Blind religious belief in science

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Blind religious belief in science

Post by Kevin Solway » Sat Jul 28, 2007 1:51 am

I've been arguing for decades that it is easily possible for things to travel faster than the speed of light, and that the limitation on the speed of light is only an artifact of the language of relativity.

Now, at last, there are scientists who are admitting this:

Science podcast with Roger Penrose

They say something like, "For the first time ever, we reveal that science does in fact believe that things travel faster than the speed of light."

User avatar
Jamesh
Posts: 1526
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:44 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Jamesh » Mon Jul 30, 2007 11:37 am

There is info about your point on this page, but I’m afraid the physics is above me.

Can objects move away from us faster than the speed of light?

Conveniently scientists seem to ignore that for the big bang maths to be true, that the expansion of the universe must have taken place at a far greater speed than the speed of light.

So either a) the speed of light is not the maximum speed within the universe, b) the big bang maths or theory is wrong or c) time was not a constant as the universe formed, meaning the speed of time as the universe inflated was faster than now, so therefore the speed of light was faster at this time, or d) some combination of the previous points.

The more I learn about the big bang, the less I believe it is a reality, at least as it is indicated.

User avatar
Dan Rowden
Posts: 5739
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:03 pm
Contact:

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Dan Rowden » Mon Jul 30, 2007 1:17 pm

As far as I can tell, Singularity physics - which is now integral to BB theory - necessitates casting aside a number of accepted physical laws. These obviously evolved as the universe expanded and developed "features". This is part of the debate over the extent of application of Darwinian principles. It's funny that when Creationists argue that the speed of light might not have always been the same, despite them being roundly pillioried for it, they maye well have/had a point.

User avatar
ExpectantlyIronic
Posts: 411
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:11 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by ExpectantlyIronic » Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:02 am

The speed of light will always be measured to be the same regardless of how fast one is moving relative to it. It's from this that we infer that you'd never be able to catch up to a beam of light, as if you were able to catch it in a foot race, at some point you'd be able to measure it to be going slower relative to yourself than it was before, and we know you can't do that. Now imagine that two folks were doing measurements on the speed of a particular light beam relative to their own speed, one who's stationary (or, at least, moving at the speed of whatever planet he's stuck on), and the other who's traveling at a much faster speed. What sort of sorcery is going on if they both measure it to be going at the same speed relative to themselves? The obvious answer is that the clock of the dude who's moving faster is going slower than the clock of the stationary dude. It's the Planet of the Apes effect, or 'time dilation' as hip cats like to call it. Both time dilation and the constant speed of light have been tested a gazillion times. So, if a dude can move faster than the speed of light, it requires some bizarre trickery that I'm unaware of.

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Kevin Solway » Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:33 am

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:The speed of light will always be measured to be the same regardless of how fast one is moving relative to it.
"Measured" is a vague term.

Let's say you are travelling in a car at the speed of light, and then turn on your headlights. The light from the headlights is travelling away from the car at a speed that is measured to be the speed of light.

But how fast does the person in the car calculate (measure) the light to be travelling relative to his starting point? He calculates (measures) it to be greater than C.

I don't know if that's what Penrose was talking about when he referred to things travelling faster than C, but I presume that is the case.

User avatar
ExpectantlyIronic
Posts: 411
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:11 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by ExpectantlyIronic » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:03 am

Let's say you are travelling in a car at the speed of light, and then turn on your headlights. The light from the headlights is travelling away from the car at a speed that is measured to be the speed of light.
How is speed calculated? It's simply a number given to the distance traveled in a given unit of time. So, if time actually slows down for a person as they accelerate (relative to C), then C will always seem to be going the same speed to that person regardless of how fast they travel. By my thinking, time has simply stopped for the dude in the car that's going the speed of light. If I'm watching this event well going at a slower speed, I'm not going to see headlights shoot out of the car, as I won't observe them going any faster than the car.
But how fast does the person in the car calculate (measure) the light to be travelling relative to his starting point? He calculates (measures) it to be greater than C.
He doesn't calculate it at all, because he needs an infinite amount of energy to get up to the speed of light. Disregarding that, I suppose we just have to say that his clock stops (along with his internal organs).


Edit: I had originally posted that time would seem to stop for the dude, but I changed my mind after thinking about it, and decided that it's more likely that once you get up to the speed of light, there is no room for change other than purely forward motion. Clocks don't tick, hearts don't beat, and things more complicated than particles moving in a single direction simply become as much.

