The future is impossible
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But that's not rewriting the formula or looking at it differently. There isn't an "interaction" between mass and a constant...that formula is saying that mass IS energy. Don't look too much into the c^2 part...it's a constant. It's just a normalizing factor between mass and energy. All it's saying is that mass is directly proportional to energy. That formula is also not the full expanded formula, it's just the main part of it. There are particles with no mass. It's called light. Photons are exactly what you are saying - particles with energy. They have energy because of the part of that equation that you're missing, but that isn't rest mass. What happens from the perspective of a particle with no mass? Exactly what I described - it moves at the speed of light! No matter how much energy you give it, it still just moves at the speed of light, it just has a different amount of energy. That amount of energy defines the wavelength of the light. Low energy = radio waves. High energy = gamma rays. When a particle that has no mass is created, i.e. a photon, it's universe LITERALLY stands still. Photons live in a uniquely different life than particles with mass - their life is defined not by time, but by distance. Time literally stands still for a particle of light during its journey, and then it is instantly over as it hits it's destination (from the perspective of the photon). You really gotta work with the full equation to get any use out of it. m=e/c^2 without factoring in the missing part doesn't actually work. See here for a somewhat better explanation: energy - Does $E = mc^2$ apply to photons? - Physics Stack Exchange[^]
The user's response to the question only reinforces the point I am trying to make:
Quote:
So formally one can still talk about the photon having a relativistic (or effective) mass $m = E/c^2$. But this concept of mass runs in all kinds of problems so its usage is discouraged.
Here is an example of the lengths that science will go to avoid the fact that the way they may be looking at physics isn't quite right. Two different ways of examining the exact same thing are available but one is accepted and the other is avoided because it causes trouble. By causing trouble, I more suspect it means that if it is accepted as priciple their life's work will be invalidated. To me, it smells of hypocrisy. Here is light which, by saying is a massless particle, breaks their own fundamentals so instead of admitting that a photon has an infinitesimally small mass, they just call it zero and tell the rest of us to drink the cool-aid so that they don't have to go back and perform decades of rework. Don't get me wrong here. I am not attacking you or the information you have provided. I don't think we are discussing the same thing. You have been providing the results of research while I am trying to examine the thought process that led to those results to determine if the human element has led us to a misunderstanding of the results or that our very base assumptions of physics are fundamentally incorrect. To me, physics has hit a brick wall of sorts which has led me to question everything I have been taught.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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The user's response to the question only reinforces the point I am trying to make:
Quote:
So formally one can still talk about the photon having a relativistic (or effective) mass $m = E/c^2$. But this concept of mass runs in all kinds of problems so its usage is discouraged.
Here is an example of the lengths that science will go to avoid the fact that the way they may be looking at physics isn't quite right. Two different ways of examining the exact same thing are available but one is accepted and the other is avoided because it causes trouble. By causing trouble, I more suspect it means that if it is accepted as priciple their life's work will be invalidated. To me, it smells of hypocrisy. Here is light which, by saying is a massless particle, breaks their own fundamentals so instead of admitting that a photon has an infinitesimally small mass, they just call it zero and tell the rest of us to drink the cool-aid so that they don't have to go back and perform decades of rework. Don't get me wrong here. I am not attacking you or the information you have provided. I don't think we are discussing the same thing. You have been providing the results of research while I am trying to examine the thought process that led to those results to determine if the human element has led us to a misunderstanding of the results or that our very base assumptions of physics are fundamentally incorrect. To me, physics has hit a brick wall of sorts which has led me to question everything I have been taught.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
I'm not sure what you mean. It's not infinitesimally small, it's zero. The equation measures rest mass. They are saying if you change the definition you can use it the other way but you've changed the definition into something that makes a mess of things, not because the equation is correct and we just don't understand it, but because if you use that definition of mass then now you have to carry the second part of the equation that you left out into EVERYTHING ELSE to make it work. And the second part of that equation is messy. There's no conspiracy here.
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Foothill wrote:
It's just a personal belief but I don't think that time travel is possible.
I surely hope so. Imagine children of the future having to learn 25 alternative histories that all happened.
Foothill wrote:
I don't know where this time travel tangent arose but, while it makes for some very interesting stories, isn't really possible in my eyes.
It comes from multiple places, including the idea that time-space warps around a black hole. Hollywood has a need for time-travel to be possible.
Foothill wrote:
In the theory, everything that has energy has mass and I tend to think of C as a universal drag coefficient. By lowering the amount of drag, particles would, in theory, lose mass and could travel faster. Even light would travel faster.
..which might be also a better explanation than the hyperexpansion of the early universe. If the velocity (or drag, depending on your viewpoint) can vary, then there is no longer a need for a rapid expansion.
Foothill wrote:
By lowering the amount of drag, particles would, in theory, lose mass and could travel faster.
Yeah, same sentence quoted twice, but just wondering; how much "particles" are there in a human that has no mass?
Foothill wrote:
The Higgs Boson (i.e. the god particle) is still just a theory.
