Will Spacecraft ever Go Faster than the speed of Light?

Various - See Text ^ | 16 FEB 2003 | Various

[vannrox]

I collected this information and thought that others might be interested in it as well as myself.

[pabianice]

Yes.

[FairOpinion]

Thanks for posting all this. It is very interesting.
I bookmarked it and plan to read it in detail.

[pabianice]

[r9etb]

Bump for me to read this yesterday.....

[freedumb2003]

From Mad Magazine (or thereabouts, it is from memory):

Luke: Our ships go faster than light, right?
Han: Yes
Luke: And lasers shoot at the speed of light, right?
Han: Yes
Luke: That explains it!
Han: Explains what?
Luke: I just shot myself down!

[fieldmarshaldj]

I have a headache.

[Captain Beyond]

Bump for later read.

[lexington minuteman 1775]

The big question for me is if we go faster than the speed of light won't we be overdriving our headlights?

[muir_redwoods]

Not of your ship has any mass and is moving through conventional space. If you can get around either of those two constraints, you might be able to do it.

[inquest]

What about that phenomenon where two photons are split from the same source, and if one is knocked into an "up" spin (whatever that is), the other will automatically have a "down" spin? It's hard for me to decipher what physicists say about it, but they seem to be saying (without actually coming out and saying it) that the locking of one photon into one spin will instantaneously communicate to the other to go into the other spin, even though they're racing from each other at the speed of light. It always has me confused whenever I read about it.

[theFIRMbss]

>Will Spacecraft ever Go Faster than the speed of Light?

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"Could Einstein be wrong and Magueijo right? Equally pressing for Magueijo, a lecturer in theoretical physics at London's Imperial College, [!] is whether the physics editor at the preeminent science journal Nature is in fact "a first class moron" for rejecting his last paper. And did that cosmologist from Princeton steal his idea? What about all those hours wasted writing requests for funding from those "parasites," those "ex-scientists well past their prime" who dispense the monies that make contemporary science possible? Welcome to the world of career science, disclosed here in all its flawed brilliance. Magueijo's heretical idea-that the speed of light is not constant; light traveled faster in the early universe-challenges the most fundamental tenet of modern physics. Deceptively simple, the theory came to the author during a bad hangover one damp morning in Cambridge, England (many of the author's breakthroughs seem to arrive at unexpected moments, like while he's urinating outside a Goan bar). If true, Magueijo's Variant Speed of Light theory, or VSL, rectifies apparent inconsistencies in the Big Bang theory. Magueijo cunningly frames his journey with the stories of other famous, courageous heretics, notably Einstein himself, and one suspects an apologetics at work here. Magueijo, a 35-year-old native of Portugal, is opinionated and can seem immature and almost bratty in his diatribes against the banalities of academia or the hypocrisy and backbiting of peer review. But his science is lucidly rendered, and even his penchant for sturm und drang sheds light on the tensions felt by scientists incubating new ideas. This book shows how science is done-and so easily can be undone."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[Fractal Trader]

You need to research under rubidium/iridium compounds and antigravtiy. These materials, utilizing "high spin" covalent bonding, CHANGE THEIR WEIGHT when heated (in a closed environment.) Iit is believed that these substances, when acting along gravitational faults, allow greater than light transport.

The government is aware of these technologies and, it is rumored by Aviation Week and Space Technology (a VERY reliable source), that elements of this technology have been used on the B-2 bomber. It has a very unique system which puts positive ions in front of it, and negative ions behind the. There is no known "stealth" reason for this technology. So why is that there? Curious minds would like an answer.

[Diana Rose]

Bump for later read

[SamAdams76]

I don't understand all the technical stuff described above but I do know that if we cannot travel further than the speed of light, then it will be impossible for mankind to voyage very far outside of the solar system. If we are going to travel to distant planets around other star systems, even the ones in our neighborhood in the Milky Way galaxy, we must find a way to travel faster than the speed of light.

[aruanan]

Good load of stuff to read. Thanks. Spaceships will probably not go as fast as or faster than light, though they'll probably get to destinations faster than light could have in the same amount of time.

[SamAdams76]

The big question for me is if we go faster than the speed of light won't we be overdriving our headlights?

Good question. Let's take an example here on earth. Let's say we put Roger Clemens with his 90mph fastball on the back of a pickup truck traveling 60mph. When he hurls one of his fastballs, then is not his fastball traveling at 150mph relative to a person standing on the roadside? So then, if a spaceship traveling at the speed of light turns on its headlights, doesn't the beams of the headlights move at twice the speed of light relative to a stationary object and at the speed of light relative to the spaceship? Then again, maybe it doesn't work that way in space due to zero gravity. One thing for sure, I'd make a lousy physicist with this kind of logic!

[demlosers]

bump to be read

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

They have slowed down the speed of light to about
3.5 miles per hour.
So they only have to speed up the speed of light
from about 186,000 miles per second to a higher
speed. This would allow a space ship to go faster then
186,000 mps.

[js1138]

An individual photon can certainly trave faster than light, provided you don't require any particular destination.