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W∴ Balboos wrote: You know - infinit vs. infinity+1
This kind of arithmetic with infinity is exactly what bugs me, that's treating it as a quantity, the problem being that you have to actually reach infinity before you can add 1 to it. But never mind, that's a small point and it's purely academic. I get what you mean that at some point it would take almost exactly the same amount of energy to get both objects up to the same velocity.
W∴ Balboos wrote: Take, for example, any light in the universe – which is part of the universe – and would always be out of reach of the gravitational waves
Well, photons don't have mass right? Gravity can affect light but light can't produce gravity AFAIK. I thought we were taking about accelerating matter. Obviously light doesn't take on infinite mass at the speed of light, we don't need an experiment to know that, we'd be able to tell 
Anyway, it's interesting to think about, but we are obviously never going to do interstellar travel by accelerating mass through space. It seems we would have to manipulate space somehow.
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Yes, but Clarke admitted that those statements were completely erroneous, a few weeks after his 30th birthday.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Quote: es, but Clarke admitted that those statements were
completely erroneous, a few weeks after before his 30th birthday.
FFY.
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Actually it might be possibly.
NASA discovers possibly faster than light travel.
Clickigy[^]
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No, just very, very improbable.Douglas Adams
Cheers,
Mick
------------------------------------------------
It doesn't matter how often or hard you fall on your arse, eventually you'll roll over and land on your feet.
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Anybody ever wonder why the speed of light is represented by the constant c?
It's because it's not the speed of light. Nobody other than optics researchers much care about the speed of light. What they do care about is the speed of causality (which, you'll note, starts with the letter 'c'). It just so happens that - in our universe - light (in a vacuum) travels at the speed of causality.
If you can exceed the speed of causality, then guess what you've just invented? Not something as mundane as FTL travel. You've invented a Time Machine.
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The speed of light is represented by the letter c because the Latin for speed is celeritate (which gives us words such as acceleration).
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Ygnaiih wrote: articles from Futurist who say that this or that is impossible.
That's their opinion, and as the old adage goes 'opinions are like a**holes, everybody has one'. A positive that may come of it though, it might kickstart a thought process by the right person, that may prove or disprove that opinion.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Possible and achievable are two different things. Something may be possible, yet we may not achieve it.
I don't think we'll achieve time travel.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: I don't think we'll achieve time travel.
According to Hawking the fact that we haven't already been visited by some future time traveler pretty much "proves" it's impossible. 
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. ~ Ronald Reagan
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Ygnaiih wrote: I'm old
Me too!
But there's always Google; the workaround to getting a life!
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If I remember correctly, it was Einstein who said that impossible things remain such only until someone comes up with a trick to make them possible. 
That's often the case with new discoveries and advances in science. While things may technically remain impossible, there can be "tricks" to bypass the impossibility. As in your example, FTL travel could be made possible not by travelling faster than light (which *may* remain impossible), but by warping the space around you etc. etc.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but not in practice. - Anonymous
A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match. - B. Bryson
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Quantum entanglement... spooky action at a distance.
Or not.
73
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I'm so sad that the world is a mundane place, free of swashbuckling space pirates and magic wands. I've even apologized to my children that our world is so boring.
Will we make significant strides in all branches of natural science? Sure, you betcha. Will we discover new physical laws that make miraculous new things possible in shirtsleeve environments? Kinda doubt it. Will we discover new chemical elements dilithium, unobtanium, and adamantium*, with miraculous properties? Not in this part of the universe. Will we explore the planets and maybe even the stars? I don't doubt it. Will we get there at Warp 8? Don't be silly.
The really annoying thing about scientific progress is that it doesn't just tell us what is possible. It also tells us what is not possible.
*What does it mean that my spelling checker doesn't mark dilithium, unobtanium, and adamantium as unknown words?
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Given enough time, the probability of any event occurring increases; and quantum mechanics is all about probabilities.
One (current) theory is that the speed of light is not a constant; and that it was "faster" at the "beginning of time" (Big Bang) in order to balance Einstein's mass / energy equation when all there was was "energy".
Does particle entanglement operate at the speed of light? Or is it "instantaneous"? Should be able to prove that at some point.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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I just read the entire thread and what keeps coming back to me is this one fact that flaws most of the argument that is present here. That is that the basis of measurement used for calculating what may or may not be faster than light is in fact light itself. Anything that is faster than light we don't have a reliable means of measurement of to determine its movement if indeed it were passing through space at a rate greater than the speed greater than the speed of light. Perhaps the speed of dark is many times faster than the speed of light? We would never know because we would never have a way of determining that or if there were such a thing with the current state of our knowledge and technology.
I'm never willing to say what we can't do or technology wise, short of those things that I consider the providence of God Himself. He's crafted us as wonderfully creative beings and their are very few limits to what we are capable of building or discovering.
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Killers of two fools inhabit my hemisphere. (9)
Good hunting!
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Assassins?
2 x ASS + I assume that you're IN the Southern hemisphere ...
Slogans aren't solutions.
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That was quick! Well done, Mr Thursday.
Cheers,
Peter
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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...can be found here[^].
What's more, it's written by our very own @DanNeely[^]! 
/ravi
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Pity it describes something other than Diffie-Hellman key exchange. See for example Diffie–Hellman key exchange - Wikipedia[^]
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Well the guy below Dan did it right
Rules for the FOSW ![ ^]
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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... and Bob was honored to be mentioned in the explanation ...
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