[Cspace]

http://www.livescien...t_backward.html

[Neraphym]

Now I'm confused. The universal speed limit was broken?!?!

[CongressJon]

I'm not even going to try to understand this.

[Xemem]

...dry ice. so cold its hot.

did not some scientist in japan fire particals through a cecium tube utilizing a curved mirror at speeds faster then 186,000 mps already?

and general relativity is only a theory. a theory is one viable way some thing could work. if it was fact it would be the only way it could work.

[Cspace]

Now I'm confused. The universal speed limit was broken?!?!

Well, "universal speed limit" is a little bit of a misnomer. Information cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum ('c', but I'll just say the 'speed of light' for simplicity), but light itself can have a variable velocity depending on through what it's moving. As you approach the speed of light, you experience time dilation (which has been proven), causing your time frame to slow down relative to an outside object moving at lower velocities. This means that you age slower relative to everyone else, if you're going faster than everyone else as long as you are below the speed of light. If you somehow find a way to move exactly at the speed of light, your time frame would stop relative to everyone else (even though you're ripping through space as fast as a photon). You'll arrive as fast as the information of your departure reaches your destination, as long as you take a direct path.

If you exceed the speed of light, though, you arrive at your destination before your information reaches it. In effect, you arrive before you left... Which is basically from where the justification of time travel comes. It's also what I believe created the unusual effects mentioned in the article.

We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses.

Everything that defines the pulse that enters, also defines the pulse that exits. But the energy of the light does not travel faster than light.

****************************************

did not some scientist in japan fire particals through a cecium tube utilizing a curved mirror at speeds faster then 186,000 mps already?

Nope. Possibly neutrinos close to the speed of light (which are almost massless, but I don't think anyone has been able to reliably create them), but not at (or beyond) the speed of light. This is because of the relativistic effects on mass.

Faster than 'c' velocities are only believed to be possible with a photon (which is believed to be massless) unless we find a way to bend space at our will, because otherwise relativistic mass effects will get in the way. There are particle accelerators that can accelerate mass to huge velocities, but still nowhere near the speed of light. These things can create a massive amount of energy when the particles collide with an object at the end (in one case more heat than the core of the sun for a moment)... But I really wouldn't doubt the creation of a singularity if somehow a baryonic particle moving at 'c' could be stopped before leaving Earth.

and general relativity is only a theory. a theory is one viable way some thing could work. if it was fact it would be the only way it could work.

Basically the whole idea of relativity is based on the idea that light always moves at the same velocity regardless of a person's timeframe. If some guy turned on a spotlight, two people cruising away in spaceships at different velocities would see the beam of light pass at the same exact rate from their own perspectives (as opposed to the ships' velocities subtracted from the speed of light). If ship A is moving at 50,000 miles per second, and ship B is moving at 100,000 miles per second, both would see the beam of light move away from them at 186,000 miles per second (in a vacuum): The same exact velocity witnessed by the guy who turned on the spotlight while stationary.

For this to work time needs to be variable. This has been proven multiple times through experiments of time dilation, and other effects have been observed as well including gravitational lensing and the orbit of Mercury. When you make assumptions branching from relativity, facts may start getting blurred... But as far as cosmology goes, this basis of relativity is solid. What was done in the article doesn't break the concepts of relativity.

[Snowy]

I can't believe I understood that. Hooray for comprehension!!!! This is all very interesting and can really be a scientific advancement but when the HELL am I gonna get my Hoverboard?

[Neraphym]

Why does light travel at that speed anyway, and what prevents it from going faster?

[Aaron]

Wow! Exiting the end before it was sent in! Our poor finite human minds .

[Neraphym]

So if light can exit before it enters, then does that means that two instances of that light now exist in one time? (i.e. time travel occured?)

[Pendragon205]

OMGTIMESPLOSION!
We just made a breakthrough!
Too bad we ourse;ves are not light.

[Cspace]

Why does light travel at that speed anyway, and what prevents it from going faster?

Not sure, I don't think there are any solid ideas for that. I personally don't think the speed of light (in a vacuum) is the cosmic speed limit (in other words, I don't think light itself is the reason for this), but I think there is some other property of space that causes light to behave as it does... I think the speed of information is the real speed limit, and the information of the light we see is [usually] confined to that.

So if light can exit before it enters, then does that means that two instances of that light now exist in one time? (i.e. time travel occured?)

Possibly, depends on how much faster it went. For it to exist in two frames, it would have to reach its destination soon enough before it was emitted so that it is witnessed to move during the time after it was actually emitted. If it goes too fast, we wouldn't see it in our universe. Seeing the effect of the experiment before it was conducted could create a paradox if the earlier conditions allowed for the timetravelin' light beam to exist.

"Ok, get ready, I'm about to throw the switch..."

"Whoa, look, where did that light come from?"

"Huh?"

*The switch isn't thrown at the moment required for the light to exist that was witnessed*


Hmm, does this support the theory of the multiverse since we're still in the same universe (as far as I can tell)?



I'll leave it to the astrophysicists, I'm sure there is much more to the story than is told in that article.

[MA-53]

Timesplosion indeed.

I survived the timesplosion! z0mg!

[Neraphym]

We might wanna stop messing around with this stuff so we don't accidently make the universe divide by zero and have existance collapse into itself.

try
{
universe.exist();
}
catch(ArithmeticException e)
{
universe.add("Black Hole", xLocation, yLocation, zLocation);
}
finally
{
omega13.activate();
}

[MA-53]

rofl. Quite.