h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You can't state Facts in this discussion, because there is only Theory. Some of Einsteins thoeries are good and have been proven to a point. Some of Hawking's theories are also very possible due to some examples. But remember the universe is a pretty big place and Space/Time Theory, Quantum Theory, Chaos Theory all these theories, the universe is FULL of them. In no way am i saying these are right or wrong but don't say things like travelling faster than the speed of light are impossible things. We just don't have a real way to do it yet. Don't limit yourself to proving theories, test yourself and try to disprove them. Don't take everyones word for it. There is a certain amount of Faith needed, but it doesn't need to be blind. Ask so many questions Faith wants to beat the crap outta ya. Imagination is everything!

Isn't it amazing how faith and science are so closly linked? After all, our great western secular science relies on faith to the point where it has really become a religion in it's own right!

To say that man can't go faster than light is like an age not so long ago where they said that we could never travel faster than 40 MPH or we souldn't be able to breath.... Lets face it, the scientific religious zealots of today who promote theories as facts are like the religious leaders of old trying to promote their own beliefs out of fear and ignorance.

Man will transend current scientific ignorance and hitchhike to the stars. As the man said, all it takes is faith.

You're missing something, religion doesn't require hard work. Science needs its foundations of faith and belief in what is being done, but without the blood sweat & tears of hard labour(be it physical or mental) science would not advance. As the major religions of the world have not advanced

Isn't that great? You can imagine all sorts of possibilities, where our intrepid pioneers reach planets hundreds, even thousands, of years after their more technologically advanced decendents reach them! Of course it might not be very cheering to find out that you have reached a new planet only to find out that your offsprings offspring reached your planet long before, but we have to take the longer view. It should not be looked on as a race to get there first. I actually think it would be cool to arrive somewhere like that and to be instantly propelled into the future, and it would be cool for the original group to arrive to see distant ancestors appearing from the skies. Whether good or bad the consequences may be, it certainly is interesting!

FACT

The speed of light IS NOT affected by gravity.

Einstein's general theory of relativity- a metric theory of gravity- predicts that light follows paths of maximum proper time through space-time. These paths are called geodesics. This means that light travelling in a region of high mass concentration will have it's path altered, but NOT IT'S SPEED.

This speed is often given the value 1, and all fundamental units can be derived in terms of this speed.

True, but the founding of most modern religions required an intense amount of effort by a lot of people to establish them. In fact, if you look at the amount of effort today that goes in to maintaining religion, it is immense. Think of all the big TV evangelists, all the millions of churches around the world that meet each and every week, not to mention the large organisations like the Vatican. If science is not careful, it will end up like today's other religions.

Point taken.
I suppose realy it comes down to purpose, religion is there to give people a basic set of standards to live by, so we can all co-habit on this green and pleasant planet in harmony (doesn't that sound twee, but you know what i mean). Pity that most of the diferent factions end up trying to kill each other realy isn't it.
Whereas science is there to help us try to understand the planet (universe?) in which we live, and to allow the human race to advance to a more enlightened state of existance.
Or alternative it is to provide the differing religious factions new and wonderful ways of killing each other.

Personally I feel both science and religion are tools to be used by the inividual to promote the wellbeing of both themselves and those with whome they come into contact with.

Or is that just too much to expect from the Human Race.

This string has now come back full circle.

Just a point here, if I can jump in. Nothing as yet has been discovered which can travelling faster than light. If the folding space theory ends up as fact and we are able to impliment it. With a blink of an eye we could be half way across the universe. Would this be travelling faster than light ? If light took the same path it would still get there before us.

So until something is found to travel faster than light and can be used in a pupose built engine. I can't see man ever travelling faster than that elusive beam.

Of course I could be wrong.
vegiman

Most particles have a corresponding anti-particle and the two will destroy each other to give energy. I was wondering recently what would happen if there was such a particle as an anti-tachyon. What would be the effect of a collision between a tachyon and an anti-tachyon. A matter / antimatter collision between two particles moving faster than light and backwards in time would have to produce some strange results.

I'm not sure it's possible to travle faster than light, but it would be possible to bypass speed and/or equal its volcity.
For instance once we had reached a set point in space normaly, a system could be set up in wich we transfer our atomical structure into a sequence of photons, ready to be reasembled once we reach our destination.
Of course we could do the same with an undiscovered partical wich travels faster light. Another way would be to skip into a diffrent dimension in which the laws of physics are diffrent within a 'bubble' of our reality, find our corrisponding destination, then skip back.