User avatar
ExpectantlyIronic
Posts: 411
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:11 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by ExpectantlyIronic » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:18 am

Insofar as things moving faster than the speed of light is concerned, the limit is only on the travel of information. If I set a bunch of timers to go off at around the same time (maybe with an unimaginably small delay between them) and they were in a straight line, we could say that the progression of them going off was faster then the speed of light, but in a very 'special' way. Some things do go faster than light in this sense.

Edit: A better example of how so-called 'group velocity' can exceed C, is to imagine how one end of a ruler reacts when we push on the other end. Though we can make one end of the ruler cross a line an inch away from it by pushing on the other end of it, we don't say that the ruler moved 13 inches if it's a 12 inch ruler, but that's effectively what physicists are doing when talking of group velocity. The length of the group gets added to the distance moved.
Last edited by ExpectantlyIronic on Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
DHodges
Posts: 1531
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2002 8:20 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact:

Re: Blind belief in things about which one is ignorant

Post by DHodges » Tue Jul 31, 2007 11:28 pm

Kevin Solway wrote:I've been arguing for decades that it is easily possible for things to travel faster than the speed of light, and that the limitation on the speed of light is only an artifact of the language of relativity.
Kevin, it seems bizarre to me that you even have an opinion about this. Do you have any kind of a background in physics?

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Blind belief in things about which one is ignorant

Post by Kevin Solway » Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:23 am

DHodges wrote:
Kevin Solway wrote:I've been arguing for decades that it is easily possible for things to travel faster than the speed of light, and that the limitation on the speed of light is only an artifact of the language of relativity.
Kevin, it seems bizarre to me that you even have an opinion about this. Do you have any kind of a background in physics?
I have spent a reasonable amount of time studying it.

In any case, I'm not the only one who believes that things can travel faster than C. For example, Penrose has no doubt of it, although I'm not sure what his reasons are.

While it is true that one can never perceive anything travelling faster than C away from oneself (because of the limitations of measurement), we can nevertheless calculate that things are traveling at a speed faster than C relative to a point other than ourselves, the observer - as in my original example.

User avatar
Cory Duchesne
Posts: 2320
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:35 am
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Cory Duchesne » Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:32 am

Kevin's conclusion seems to follow from a simple logical truth. Namely that all things are relative, and not existing inherently. For instance, something which, from our perspective, appears to be traveling very fast, is, from another perspective, slow, or even still.

User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:17 am

Lightspeed is defined for 'volumes of space'.

This means that for example when one would redefine space because of the existence of another spatial dimension, the speed limit becomes meaningless. Because now there's a way for a 'short-cut' to occur and we could start to measure intra-dimensional links that just traverse space differently.

But outside hyperdimensional theories we have tricks like the 'subluminal'. I'd guess it's some version of Kevin's car at lightspeed blinking its headlights. This can actually be done in an experiment but one has to conclude it doesn't actually transmit information, which could tell us c is more a limit of the speed of information than anything else.

A sample applet to get the idea

User avatar
average
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:15 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by average » Wed Aug 01, 2007 2:28 am

what an utterly trivial topic to even spend 5 seconds of thought on...

User avatar
DHodges
Posts: 1531
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2002 8:20 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact:

Blind spot

Post by DHodges » Wed Aug 01, 2007 3:22 am

Kevin Solway wrote:Let's say you are travelling in a car at the speed of light, and then turn on your headlights.
As far as I can tell, the land speed record is 1227.986 km/h (763.035 mph), set by the Thrust SSC, while getting a rather unspectacular 0.04 mpg U.S.

Meanwhile the speed of light is 1,079,252,848.8 km/h.

That is, it is possible for a car to go a bit over 0.000001 of light speed, if you consider the fastest car ever built, and are willing to burn enormous amounts of gasoline.

To sum up : YOUR CAR CAN NOT GO AT LIGHT SPEED. NOT EVEN A BIG-BLOCK CHEVY WITH A SUPERCHARGER AND NITROUS.

The light from the headlights is travelling away from the car at a speed that is measured to be the speed of light.
Light always travels at the speed of light. It doesn't matter who is measuring it or where they are. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant. That's why they call it c. It seems to me we covered all this not that long ago, back when there was a separate science forum. There was a discussion of the Lorentz transform.

I don't know if that's what Penrose was talking about when he referred to things travelling faster than C, but I presume that is the case.
Well, there's a very convincing argument, right there. I'll just ask Penrose's enormous penis about it. What a bizarre appeal to authority, especially given the title of the thread.


Man, you're making me feel like Victor Danilchenko today.

User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Wed Aug 01, 2007 4:39 am

I can't believe Hodges just spent any time and effort to show how the modern car cannot go light speed... it sounds like Victor alright :)

Then he goes on saying light speed is constant because ... it's a constant. Great!

