Faster than the Speed of Light?

Not a bad article but doesn't really mention the flatness problem. Took a while to mention dark energy which accounts for the expansion of the universe. You don't really have to go outside the universe for alien life, they could be in the next galaxy over. But if the speed of light is the real speed limit, you'd never be able to visit them in a reasonable amount of time. There's an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe with 100-400 billion stars per galaxy.
 
The expansion of the universe is sometimes explained as a loaf of bread baking. While nothing goes faster than the speed of light, space itself is expanding. So the distance between you and another object far away is actually expanding like the loaf of bread. So if it's far enough, it's actually expanding faster than you could ever reach the other object even at the speed of light. That's dark energy. And you can't go faster than the speed of light, the math kinda says if you do, you end up going back in time which is impossible...
 
Originally Posted by Wolf359
And you can't go faster than the speed of light, the math kinda says if you do, you end up going back in time which is impossible...


I see you haven't been to McGehee Arkansas. I also managed to get out of there at approximately the speed of light. No offense intended! lol
 
Well, in my view this is simply another popular science writer writing about that which they really know nothing about, and many of the statements contain "question-begging" epithets.

I have been teaching a course on Relativity, Light travel and Spacetime to advanced Physics and Astronomy-Astrophysics students, and in order to motivate them to think about alternative explanations in relativity, I introduced the Conventionality of Simultaneity Thesis originally conceived by one of Eisnstein's students, Hans Reichenbach and verified by at least 5 other researchers. This proposition states that nature does not prefer one convention of simultaneity over another.

here is what is means:

The canonical or two-way speed of light is approx. 3X10^8 m/s but this is the measured "two-way" speed of light

Cannonical Speed of Light Measurement

and it is assumed by Einstein's Synchrony Convention (ESC) that it is isotropic, which means it has the same velocity in all directions.

But in Eintein's SRT theory, it runs into trouble when attempting to define the one-way speed of light in terms of his ESC.

In terms of light travel, Reichenbach's theory says that the one-way speed of light is anisotropic (not the same speed in all directions) and the speed of light can have a value Epsilon between 1/2c and Infinity, depending on the observer's Frame of Reference, but never less than 1/2c.

Arthur Eddington had one of the earliest references to an alternative convention when he stated, "a convention is introduced as to the reckoning of time differences at different places…" He further stated that the isotropy of the one-way speed of light is not "by itself a statement of observable fact, nor does it refer to any intrinsic property of clocks or of light; it is simply an announcement of the rule by which we propose to extend fictitious time-partitions throughout the world…" I.e, Einsteins ESC proposition was chosen for his convenience in order to make his SRT equations tenable, but it is NOT the only viable convention.

In essence what this means is that for an observer on earth, the one-way speed of light from distant astronomical objects arrives instantaneously.

The title, Scientists Know Where Aliens Might Be, But Humans Will Never See Them, is ludicrous. This is analogous to the fudge factors called dark energy and dark matter, which we can't measure or see it but it has to be there in order to make previous fudge factor equations work out. Sure, it is conjectured they exist but recall that a conjecture is an or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof; an opinion or theory so formed and often expressed as a guess.

Quote
s our astronomical vision has improved over the centuries, we've discovered that gazing into space is also a form of time travel to the past. If you look at a star like Sirius, which is eight light years away, you are seeing an image of it eight years ago, when the starlight hitting your eye left it. The farther away an object in space is, the more distant in time it is as well, and so the light from stars that died long before our planet was born continues to reach Earth.


According to Reichenbach's theory, the one-way speed of light arrived from Sirius instantaneously.

This article just reinforces that notion that current science is in disarray because the whole premises is based on conjectured probability assumptions.
 
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Originally Posted by Eddie
I guess you're not a STAR TREK fan. Warp 5 equals approximately 200 times light speed. :))


Oh yeah, Star Trek is awful with the science. I wanted to vomit when they introduced the spore drive in season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery. That's more like science fantasy. And they had a Dyson's Sphere in one episode but they didn't really show case it, kind of a few minute throw away item. And I think in one of the last few episodes, you had long range beaming. Which makes the point of star ships obsolete if you can just beam yourself all over the universe, even if there's a distance limitation, you just have multiple hops like a router. Oh just way too much technology that's not fully fleshed out.
 
