Does space ever end?

2cvbloke

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I believe that space ends where our understanding of the universe ends... :D
 

Sir Bronking

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if you were in a vehicle that was travelling at the speed of light, and you got up and started to walk forward from back of vehicle towards front...

wouldn't you therefor be travelling faster than the speed of light ???
 

Likvid

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There is faster than light in universe and i won't argue anymore about this if you don't know what you talk about.

You can read about it here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/781199.stm

There are many more articles about it.

To get out from our galaxy and to force the edges we need enormous power AND speed which isn't possible today even with the speed of light.

To sum it up, we are prisoners today in our own galaxy wether you like it or not.
 

spiney

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Sigh ......

Nothing can travel faster than light.

Read that BBC article again, CAREFULLY!

"Apparent" exceptions include:

1) Waveguide phase velocity (however, nothing actually travels!).

2) Cerenkov radiation (faster than light propogation speed in some substances).

3) The Aspect Experiment (quantum coupling is instant, everywhere, but again, nothing "travels"!).

It's not "Spiney says so", I'm afraid, but a matter of logic, the actual concept involves self-contradiction, so becomes gibberish (just like time travel, free energy, perpetual motion, etc ......).

"Instant" travel though wormholes is no exception, exactly the same problem is involved ......

It would - in theory - be possible to reach anywhere in a Bussard Ramjet. Possibly, including the nearest stars within a single human lifetime (but time dilation would still apply, thousands of years would pass on earth!).

I'm not insulting you, likvid, just saying what's what! Should I not give the answer, because it's not what we'd all "prefer" to be true?
 

JTA

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okay guys, let's complicate things further, shall we ? :-doh!
No, nothing can travel faster than light.
Yes, you can get to the edge of the universe in your lifetime.
And here's why : it's called relativity ! :-worship

The universal laws of physics have some difficult to understand surprises if taken to their extremes. One such thing is the holy triad of speed, time and distance. Every object in this universe uses a fixed amount of energy at any given moment, partially used for moving around in space, with the remainder converted into time. Hence, the more energy you put into movement, the less will be converted into time. Known as Einstein's law of relativity : the faster you move the slower your clock ticks.

It's allways easier to explain things with an example. Say that you want to go shopping to Proxima Centaury, our nearest star neighbouring at some 4 lightyears away. You would go to the space train in the morning, sit down and you would start to read your newspaper while the space train accellerates to 99,99% the speed of light. After reading a few lines, you would see the space train entering the station at proxima. A quick glance on your watch tells you that only 30 seconds have passed since you left earth. You get out and carry on shopping, and by noon you make it back to the space train to earth, where you arrive some 30 seconds later, time for lunch. True or False ? True - travelling at 99,99 % of the speed of light, time is slowed down so much that it takes only 30 seconds to travel that distance. You would be back by noon - 8 years later, but you would only be a few hours older. :p

Now, at what speed did you travel ? Inside the ship it took only 30 seconds to travel 4 lightyears, so your speed would have been 4x2x60 lightyears/hour, would it not ? True. As everybody knows that the speed of light is 300.000 km/sec, you surely travelled faster than the speed of light, right ? No, wrong. The speed of light is absolute ! Speed is a measurement of distance travelled over time. If you change one of it's components, than you must compensate the other component to obtain the same speed. If you slow down time by half, then you must double the distance which would give you 600.000 km/sec. We now have 3 different calculations for the speed of light ! Which one is correct ? Well, they all are, but only in the environment where the speed measurement was taken, otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges to lemons. All 3 speeds are the same, but measured from other relative points in the universe : the first one travelling at 99.99 % the speed of light, the second one on earth, the third one calculated at a point where time is half that as here on earth.

Extrapollating this, it means that the more you slow down time, the greater distances you can travel, whilest keeping your speed constant.

Now, let's go to the edge of the universe. You just need to accelerate yourself to the speed of light, to be able to travel infinite distances instantly. If we measure the age of a photon which strikes earth, coming from the center of the universe from 10 million lightyears away, how old would this photon be ? 0 seconds to be exactly : travelling at the speed of light, it took that photon 0 seconds to get here, as there is no more energy to be converted into time at these speeds. It crashed into earth the moment it was released into space. Incidently, that's also why you can't travel faster than light : there simply isn't any more energy left to go any faster !

As usual, there's a snag. Once you reach the edge of the universe, you would stay on this edge forever, as the universe itself is also expanding with the speed of light. And as time is halted, you wouldn't even be aware that you have reached the edge - you would remain frozen in time for eternity.

I've disregared some "minor" technical obstacles such as instant accelleration, instant deaccelleration, and the fact that you need an infinite amout of energy to accellerate any matter to the speed of light. :D

Bottom line is : you cannot rely on speed measurements as it is relative to your current speed. Changing your speed will change all your measurements as speed itself affects the components by which speed is measured. That's relativity for you !

Hope you're all going to thank me for this ..... :-ohmy
 

Sir Bronking

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Likvid

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I know Star Trek Enterprise can travel 10x times the speed of light and that has been proven.
 