I think Kevin suggests it's an artifact of our current physics ('language of relativity') and the observations it's based on. It's related how we perceive vacuum and space-time currently, only in that context the calculations add up to having such a constant.

I think the moment we develop different models that do not deny but include current physics, we
might have to add some qualifiers to a label like 'constant'. Those models are exactly what people like Penrose are playing with.

User avatar
Matt Gregory
Posts: 1537
Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:40 am
Location: United States

Re: Blind spot

Post by Matt Gregory » Wed Aug 01, 2007 5:12 am

Diebert wrote:
DHodges wrote:
Kevin Solway wrote:Let's say you are travelling in a car at the speed of light, and then turn on your headlights.
As far as I can tell, the land speed record is 1227.986 km/h (763.035 mph), set by the Thrust SSC, while getting a rather unspectacular 0.04 mpg U.S.

Meanwhile the speed of light is 1,079,252,848.8 km/h.

That is, it is possible for a car to go a bit over 0.000001 of light speed, if you consider the fastest car ever built, and are willing to burn enormous amounts of gasoline.

To sum up : YOUR CAR CAN NOT GO AT LIGHT SPEED. NOT EVEN A BIG-BLOCK CHEVY WITH A SUPERCHARGER AND NITROUS.
I can't believe Hodges just spent any time and effort to show how the modern car cannot go light speed... it sounds like Victor alright :)
Plus, the accelerating car would exceed the escape velocity of the earth's gravity and go flying off the road long before it hit light speed :)

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Blind spot

Post by Kevin Solway » Wed Aug 01, 2007 5:42 am

DHodges wrote:
Kevin Solway wrote:Let's say you are travelling in a car at the speed of light, and then turn on your headlights.
As far as I can tell, the land speed record is 1227.986 km/h (763.035 mph), set by the Thrust SSC, while getting a rather unspectacular 0.04 mpg U.S.
Actually, I could have said that the car was travelling at only 1 kph. It doesn't make any difference to my argument: ie, the light from the headlights is travelling faster than C relative to the car's starting point, from the perspective of the observer in the car.
The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.
. . . with the essential qualifier that it is relative to a stationary observer. I mean that the driver in my car can be regarded as "stationary" relative to the light coming out of his headlights, which is traveling at the speed C, relative to him.

If the observer is already moving - as in my example - then this doesn't apply. At least, I know of no demonstration that it does. All demonstrations are based on stationary observers.

Of course, in the real world, all things are moving (relative to some other thing).

User avatar
ChochemV2
Posts: 197
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:16 am

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by ChochemV2 » Wed Aug 01, 2007 6:43 am

Except mathematically the speed of light is constant no matter what reference point you view light from. I remember my high school physics teacher showing that on the blackboard...

That doesn't mean that nothing can travel faster than light just that according to our current mathematical understanding nothing can.

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Kevin Solway » Wed Aug 01, 2007 8:31 am

ChochemV2 wrote:Except mathematically the speed of light is constant no matter what reference point you view light from. I remember my high school physics teacher showing that on the blackboard...

That doesn't mean that nothing can travel faster than light just that according to our current mathematical understanding nothing can.
In my example, the driver of the car isn't really "viewing" the speed of light - not directly, at least - but is calculating it, based on two separate measurements.

If the overall (combined) measurement is useful to him, then I don't think it can be invalidated . . . Though it's difficult to think of how it would be useful to him.

User avatar
ChochemV2
Posts: 197
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:16 am

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by ChochemV2 » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:23 am

Kevin Solway wrote:In my example, the driver of the car isn't really "viewing" the speed of light - not directly, at least - but is calculating it, based on two separate measurements.

If the overall (combined) measurement is useful to him, then I don't think it can be invalidated . . . Though it's difficult to think of how it would be useful to him.
Whoops, I just re-read your example and I certainly misunderstood.

User avatar
Matt Gregory
Posts: 1537
Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:40 am
Location: United States

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Matt Gregory » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:35 am

I don't think I understand all this. If there are two cars, one stationary and one about to pass the other at a quick speed and at the exact moment it passes they both turn their headlights on, would the moving car's headlights beat the other car's headlights in a race?

User avatar
Jamesh
Posts: 1526
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:44 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Jamesh » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:50 am

It would not surprise me at all if what scientists refer to as dark energy (which is just the expansionary force as a dominant perecentage) travels at faster than the speed of light and that is why it has not been observed and is perhaps not observable.

Their research indicates that dark energy is supposed to make up 70% of the universe. If the expansionary force is dominant then it will push light away, or deflect it unchanged, rather than consume it as the 5% of the universe that is ordinary matter does.

