy creatures like us are not suitably designed for space travel. I would rather go with Arthur C.Clarke's idea, that our future 'children' may be a form of artificial intelligence who can make it to the stars.
The aliens might be the same. They might turn out to look more like a giant monolith as in C. Clarke's film, 2001. Or they might be very small robots that we can't see or recognize.
They might have inbuilt repair systems that would make them 'immortal' meaning they could explore the universe at their ease.
Either way, my bets are on that if we do make contact, it might be with some form of artificial intelligence.

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'No one can make you inferior without your consent.'
Eleanor Roosevelt.

If you could travel faster than the speed of light there would be several logical paradoxes. Effect would come before the cause.......

Now that I think about this some more.
Wait why would that be a problem? It all happened at the same time it just appears to happen at different times to the observer. Am I just stupid or something? Please feel free to tear that apart.

Why can particles exceed the speed of light in water but not in a vacuum? I am refering to Cherenkov radiation.

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If you could travel faster than the speed of light there would be several logical paradoxes. Effect would come before the cause.......

Now that I think about this some more.
Wait why would that be a problem? It all happened at the same time it just appears to happen at different times to the observer. Am I just stupid or something? Please feel free to tear that apart.

Why can particles exceed the speed of light in water but not in a vacuum? I am refering to Cherenkov radiation.

The speed of light i water is less than it is in vacuum.

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Why can particles exceed the speed of light in water but not in a vacuum? I am refering to Cherenkov radiation.

The radiation arises when the particle moves faster than the speed of light in that medium. It's important to remember that the literal speed of light in a Medium will be less than the speed of light in a Vacuum. So to say when "the particle moves faster than the speed of light in that medium" means that it's still slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.

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TEAM
LL

Hi Sleestak, I read your profile. Its good. did you do much in the field of
electrical engineering. I'm an electrican. I've been working in heavy engineering now for about 15 years. I Dabble in electronics also. You do seem to have a quality understanding of chemestry allright.

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The speed of light i water is less than it is in vacuum.

The speed of light is unchanging. What changes is the overall forward progress of photons as the path length and number of interactions increase in a medium such as water.

The best example of this is the sun, where photons emitted as gamma rays at the core average around a million years to reach the photosphere as visible light. At that point they can travel through the vacuum of space "at the speed of light" because there's little to interact with and alter their path.

Solar neutrinos produced by the same fusion reactions that generate gamma rays at the core do travel at the speed of light to the sun's surface because they seldom interact with anything.

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What changes is the overall forward progress of photons as the path length and number of interactions increase in a medium such as water.

Is the reason that the photons are absorbed and emitted an number of times during the pas trough the water?

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This seems to be the fastest man made machine ever built.
Helios 1
Its Helios 1, a salalite launched in the 1970s and it used the suns gravity
seemingly to reach a speed of 158,000 MPH. Thats one 4000th, of the speed of light and there was no man on board.

It would have been nice to have been sitting in the front seat.

Light travels at 670,616,629 MPH or 3x10^8 M/S

This seems to be the fastest a woman has gone. It does not say for Mankind.

Galileo this is a short video of Galileo crashing into jupiter
Fastest woman17,761MPH

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The radiation arises when the particle moves faster than the speed of light in that medium. It's important to remember that the literal speed of light in a Medium will be less than the speed of light in a Vacuum. So to say when "the particle moves faster than the speed of light in that medium" means that it's still slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Yes I figured that but that doesnt satisfy me. If you exceed the speed of light it water hows that so different from a vacuum? Wouldn't the same problems arise as you approch the speed of light in a vacuum, such as the infinite mass phenomenon? You are travelling faster than the light photons so wouldn't that say it might be possible to do the same in a vacuum?

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That's an interesting thought. The difference is that in a Vacuum, you can speed up your electron to speeds greater than the speed of light in a Medium to begin with. How would you take advantage of this effect to get to the speed of light within a vacuum?

