Beyond Lightspeed

I think I have a very good question, they claim the universe is 13.7 billion years old. But surly we aren't sitting right smack in the middle so how do they derive 13.7 vs maybe 27.4 or something older.

Time has been shown to speed up within certain areas or spots where extraterrestrial crafts have been thought to have landed here on earth.

What is the definition of the length of a second?

Since 1967, the international second has been defined to be:

The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

Time can be distorted as speed increases, as predicted by Einstein's theories. I can't recall the exact logic, because I never had to consider that particular corner of his work while doing my work at very low temperatures (77K = too hot, sub 4K = normal, even a few trips to sub 1K...) - you can have real fun with liquid helium and tomatoes, but that's a different story....
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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

It is easier of you consider "time" as an n-dimensional plane than a linear object. By doing so you can have the time-plane distort without disturbing our geometric planes, or you can distort our geometric planes without affecting the time-plane. Once you've done this transformation you can start to think about exceeding the speed of light in our set of geometric planes, but without exceeding it in the time-plane. The maths is in the "quite exciting" club until you give up trying to work everything back to our view of geometry....


This reminds me of an old sci-fi book that started with the phrase "Time was proceeding at it usual rate of one second per second", and ended, two hundred odd (very odd) pages later with the phrase "Time was one more proceeding at its usual rate of one second per second".
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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

but in the emptiness of space.. there is no 'mass' :P
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but in the emptiness of space.. there is no 'mass' :P

There are various theories about "sling shots" around the sun to launch vehicles into interstellar sapce at near light speeds.

Mass is a "funny", it is the result of an interaction between gravity and particles, or an interaction between gravity and a wave. Now in which set of dimensions does this interaction occur? That entirely depends on the model you are using.




Can I take another aspirin now please - I'm getting a headache thinking about the prospects of distorting our geometric set of planes in the time domain in such a way that it becomes possible to move faster than light, but without increasing the mass of the object you are trying to move within the geometric/time set of planes....
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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

If only we could trick physics into thinking that an object didn't have any mass, then faster than light speed would be possible.

wibble wibble

The problem isn't so much fooling physics as being able to manipulate the correct set of dimensions without upsetting our normal set of dimensions.
Our normal set of dimensions, the "geometric", "temporal time" and "gravity" relate to each other in a predicable manner, however there is a lot of theory around that indicates that this relationship is actually controlled by another set of dimensions, which, if we could manipulate them would allow us to change the relationship between say non-temporal-time and temporal-time in such a a way that we could proceed through temporal-time at say 0.001ts per nts, thus be able to approach light speed in our time domain...
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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

but in the emptiness of space.. there is no 'mass' :P

Even in empty space, there is about one hydrogen atom per size of a grape fruit, so not even space is completely void of mass. Years ago, I read of a possible earth based space craft that could theoretically obtain about 86% of the speed of light that would shaped like a huge scoop close to the size of the moon, that would scoop up those hydrogen atoms, and fuse them as a propulsion source that is self fueling. Of course that is not practicle, but theoretically possible.

Steve

but in the emptiness of space.. there is no 'mass' :P

Even in empty space, there is about one hydrogen atom per size of a grape fruit, so not even space is completely void of mass. Years ago, I read of a possible earth based space craft that could theoretically obtain about 86% of the speed of light that would shaped like a huge scoop close to the size of the moon, that would scoop up those hydrogen atoms, and fuse them as a propulsion source that is self fueling. Of course that is not practicle, but theoretically possible.

Steve

You're the last person I'd ever want to argue physics with, Steve, but the Ram Scoop engine you are talking about wouldn't work at higher speeds. Scooping up those atoms robs momentum from the spaceship which is, presumably, gained back when you launch it out the back end. The faster your exhaust, the better, of course but it is hard to imagine a jet velocity of even half of the speed of light. (Just a few percent is more likely.) and attempting to go faster than the jet speed means that it costs more energy to scoop them up than you get out of them.

but in the emptiness of space.. there is no 'mass' :P

Even in empty space, there is about one hydrogen atom per size of a grape fruit