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But light does not travel at a constant speed, so the number assigned to it is all but arbitrary.
Who knows if it can go a lot faster, under the right conditions?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Well, it's defined according to the speed of light in a vacuum.
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What kind of vacuum? No real vacuum has been actually observed, only approximations of it.
CALL APOGEE, SAY AARDWOLF
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game.
I'm a puny punmaker.
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A perfect, theoretical one. As far as actually measuring it goes, the vacuums we can generate are probably good enough. After all, vacuum quality is just one source of uncertainty.
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Under what gravity?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Sounds like it's time for a "your momma" joke.
Jeremy Falcon
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Yo momma so fat that her gravity gradient is so steep that light can't escape her orbit, so she has effectively transformed into a black hole?
Did I get the parlance right?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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What is gravity? The whole thing about not traveling faster than the speed of light is special relativity which is consistent from cosmological scales down to the quantum. Gravity bending spacetime and thus light was general relativity and falls apart at quantum levels. It's one of the least understood things in physics.
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But that still doesn't completely rule out the Alcubierre drive[^]. We just need to find some exotic matter with a negative energy density.
If everyone here could have a look down the back of their sofas, I'm sure we'd be able to find some. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I'm searching. Sofa so good.
Getting my coat
CALL APOGEE, SAY AARDWOLF
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game.
I'm a puny punmaker.
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Almost as good as the "Sofa King" slogan - "They're Sofa King good". 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Ok, that is an unreachable standard! 
CALL APOGEE, SAY AARDWOLF
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game.
I'm a puny punmaker.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: The speed of light is a known physical limit of the universe.
That's not entirely accurate, depending on your point of view. The speed of light is a known limit to our understanding of the universe. Until someone explains why energy cannot go any faster without relying on 45 layers of other people's mathematical theories, I will still say that it is possible to go faster then light and that is our understanding of physics that is, well, incomplete.
I know that with e = mc2 accelerating anything with more mass then a single elementary particle would need all of the energy of the universe but if you rethink what that equation implies, you begin to see that it might just be possible if we knew more.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Foothill wrote: That's not entirely accurate, depending on your point of view. The speed of light is a known limit to our understanding of the universe. Until someone explains why energy cannot go any faster without relying on 45 layers of other people's mathematical theories, I will still say that it is possible to go faster then light and that is our understanding of physics that is, well, incomplete.
AFAIK, it does not require any additional layers. Now, do come up with a theory were light goes faster and prove it with a repeatable experiment, and we'll talk
Foothill wrote: I know that with e = mc2 accelerating anything with more mass then a single elementary particle would need all of the energy of the universe but if you rethink what that equation implies, you begin to see that it might just be possible if we knew more.
No, it wouldn't, because all matter is still slower than light.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Let me see if I can explain this little theory I've been mulling over in my head since back when I was taking physics at my local university.
First, I will start with your statement
Eddy Vluggen wrote: come up with a theory where light goes faster
One of the central tenants of my idea is not to find examples of light deviating from it's set speed but to answer why does it always want move at that speed. What is it about the constant that makes it this way not just for light but all energy. So I started pondering the meaning of Einstein's famous equation and it's implications.
e = mc2 implies that energy is a function of an interaction between mass and the constant. It implies that energy is irrelevant and only mass and C matter. Most of the widely accepted theories are rooted in this. If we switch things up, the equation takes on a whole new meaning.
m = e/c2 implies that mass is a function of an interaction between energy and the constant. It implies that mass is irrelevant on only energy and C matter. More to the point, since energy is in a constant state of acceleration, the mass of a particle is a direct result of energy shedding velocity due to the C. The caveat is that if we could figure out what the universal principal is that causes all energy to shed velocity to make mass, we could figure out how to negate it, thus making faster-than-light travel possible.
I may be off my marks but I've asked several physicists about this without a straight answer; even emails to NASA and FermiLab got me nowhere. The answer was always make up a mathematical model and prove it. It's the same exact model they have now just a different way of looking at it. Never did get anywhere with it so far. The only nice thing is that it offers an explanation for electron quantum jumping. I've got theories on gravity too but I can never get any help from physicists on that one either. Not even a suggestion on where to start.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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The longer one practices physics, the more entrenched prevailing thought becomes. The "trap" of science is that eventually it becomes its very antithesis: a religion, one based upon perceived facts. The word "perceived" escapes notice, however, and the physicists become the acolytes of the "church" of science. Those acolytes then defend their religion to the death.
Your new idea is heresy.
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It seems that perception is the key thought there. As I read about special and general relativity, one point was clear: everything you measure is based on your frame of reference. It seems like a lot of scientists took that and ran with it while they forgot that perception makes the measurement and not the other way around.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Have you read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn? I think that you would like it.
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Sorry for the late response, but I'm still digesting your post
Foothill wrote: One of the central tenants of my idea is not to find examples of light deviating from it's set speed but to answer why does it always want move at that speed.
If I learnt anything from programming is that all constants*) are variables. If C holds, then faster-than-light travelling would equal time-travelling.