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TEAM
LL

According to what you can reed under number 2. 'Third Party Observers' in the article below you can travel faster than light but you can't, as a traveler, measure it.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

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I find the conclusion reached in that article promissing
Conclusion
To begin with, it is rather difficult to define exactly what is really meant by FTL travel and FTL communication. Many things such as shadows can go FTL but not in a useful way which can carry information. There are several serious possibilities for real FTL which have been proposed in the scientific literature but there are technical difficulties. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle tends to stop the use of apparent FTL quantum effects for sending information or matter. In general relativity there are potential means of FTL travel but they may be impossible to make work. It is thought to be highly unlikely that engineers will be building space-ships with FTL drives in the foreseeable future, if ever, but it is curious that theoretical physics as we presently understand it seems to leave the door open to the possibility. FTL of the sort science fiction writers would like is almost certainly impossible. For physicists the interesting question is "why is it impossible and what can we learn from it?".

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Old enough to know better(but)still young enough not to care

Forget this nanzy panzy stuff. I want a space craft that looks like this
and travels faster than Light!!!!


I want to park it outside my house aswell. And use it for going to the shop
to pick up groceries.

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I'd want the RV version of the FTL ships. I would need a minibar and frig for long voyages.

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TEAM
LL

Forget this nanzy panzy stuff. I want a space craft that looks like this
and travels faster than Light!!!!


I want to park it outside my house aswell. And use it for going to the shop
to pick up groceries.

Sorry, but the United Nations regulations forbid the use of space-capable aircrafts over civilian air-space.
You will have to leave your ride parked at the space-port, like everybody else, mister. ;)

By the way, that plane looks a lot like the Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird", one of USAF's F-117 predecessors. What plane is that?

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/Mav

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
(Carl Sagan)

Yes Diego, its the SR 71. I think its a realistic idea that it be
parked outside my place and i can go to the shop and back faster than the
speed of light. THIS IS POSSIBLE.

Sleestak has a vivid imagination and is compleetly unrealistic if he thinks
your ever going to get a mini bar AND a fridge into an SR 71. Maby just the
mini bar could be squeezed in!!

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Then that settles it. I won't be able to go on the FTL trip then.

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TEAM
LL

I see. You only like your beers cold!!!!.

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Yes Diego, its the SR 71.

/nod
That has to be one of the coolest-looking planes ever built.

I think its a realistic idea that it be
parked outside my place and i can go to the shop and back faster than the
speed of light. THIS IS POSSIBLE.

We'll have teleportation pods in our garages to do that. Won't need planes.

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/Mav

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
(Carl Sagan)

Because we really do not understand the true nature of matter or light, we cannot say for sure if we can or cannot travel faster than light. It's current theory that suggests that we cannot travel faster than light and current theory is obviously wrong or incomplete at best.

What on earth are you talking about!?

From wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

Special relativity has been experimentally tested to extremely high degree of accuracy (10^-14)... A number of experiments have been conducted to test special relativity against rival theories. These include:

Kaufman's experiment — electron deflection in exact accordance with Lorentz-Einstein prediction
Hamar experiment — no "ether flow obstruction"
Kennedy-Thorndike experiment — time dilation in accordance with Lorentz transformations
Rossi-Hall experiment — relativistic effects on a fast-moving particle's half-life
Experiments to test emitter theory demonstrated that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the emitter.

In addition, particle accelerators run almost every day somewhere in the world, and routinely accelerate and measure the properties of particles moving at near lightspeed. Many effects seen in particle accelerators are highly consistent with relativity theory.

Maybe the view of it being "law" is why there have been no major advancements since relativity.

What!? Einstein's theory of special relativity has been one of the most challenged theories of all time. Physicists are constantly trying to prove it wrong, but Einstein always wins. Experimental results which appear to contradict special relativity (e.g. the "fast-light" material experiment) are always later found to be incorrect. Maybe the reason why there have been no major advancements since relativity is because it is correct.

Einstein wins again - for now:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1106/p16s02-stss.html

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