Dove

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spiney said:
Sigh ......

Nothing can travel faster than light.


3) The Aspect Experiment (quantum coupling is instant, everywhere, but again, nothing "travels"!).

Well in this case information travels faster than light speed. If this can be turned into a pratical communications technology it would herald a new area of not just faster the light phone calls but faster that light travel (after they have perfected the ability to map and rematerialize a person at a distance point).

The snag, there's always a snag, is that the matter that is quantumly coupled can only be moved to the distance point at "normal" speed.
 

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Dove, you're contradicting yourself there :
"quantum coupling is instant and everywhere."
Say this is true, and that you can use this effect to transfer information to any point everywhere instantly. In that case, the information does not longer travel around, at any speed, and certainly not faster than light. It simply becomes available anywhere instantly at the same moment, by using the quantum coupling effect........
 

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unfortunately, jta is wrong, and i'm just not going to bother replying ..... go read some physics.

I ' ve already said nothing travels faster than light. There's no way to use quantum coupling to signal. For gawd's sake, go read up Bell's theorem .......
 

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spiney said:
unfortunately, jta is wrong, and i'm just not going to bother replying .....
that's a bald statement 'O'-red

spiney said:
I ' ve already said nothing travels faster than light.
so do I :-Nooo

spiney said:
There's no way to use quantum coupling to signal.
I never said it could be done. I was replying on Dove's statement with a "say this is true", just to prove my point. I haven't come across quantum coupling before, but I wouldn't be surprised if some scientist wrote a nice letter about it :-ohmy

spiney said:
..... go read some physics.
I did, believe me :-doh!

spiney said:
i'm just not going to bother replying .....
:eek: why not ?
 

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spiney said:
Nothing can travel faster than light.
Really? Have you not heard of the Estling's Partitioned Trousers (EPT) non-paradox?

It proves conclusively that information can information can travel faster - than the speed of light - in fact instantaneously:-


The right leg of a pair of trousers is sent to me by an inhabitant of a
galaxy 10 billion lightyears ago/away. At the moment I receive it I know with
absolute certainty that he has retained te left leg of the trousers.
 

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JTA said:
Dove, you're contradicting yourself there :
"quantum coupling is instant and everywhere."
Say this is true, and that you can use this effect to transfer information to any point everywhere instantly. In that case, the information does not longer travel around, at any speed, and certainly not faster than light. It simply becomes available anywhere instantly at the same moment, by using the quantum coupling effect........

There is no contradication. For example if you sent the instructions on how to build a copy of a spaceship and its crew to the far end of the galaxy and it's built in a reasonable amount of time, you have in effect travelled faster than light but without exceeding the light speed limit.

simple really.... :D
 

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spiney said:
unfortunately, jta is wrong, and i'm just not going to bother replying ..... go read some physics.

I ' ve already said nothing travels faster than light. There's no way to use quantum coupling to signal. For gawd's sake, go read up Bell's theorem .......

Mainstream thinking in physics now is that nothing travels faster than light speed neither matter or information. Some of the limits set by Bell's theorem have proven to be anything but.
As I understand it it is possible to transmit information via quantum coupling but currently impossible to statically extract that info from the noise at the other end.

There is huge interest in quantum physics at the moment due mainly in the race to develop a quantum cumputer. On paper at least this is a relatively straight forward task but nobody knows if its even possible!
 

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Unfortunately, this is highly ignorant utter rubbish and drivel , getting steadily worse ......

Just to repeat - I don't know why I'm bothering - nothing travels faster than light, and it's impossible to signal via quantum coupling. If you can be at all arse bothered to find out (although RIGOROUS maths is required!), you can discover why for yourself, there's lots on the Web.

If you know nothing about physics or logic, and don't want to know either, that's ok by me, but just don't expect a reply ...... so enjoy your fantasy gibberish wallowing!
 

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PaulR said:
Really? Have you not heard of the Estling's Partitioned Trousers (EPT) non-paradox?

It proves conclusively that information can information can travel faster - than the speed of light - in fact instantaneously:-


The right leg of a pair of trousers is sent to me by an inhabitant of a
galaxy 10 billion lightyears ago/away. At the moment I receive it I know with
absolute certainty that he has retained te left leg of the trousers.

I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

It proves nothing of the sort! (crikey!). Read what you've just said, above, again, very very very carefully.
 

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double post, sorry (faulty computer).
 

PaulR

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spiney said:
I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

It proves nothing of the sort! (crikey!). Read what you've just said, above, again, very very very carefully.
Lost your sense of humour Spiney?:-rofl2
 

spiney

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Unfortunately, PaulR, your "joke" is exactly the mistake most people make about Bell's theorem and non locality.
 

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spiney said:
Unfortunately, PaulR, your "joke" is exactly the mistake most people make about Bell's theorem and non locality.

I am confused now, you say "joke", so does it mean this is actually true?? :confused
 
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