Einstein said that the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound. However it is possible that you may hear the sound of my BMW's horn before the light turns green.
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Originally Posted by Eddie
I guess you're not a STAR TREK fan. Warp 5 equals approximately 200 times light speed. :))


What about ludicrous speed?
 
...and so it does.
One can view lots of distant objects in the night sky under clear conditions and AFAIK, that view arrives immediately to us.
An interesting perspective on what we can observe and know versus what we invent to make theory meet observable fact.
 
I only want to say they measure how fast things are moving apart with red and blue shift. We are moving in some direction and light will have a higher or lower wavelength depending on that.
I think time is a fabrication of creation or "the Big Bang" There was no time until then, when it began. There was nothing we have knowledge of. Time has been simply defined as change of state. There was no state in the physical emptiness, so no change. Not as advanced as many here but another idea is everything we look at even across a room actually doesn't exist like that anymore, the brain has recreated it from sensors and formed the image. Think about when we see something what is it actually but an image in the brain. Well that's all I wanted to say sheltered in place.
 
The article didn't really go into the size of the unobservable universe. The flatness problem has been mentioned before. Basically last measurements made say that the universe may extended at least 250 times the observable universe and maybe up to 1000 times but the 1000 gets into measure errors so 250 is the safe number. So instead of 46 billion light years in radius, it may be as big as 23 trillion light years in diameter and the volume would be about 15 million times bigger than the observable universe. So if you have 2 trillion galaxies in the observable, then 2 trillion times 15 million gives you....

https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...arge-is-the-entire-unobservable-universe
 
Saying the universe has a radius means there is something it's in? I think that's where the brain fails us, we can't understand nothingness. I watch my dog a lot, she has learned it's warm under the blankets, but really could never make a bed. No reason to think humans aren't also limited since we are evolved to live within a physical realm. Anyway this is why I became a believer.
 
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Saying the universe has a radius means there is something it's in? I think that's where the brain fails us, we can't understand nothingness. I watch my dog a lot, she has learned it's warm under the blankets, but really could never make a bed. No reason to think humans aren't also limited since we are evolved to live within a physical realm. Anyway this is why I became a believer.


I'm not sure what your question or comment refers to. I think it's just you that can't understand nothingness. Although even a vacuum has energy, just look up zero point energy so it's not really nothingness. There's lots of science that says the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. The red shift tells you how far objects are. We have the Hubble telescope. It looked at one section of empty sky and found many galaxies there. It's called the ultra deep field Hubble. They extrapolated from that section and basically said that there's probably 2 trillion galaxies out there in the observable universe. So distance wise, you end up with about 46 billion light years. The reason the distance is greater than the existence of the universe is due to dark energy which causes the expansion of space. There's different measurements of that too, but basically space expands between 67-73 kilometers/second per megaparsec and a megaparsec is about 3.26 light years. So that's why you have space being bigger than the age of the universe.
 
Originally Posted by Wolf359
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Saying the universe has a radius means there is something it's in? I think that's where the brain fails us, we can't understand nothingness. I watch my dog a lot, she has learned it's warm under the blankets, but really could never make a bed. No reason to think humans aren't also limited since we are evolved to live within a physical realm. Anyway this is why I became a believer.


I'm not sure what your question or comment refers to. I think it's just you that can't understand nothingness. Although even a vacuum has energy, just look up zero point energy so it's not really nothingness. There's lots of science that says the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. The red shift tells you how far objects are. We have the Hubble telescope. It looked at one section of empty sky and found many galaxies there. It's called the ultra deep field Hubble. They extrapolated from that section and basically said that there's probably 2 trillion galaxies out there in the observable universe. So distance wise, you end up with about 46 billion light years. The reason the distance is greater than the existence of the universe is due to dark energy which causes the expansion of space. There's different measurements of that too, but basically space expands between 67-73 kilometers/second per megaparsec and a megaparsec is about 3.26 light years. So that's why you have space being bigger than the age of the universe.

Nothing means none of anything we live in, and also time doesn't exist. It isn't just me who can't understand it. We are designed and evolved to respond to the universe as it exists, with a clock ticking all the while, not nothing. I knew a brilliant man I worked with once who said after death there is nothing. I agreed at the time not now but it took awhile.
 