Foothill wrote: It implies that mass is irrelevant on only energy and C matter. More to the point, since energy is in a constant state of acceleration, the mass of a particle is a direct result of energy shedding velocity due to the C. The caveat is that if we could figure out what the universal principal is that causes all energy to shed velocity to make mass, we could figure out how to negate it, thus making faster-than-light travel possible.
Shedding velocity, or lacking velocity? And if you can vary the C, does that make faster-than-light travelling possible, or does it change the point at which energy 'solidifies' into mass?
Foothill wrote: I may be off my marks but I've asked several physicists about this without a straight answer; even emails to NASA and FermiLab got me nowhere.
I'm just a programmer, never been to a university. From what I know, if some professional can give you a good explanation, they're usually rather fond of giving it. This forum is built on that premise
Foothill wrote: It's the same exact model they have now just a different way of looking at it.
Doesn't mass come from the God-particle? I remember some 'yo mama so fat' yokes about it 
Foothill wrote: Never did get anywhere with it so far. The only nice thing is that it offers an explanation for electron quantum jumping. I've got theories on gravity too but I can never get any help from physicists on that one either. Not even a suggestion on where to start.
Not a suggestion, but a request - jot it all down. Notes are better than nothing (which means loosing the train of thought), and notes become scripts after some time. First thing to do with an idea is to capture it on paper, so it can be transmitted and multiplied.
If you can explain it in simpeler terms than academic speech then you'd have me as additional audience, and I'm pretty sure there are more people interested in the subject.
*) with the possible exception of human stupidity
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Thank you for not attacking the idea but, instead, asking for clarification. Let me expand on some of your points.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: If C holds, then faster-than-light travelling would equal time-travelling.
It's just a personal belief but I don't think that time travel is possible. When it comes to Einstein's theory on relativity, time dilation is really about the rate that information, which is traveling at the speed of light, arrives at a specific frame of reference (which can be moving or stationary). It's basically describing the Doppler Effect at close to the speed of light and has nothing to do with the actual passage of time. I don't know where this time travel tangent arose but, while it makes for some very interesting stories, isn't really possible in my eyes.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: And if you can vary the C, does that make faster-than-light travelling possible, or does it change the point at which energy 'solidifies' into mass?
In the theory, everything that has energy has mass and I tend to think of C as a universal drag coefficient. By lowering the amount of drag, particles would, in theory, lose mass and could travel faster. Even light would travel faster.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: Doesn't mass come from the God-particle? I remember some 'yo mama so fat' yokes about it
The Higgs Boson (i.e. the god particle) is still just a theory. They found evidence of particles in the energy range they were looking for at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe but it could be anything really. They don't know where mass comes from yet.
I have this written down at home but I do not have the academic credentials to get anybody in the field of physics to listen. I just tell it to people who might be interested to hear. With so little in the way of resources, I wouldn't be able to prove a word of it in a lab. It doesn't help that I'm not really very good at any mathematics above college algebra which is why I stay clear of graphics programming and security algorithm design. Sorry if some of this is academic speech as I don't know of any other way to describe it.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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I think you are misunderstanding part of what happens when you travel at the speed of light. Faster than light travel necessitates time travel, unless you don't actually move through space and go through a wormhole or something of the sort.
Allow me to explain. Say you accelerate to 99.9999% the speed of light towards a star that is 3 million light years away. You will get there INSTANTLY. The star will be 3 million years older, but you will be at it's location instantly from your perspective. Your travel time will be almost zero, the star will just age very quickly. You can't get there faster than instant. Likewise, if you turn around right away and come back to earth at 99.9999% the speed of light, you will get back to earth INSTANTLY, but earth will be 3 million years older.
Unless you're travelling through wormholes, there is no way around this. Your comments about the Doppler effect and time travel make me think that you feel like passage of time is independent of your motion through space. It isn't. Faster than light travel moving through space is just non-nonsensical. If you want more speed, time passage on the things you are moving towards elapses faster and the time passage on the things you are moving away from slow down from your frame of reference. What does it even mean to move faster than instantly towards a location from your perspective? Or if you look back at the earth you are moving away from at the speed of light, what does it mean for less than zero time to have passed since you left? It's completely implausible.
Now, that said, I VERY STRONGLY argue with everyone that anything is possible, we might just not know it yet. That includes faster-than-light travel through something like a wormhole, or faster than light travel with really messed up multiverse stuff going on or whatever. Your imagination is the limit, but that is exactly why faster-than-light travel moving through space without time travel is impossible...because I can't imagine something that takes less time than an instant and I can't imagine how I can look at something and less than zero time passes by.
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Think about it this way - the reason it takes infinite energy to move at the speed of light is because you just INSTANTLY propelled yourself from one location in space to another. To instantly move any distance requires infinite energy. You can't move faster unless you input more energy and to input more energy you need more time, hence why the "speed of light" is always a moving target and no matter how much energy you put in, you'll only get a little closer to it...because you can never get from A to B instantly, you need time to do that. And if you took any time to release that energy to get you moving, well then you haven't moved at the speed of light.