I don' know if matter/antimatter propulsion would work. You would need a shield or something that would not let the resulting explosion pass through to give thrust. Would anti-matter pass through a shield of matter and matter pass through a shield of anti-matter. I am not into tachyon and anti-tachyon theories but it sounds good.

As for teleportation from one place to another, it could be possible but would a persons individuallity be lost. They say you will be able to copy things with nano technology but onve again will be memories disappear when a copy of a human is made. alright for transplants though.
vegeman

Oh, no problem.
I was reading a little while ago about the equations required to create a 'anti-matter bubble' that would encapsulate a matter object.
As anti-matter has a set of physical laws that are considerably different than those for boring old matter, then it would be possible to travel at speeds in excess of the speed of light.
Aparrently, the anti-matter bubble can be created using nothing more than a teaspoon-ful of water. (As opposed to the theory that it replaced that said you needed the power of several supernovae).

Another theory that I have heard about is using anti-matter to connect matter to the energy (grid, web, whatever) that is 'underneath' our universe (underneath, of course, is not the term - but no other appropriate terms have been invented yet) so the matter will be *at the same time* inside our universe, and yet outside it - so it doesn't have to obey our physical laws.

Practical experiments and demonstrations of these concepts are only 12-25 years away, or so I have heard.

Then again, it could be complete rubbish.

-Nick
"I'm a Graphic Designer, not a Physicist, Jim!"

Its cool to fashionably late anyway.

Ahhh, yes it may be true that you will not be able to afford a sirius chocolate bar, but as far as i can see that would be due to poor investments. If you were to put your money into a secure investment for a few hundred years I'm sure that you would be able to afford to buy a whole sirius chocolate bar just for yourself, maybe even two.

About time travel. First off, I believe it's possible for people to time travel, we just haven't figured out exactly how to do it yet. We all sit around here making theories and laws and saying how things are impossible, or at least most of us do, but the universe doesn't neccessarily follow our rules. Believe me, plenty of things that we say are impossible have happened anyway.
Also is it possible that we are already traveling at the speed of light? Since time is passing right now so we must be traveling through it. Isn't that impossible?
And isn't there supposed to be something to do with frequencies that could make it possible to have instantaneous travel from point A to point B?
One other thing. If we were to send someone back in time wouldn't it get really confusing? You would have to make sure you sent them back to the same point in space that the Earth was at then, which would be somewhere totally different since the solar system is moving and the planet is orbiting the Sun. Wow, I wouldn't want to be the person triyng to figure out all those equations. 3-)

Sorry dude, hate to be the one to tell ya, but it's way too much for the human race.

Too annoyingly true...

Who has ever said we are travelling at the speed of light? We are circling the Galactic Central Point at a pretty high relative angular velocity (several tens of thousands of miles per hour) and the Galaxy itself may be rushing away from the centre of the Big Bang (if there was a Bang and it was 'Big') but only at a small fraction of light-speed. If we abandon all current accepted AstroPhysical theories then where do we start?
Scientists are commonly quoted as saying that timetravel is theoretically possible, that it doesn't contravene the Physical laws that we have come up with so far. Well I believe (and I'd love to be corrected on this) that timetravel into the past would contravene the principles of conservation of momentum and of energy -
If we accept that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but is a constant in the Universe then it must *always* have been a constant value, the same *then* as *now*.
If the atoms that made up time traveller X were formed from various atoms in plants, other animals and water that X's mother had to ingest to sustain X's life in the womb then what happens to those atoms when X travels to a time before he was born. Do the atoms in the plants that X's mother will later eat suddenly blink out of existence? If the atoms of X and the atoms that later formed X are allowed to co-exist in the same Universe in the same time then surely some energy has been *added* to that universe.
So how could that happen then?
- TWF

The way I see it, for time travel to be possible all events mest be lined up in a neat row according to the planck time they took place in, and I would also say that since we are living on this line, then if a person went back in time and altered it on the quantum level it has both happened and about to happen, although we would not know. This means that what must happen WILL happen. Your great grandson can't come back and kill you, the ball traveling backwards in time can't stop itself from getting into the time machine because it has happened already, the bullet HAS to miss, the ball HAS to miss itself, because if it didn't the universe would just be one big cock-up. My general point is that time sorts itself out.