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Originally Posted by Wolf359
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Saying the universe has a radius means there is something it's in? I think that's where the brain fails us, we can't understand nothingness. I watch my dog a lot, she has learned it's warm under the blankets, but really could never make a bed. No reason to think humans aren't also limited since we are evolved to live within a physical realm. Anyway this is why I became a believer.


I'm not sure what your question or comment refers to. I think it's just you that can't understand nothingness. Although even a vacuum has energy, just look up zero point energy so it's not really nothingness. There's lots of science that says the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. The red shift tells you how far objects are. We have the Hubble telescope. It looked at one section of empty sky and found many galaxies there. It's called the ultra deep field Hubble. They extrapolated from that section and basically said that there's probably 2 trillion galaxies out there in the observable universe. So distance wise, you end up with about 46 billion light years. The reason the distance is greater than the existence of the universe is due to dark energy which causes the expansion of space. There's different measurements of that too, but basically space expands between 67-73 kilometers/second per megaparsec and a megaparsec is about 3.26 light years. So that's why you have space being bigger than the age of the universe.

Nothing means none of anything we live in, and also time doesn't exist. It isn't just me who can't understand it. We are designed and evolved to respond to the universe as it exists, with a clock ticking all the while, not nothing. I knew a brilliant man I worked with once who said after death there is nothing. I agreed at the time not now but it took awhile.

That "brilliant man" is right. Hosteen
 
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Startrek has gone to [censored] in a handbasket with the fiction part of science fiction since Voyager. Stargate SG1 and BSG Re-imagined were a step back in the right direction with their portrayal of space combat and maneuvering in vacuum, but the real standout show for scientific accuracy is The Expanse.
 
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Originally Posted by Wolf359
Originally Posted by Farnsworth
Saying the universe has a radius means there is something it's in? I think that's where the brain fails us, we can't understand nothingness. I watch my dog a lot, she has learned it's warm under the blankets, but really could never make a bed. No reason to think humans aren't also limited since we are evolved to live within a physical realm. Anyway this is why I became a believer.


I'm not sure what your question or comment refers to. I think it's just you that can't understand nothingness. Although even a vacuum has energy, just look up zero point energy so it's not really nothingness. There's lots of science that says the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. The red shift tells you how far objects are. We have the Hubble telescope. It looked at one section of empty sky and found many galaxies there. It's called the ultra deep field Hubble. They extrapolated from that section and basically said that there's probably 2 trillion galaxies out there in the observable universe. So distance wise, you end up with about 46 billion light years. The reason the distance is greater than the existence of the universe is due to dark energy which causes the expansion of space. There's different measurements of that too, but basically space expands between 67-73 kilometers/second per megaparsec and a megaparsec is about 3.26 light years. So that's why you have space being bigger than the age of the universe.

Nothing means none of anything we live in, and also time doesn't exist. It isn't just me who can't understand it. We are designed and evolved to respond to the universe as it exists, with a clock ticking all the while, not nothing. I knew a brilliant man I worked with once who said after death there is nothing. I agreed at the time not now but it took awhile.


Let's not get into religion. Not too many people understand quantum mechanics either, that doesn't make it unreal or that if you can't understand it, it doesn't exist. This country went to the moon and the common phrase is that rocket science is hard.
 
Originally Posted by GZRider
Startrek has gone to [censored] in a handbasket with the fiction part of science fiction since Voyager. Stargate SG1 and BSG Re-imagined were a step back in the right direction with their portrayal of space combat and maneuvering in vacuum, but the real standout show for scientific accuracy is The Expanse.


At least there's new Star Trek to watch. Visually Star Trek: Discovery wasn't bad. Some of the story lines and characters were also decent. But yeah, the spore drive was pretty bad. Star Trek:picard I felt was better but the last episode was somewhat of a let down after a pretty good 9 episode build up. Then again I though the 2nd season of Discovery was better than the first although still full of plot holes and other problems so maybe Picard will be better in the 2nd. Anyway, as long as it's somewhat entertaining, I guess I'll still watch even if I feel like gagging at some of the pseudo science they use. Some of the old Trek episodes were written by well known science fiction writers and were very good.
 
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