Wrap your head around this - time doesn't move from the perspective of light. Light just moves around in a static universe. That's why light "captures" what things looked like from the location the light came from...because light IS a timeless snapshot of the universe, at the time it was created.
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Last reply I promise  Just wanted to give you an example of something I do strongly argue against...people that think we are doomed to end with some catastrophic ripping apart of the universe.
Firstly, to make any long-term prediction with any certainty about what will happen to a bubble of mass-energy where you literally have NO IDEA what 95% of it is or where it is coming from is insane. We live in but a tiny sliver of time of the universe and our predictions of where it is going and what it is going to do keep coming up wrong time and time again. We don't even know if the universe is a closed system. Given dark energy, it may not be. To decide we are doomed to explode from all this energy accelerating the universe that we know nothing about is insane to me.
Secondly, look at the scientific advances in the last 100 years. Can you even begin to picture what scientific advances will look like in 500 years? 10,000 years? 1,000,000 years? Yeah...no. The current physical arrangement and makeup of our bodies may cease to be possible, but who's to say that in a million years we won't be able to discover tech that will continue to work and exist and persist our minds in a universe with much different physics than now? Nobody can.
I love talking about this kind of stuff though haha. I was always trying to work out the whole faster than light travel thing in my head until I had an "aha!" moment one day while thinking about it and suddenly relativity, speed of light, time dialation, etc just clicked on a much deeper level than before and it started making sense. I was always relatively (pun intended) well-versed with relativity and how it worked, I could answer any question you wanted about what would happen if X, but that one aha moment was mind blowing, and I began to look at the universe entirely differently.
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I know how those ah-ha moments feel. I had mine when I was trying to figure out why we couldn't define gravity and what gives particles their mass. That is when it struck me that it's not the science that is wrong, it is our perception of the science that is wrong. I have always acknowledged that when a problem looks impossible, it's time to shift your point of view and approach the problem in a different direction. I'm not saying that any of the discoveries of the last 40 years are wrong. I'm am attempting to point out that human failings have fixed our view point to a specific set of base hypotheses which limits our scientific flexibility of thought.
To expand on how human perceptions play into scientific research I start with e = mc2 and how this formula influenced thought processes. Not many think much about this formula but it usually is one of the first physics formulas that we are exposed to; usually as children through TV and other media. Once we learn about what it means, it becomes a base for other thoughts. It's the rigid adherence to the formula's structure that could be the problem. By only looking at the formula, and the universe by extension, from one singular point of view, we have limited ourselves to functioning within that narrow space.
By limiting ourselves to such a narrow point of view, science can only progress along one line of thought. Previously when I said that e = mc2 implied that energy was a function of an interaction between mass and the universal constant, I was attempting to make the point that, when you look at the formula like this, our brains interpret its meaning in that all particles are defined by their mass. All of the mainstream accepted science to this date is predicated on the idea that a fundamental aspect of particles is that they have mass. What if that were not true. With simple algebra, the formula can be rewritten to m = e/c2. Now, anybody with mediocre math will shrug at this and not see past the surface but it could be that if Einstein had written the formula this way our approach to physics would be completely different now. That is the line of thought that I like to explore. What the formula now implies is that all particles have energy and that mass is a function of energy and the universal constant. That means that particles are defined by their energy. When you approach it from the side of all particles have energy, the limitations caused by mass do not seem so insurmountable.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything you mentioned, well except when it comes to time  . I still say that even when traveling faster than the speed of light, time still ticks by at the same rate as if you were standing still. The real fact is that, until we actually accelerate a human being to relativistic velocities, we really don't know how time will behave and that our understanding right now is still just theory.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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But that's not rewriting the formula or looking at it differently. There isn't an "interaction" between mass and a constant...that formula is saying that mass IS energy. Don't look too much into the c^2 part...it's a constant. It's just a normalizing factor between mass and energy. All it's saying is that mass is directly proportional to energy.
That formula is also not the full expanded formula, it's just the main part of it.
There are particles with no mass. It's called light. Photons are exactly what you are saying - particles with energy. They have energy because of the part of that equation that you're missing, but that isn't rest mass. What happens from the perspective of a particle with no mass? Exactly what I described - it moves at the speed of light! No matter how much energy you give it, it still just moves at the speed of light, it just has a different amount of energy. That amount of energy defines the wavelength of the light. Low energy = radio waves. High energy = gamma rays.
When a particle that has no mass is created, i.e. a photon, it's universe LITERALLY stands still. Photons live in a uniquely different life than particles with mass - their life is defined not by time, but by distance. Time literally stands still for a particle of light during its journey, and then it is instantly over as it hits it's destination (from the perspective of the photon).
You really gotta work with the full equation to get any use out of it. m=e/c^2 without factoring in the missing part doesn't actually work.
See here for a somewhat better explanation: energy - Does $E = mc^2$ apply to photons? - Physics Stack Exchange[^]
modified 10-Feb-17 12:25pm.
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