User avatar
ExpectantlyIronic
Posts: 411
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:11 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by ExpectantlyIronic » Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:16 am

Kevin,
the light from the headlights is travelling faster than C relative to the car's starting point,
A fella who was standing on the starting point would measure the speed of light to be exactly the same relative to himself as the dude in the car would relative to himself. Light always moves at the same speed, but time will progress slower for the dude in the car, causing a discrepancy in the two dudes attempt to measure how fast light is moving relative to the cars starting point (if they don't take time dilation into account). If the car is moving at any speed a car could actually go, the discrepancy would be insanely small anyways.


Matt,
I don't think I understand all this. If there are two cars, one stationary and one about to pass the other at a quick speed and at the exact moment it passes they both turn their headlights on, would the moving car's headlights beat the other car's headlights in a race?
Nope. Assuming the light from the headlights are traveling through the same medium for both cars, the two beams of light will travel at the exact same speed. Of course, the faster moving car will continue to emit light as it moves (if the headlights are left on), and thus the light that comes from it will cross the finish line sooner (assuming that the finish line is some distance from where the headlights are first turned on).
Last edited by ExpectantlyIronic on Wed Aug 01, 2007 11:58 am, edited 4 times in total.

User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:18 am

Just to touch upon what Dave Hodges was referring to already: in special relativity you can never just add the speeds of car & headlights (or cars coming from the opposite direction!) because the supposed (and measured) structure of space and time have effects on all motion, even when comparing different frames. You have to divide still by (1+ speed_1 * speed_2 / c^2). Which isn't normally done with lower speeds because the effect is hardly of influence.

Here: Adding velocities in Special Relativity
An awarded idiot's guide here: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/

However, Kevin was I think (?) referring to something else, like Penrose was. Penrose was making the point that special relativity has to be seen local in relation to .. well.. the relations to objects in the vicinity, each in its own frame if you want but having a position in time and space.

For larger distances, like the expanding universe, one arrives at something else. Since (according to theory) an expanding universe is not expanding within space/time - it forms space/time, we can talk about different, faster type of 'speeds', which can also be observed.

One could object of course that any 'speed' including the speed of light alwys refers to the movement inside or between reference frames, within time/space. So the expansion of the known universe could also be seen as illusionary, an artifact with no real reference to a 'thing' moving, or having 'speed'.

Then we arrive at what I wrote before: lightspeed only can be broken by breaking the 'plane' of relativity, in other words: escape the time/space continuum. Penrose his proposed 'wormholes' would be an example.

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Kevin Solway » Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:17 pm

Matt Gregory wrote:I don't think I understand all this. If there are two cars, one stationary and one about to pass the other at a quick speed and at the exact moment it passes they both turn their headlights on, would the moving car's headlights beat the other car's headlights in a race?
I think that a person at the destination would observe the light from both cars arriving at the same time - but I think the fast moving car would have its light "compressed". Weird, but I think that's what experiment indicates.

However, my question is not about what a person at the destination would observe, but what a person in the fast moving car would observe. And I can't think of any reason to think that their calculation wouldn't be meaningful in some way. Though it's not clear to me in what way at the moment.

Tricky, eh?

User avatar
Matt Gregory
Posts: 1537
Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:40 am
Location: United States

Re: Blind religious belief in science

Post by Matt Gregory » Wed Aug 01, 2007 5:48 pm

Matt Gregory wrote:I don't think I understand all this. If there are two cars, one stationary and one about to pass the other at a quick speed and at the exact moment it passes they both turn their headlights on, would the moving car's headlights beat the other car's headlights in a race?
ExpectantlyIronic wrote:Nope. Assuming the light from the headlights are traveling through the same medium for both cars, the two beams of light will travel at the exact same speed. Of course, the faster moving car will continue to emit light as it moves (if the headlights are left on), and thus the light that comes from it will cross the finish line sooner (assuming that the finish line is some distance from where the headlights are first turned on).
I don't think that's true unless the car was moving faster than the speed of light. The speed of the light would overtake the speeds of all the slower objects.

Kevin Solway wrote:I think that a person at the destination would observe the light from both cars arriving at the same time - but I think the fast moving car would have its light "compressed". Weird, but I think that's what experiment indicates.
Wouldn't it be more like the Doppler effect, where the light waves at the destination would be the same, but the light moving away from the starting point would be expanded?

Kevin wrote:However, my question is not about what a person at the destination would observe, but what a person in the fast moving car would observe. And I can't think of any reason to think that their calculation wouldn't be meaningful in some way. Though it's not clear to me in what way at the moment.
But the person in the moving car would measure light to be c relative to his starting position and lower than c at his current position and speed, wouldn't he?
Last edited by Matt Gregory on Wed Aug 01, 2007 11:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Post Reply