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Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

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Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#61
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on how you define 'conservation of energy'. Consider an arbitrary bounded volume of spacetime. Conservation of energy says that the net flow across the boundary of any such volume is 0. Under this definition moving in space but not time is not a violation, as the same amount of mass enters the volume as exits it. The only odity is that both events happen at the same time

That definition sounds broken, since energy is still conserved if I move something into or out of the bounds. It stops being conserved if there's suddenly more or less energy inside the volume without the same amount crossing the boundary

The idea is that the volume we are talking about is a 4 dimensional volume of space-time and is bounded; not a three dimensional volume of space that extends to infinity along time.

Conservation of energy says that it is impossible for energy to enter this volume with that same amount of energy exiting the volume.

Consider what it would mean for this to be violated. For the sake of argument, assume that all particles must move forward in time by a non zero amount at all points along there path. Since the volume is bounded, any particle with an infinite path must eventually have a time coordinate beyond the largest time coordinated in the volume. Therefore, the particle must eventually exit the volume. If you were to work out the geometry more carefully, you could show with relative ease that the particle must exit the volume an equal number of times as it enters. If a particle were to enter the volume without exiting the volume, it would mean that said particle was destroyed within the volume. Similarly, if a particle were to exit the volume without entering, it would have to have been created within the volume. Both of these situations are possible if an interaction occurs within the volume, but the net energy of the particles leaving such an interaction, must be the same as the net energy of the particles entering the interaction.

Put another way, assume that all interactions obey the conservation of energy. If our original volume was V, we can construct a new volume V' from V by carving out sub volumes in which an interaction occurs. Since all such sub volumes obey the conservation of energy (by assumption), the net energy flow into and out of V' must be the same as for V. However, since no interactions occur withing V', all particles entering V' must exit V' an equal number of times, so the net energy flow of V' must be 0. Therefore the net flow of V must also be 0.

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#62
post #23

I think a lot of people assume that this means you couldn't go more than a few (~100) light-years in your lifetime... But this is not actually correct. Counter-intuitively you can theorically go any number of light-years (essentially) in your lifetime, as long as you are able to approach the speed of light because when you do so the distance is dilated and hence you're covering far more ground within your reference f…

I know this is true, but I never got my head around this, maybe someone can help. So if a photon is emitted from the sun, it's passing earth immediately? Then why does sunlight need 7 or 8 minutes to get to earth? And let's say, i travel one light-year at the speed of light, that should be instantaneous, right? The odometer would show 1 light-year, my watch would should 0 seconds and some decimals. How much would I h…

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Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#63

"Nothing can go faster than light" is just a convention and is not experimentally confirmed. IIRC there are a few things that go faster than speed of light (e.g. universe expanding). "Spooky action at a distance" is also not known very well. That could also break the speed of causality law. While Bell's theorem hints that this is not the case, there are some exceptions to Bell's theorem. Right now a lot in physics ar…

AFAIK 'nothing goes faster than c' is wrong in the 'lies to children category'. The devil is in the details. In fact, plenty of things go faster than c.

As a standard example, take a wall at 1m distance and a flashlight. move the light spot at 1 m/s. If you put the wall at 2m, the same spot will now go 2 m/s. If you put it at 300 000 km, the spot will go at 300 000 km/s, slightly over light speed.

The problem is more one of information: For any action you take, no consequence can happen outside your light cone. All information you generate travels at c at max.

None of the examples you gave violates this: Even if the universe expands at more than c, nothing you do will have influence on things too far from you.

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#64
post #37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it another way, time travel machines are very much theoretically possible, and in fact are “only” an engineering problem (an extremely hard one, however). But, only forward travel is allowed: time travel machine could take you as far forward as its engineering would allow it, but there is no going back.

They are only theoretically possible if you allow for negative mass and energy--not an engineering problem so much as a "need to find exotic matter" Basically people ran the EFE "backwards" to see what matter distribution makes the wanted curvature. You get either negative mass-energy or the bubble doesn't travel ftl iirc.

The Alcubierre drive “beats” the speed of light, for the effects described 0.7-0.9c are more than good enough (if slightly unpractical).

We can’t do that either for now, but is way easier on the feasibility scale.

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#65
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means you can't within the lifetimes of the people you left behind. For that you need more exotic contraptions (wormholes, warp drive, etc).

If they were to wait a year and then come find you far away, would it net out and you’d be the same age?

Yes

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#67
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm not sure if troll, but energy conservation is definitely not just some convention. It’s a fundamental thermodynamic law. Spooky action at a distance does not violate speed of light information propagation either. The particles have to be entangled before they’re set off in opposite directions. Only once one is observed does the other also collapse, but it doesn’t mean you can communicate faster than the speed of…

Why do you feel the need to say somebody is a troll? Here: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-violations-energy-early-univer... Here: https://phys.org/news/2015-02-space-faster.html - we are trying hard to reconcile this and categorize universe expanding as something else (e.g. not a movement that has speed because time itself is a dimension or something). But this is still up for debate, tbh. Another example was one wher…

Apologies, I wasn’t trying to call you a troll, more that your first comment seemed to me like it might have been made in jest, clearly it wasn’t.

The articles you’ve linked to are interesting and there are clearly many scientific discoveries to be made by studying the early formation of the universe which will test our current models. However I don’t feel like convention is the right word for laws like the conservation of energy, even if there are some difficulties with tying up these theories and new experimental evidence from events at the scale of the Planck length.

Convention to me would mean something that has been accepted just because it’s always been done that way and people didn’t really bother to question why, but I don’t think that’s the case here. But we’re verging on pedantry now so no point going down that route any further.

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#68
wouldn't it go backward in time if it goes faster than light? Light travels in null-time from point a to point b (light-perspective of course) - anything slower, needs time to go from a to b. if i travel faster than light, i can - but i travel to b before i start at a. Maybe because this is not possible.

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#69

Wow, this is the first time I have understood why nothing can go faster than the speed of light and why time dilation is a thing. A very easy to read article, give it a try. Also if you are curious why a moving charge creates a magnetic field watch this Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TKSfAkWWN0

Frankly though, I not sure why they couldn't just use a simpler correction: postulate that moving charge only creates magnetic field with regard to objects moving relative to it. Which is also basically true? This way, the stationary observer will sure notice that there's F_B, but will also know that the charge moving alongside the (also moving) rod does not experience it.

That's the thing though, in the article the charged object does not move relative to the rod. The rod, object, and person B are stationary relative to each other. I was actually really surprised to read that two charged objects moving with the same velocity relative to each other generates a magnetic field from A's perspective.

Re: Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light?

#70
post #23

I think a lot of people assume that this means you couldn't go more than a few (~100) light-years in your lifetime... But this is not actually correct. Counter-intuitively you can theorically go any number of light-years (essentially) in your lifetime, as long as you are able to approach the speed of light because when you do so the distance is dilated and hence you're covering far more ground within your reference f…

I'm pretty sure this doesn't work out because you have to slow down.

So thinking about it, if you are traveling at that speed because of your inertial reference frame it is equivalent that everyone else around you is moving at (or near) the speed of light and they are moving slowly through time. This is the classic twin paradox and there is a resolution to it, which is that you can't instantaneously turn around.[0] Or in our case, we have to turn around to slow down.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iJZ_QGMLD0

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