Yes, but I haven't come up with anything better yet :rolleyes:
Foothill wrote:
I have this written down at home but I do not have the academic credentials to get anybody in the field of physics to listen. I just tell it to people who might be interested to hear. With so little in the way of resources, I wouldn't be able to prove a word of it in a lab. It doesn't help that I'm not really very good at any mathematics above college algebra which is why I stay clear of graphics programming and security algorithm design. Sorry if some of this is academic speech as I don't know of any other way to describe it.
Are you familiar with open source? If you can describe your ideas and distribute it (in whatever form), it will be built upon by others. You can fill up any current gaps using "fairy dust", as lots of theories are incomplete. My math-skills are at the level when I left school; junior second
Yea, you have to be jovial while exploring lines of thought that run counter to established beliefs. If you want proof that time travel is impossible, thank history. Do you think for a second that if time travel were possible somebody would have already traveled back in time and assassinated Hitler in the trenches of France during WWI? We're human and I am certain some American would have done it just to prove that it could be done. :laugh: I also don't think that black holes exist or at least not in the way that we currently think that they do. The point is that we use math to describe the universe but it doesn't work in reverse. While Hawking is a brilliant mathematician, just because you can prove something exists on paper does not mean that it exists in reality. I find it far more probable that the phenomenon that we think are black holes are really just the dead cores of the very first stars. Since black holes where accepted in mainstream physics, some people have gone to great lengths to try and prove it and thereby preventing other avenues of thought. I see them as very large bodies of normal matter with large proportions of radioactive material. The radioactivity will keep them very hot for a long time, continuously spewing radiation into space but other then that they behave like any other celestial object. Until we get close enough to one to take real-time measurements, it is still an educated guess either way.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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I'm not sure what you mean. It's not infinitesimally small, it's zero. The equation measures rest mass. They are saying if you change the definition you can use it the other way but you've changed the definition into something that makes a mess of things, not because the equation is correct and we just don't understand it, but because if you use that definition of mass then now you have to carry the second part of the equation that you left out into EVERYTHING ELSE to make it work. And the second part of that equation is messy. There's no conspiracy here.
I'm not calling a conspiracy. Recent discoveries have led me to a questioning of fundamentals. Take the EM Drive for instance. The experiment has repeatedly shown that the drive is creating thrust from electromagnetic energy in a vacuum but that shouldn't be possible. I really goes against convention. The EM Drive is basically saying that a vacuum is not empty and there is something there for the EM Drive to push against. Since we might have gotten the concept of what's in the space around us wrong, what else have we gotten wrong?
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Let me see if I can explain this little theory I've been mulling over in my head since back when I was taking physics at my local university. First, I will start with your statement
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
come up with a theory where light goes faster
One of the central tenants of my idea is not to find examples of light deviating from it's set speed but to answer why does it always want move at that speed. What is it about the constant that makes it this way not just for light but all energy. So I started pondering the meaning of Einstein's famous equation and it's implications. e = mc2 implies that energy is a function of an interaction between mass and the constant. It implies that energy is irrelevant and only mass and C matter. Most of the widely accepted theories are rooted in this. If we switch things up, the equation takes on a whole new meaning. m = e/c2 implies that mass is a function of an interaction between energy and the constant. It implies that mass is irrelevant on only energy and C matter. More to the point, since energy is in a constant state of acceleration, the mass of a particle is a direct result of energy shedding velocity due to the C. The caveat is that if we could figure out what the universal principal is that causes all energy to shed velocity to make mass, we could figure out how to negate it, thus making faster-than-light travel possible. I may be off my marks but I've asked several physicists about this without a straight answer; even emails to NASA and FermiLab got me nowhere. The answer was always make up a mathematical model and prove it. It's the same exact model they have now just a different way of looking at it. Never did get anywhere with it so far. The only nice thing is that it offers an explanation for electron quantum jumping. I've got theories on gravity too but I can never get any help from physicists on that one either. Not even a suggestion on where to start.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
OK, let me come at this from a more philosophical angle. Which came first, energy or matter? AFAIK, current mainstream cosmology would have to say that energy came first, at least if you hold with the Big Bang Theory. You can convert energy to mass and vice-versa, but when you look closely enough matter is fundamentally a product of energy (think of what an atom truly is). So is the everyday material world even "real" then, if solid matter is merely an "illusion" created by tiny energy clusters sparsely distributed through vast quantities of empty space? Well, it's as real as real gets, from the experiential viewpoint, because there's no "more real" world that you can visit. However, that doesn't mean that matter is the foundation of reality itself, it's just the foundation of our experience of reality. But what is it that experiences this reality? There is one truly undeniable statement in philosophy, one statement that is more certainly true than anything else that can be said. It was famously stated by Descartes as "I think, therefore I am." In other words, the fact that I am able to contemplate being proves that, in fact, being is a thing and that I exist. Importantly, the only thing that we can be so certain that exists is consciousness. Consciousness is the only thing that experiences reality, and so in some sense reality is always defined in terms of consciousness (even for materialists, who have to deal with the sensory problem). You cannot, in good intellectual faith, ignore the question of consciousness if you seek an accurate understanding of reality. [I'm going to beat on Daniel Dennett a bit here because his book Consciousness Explained has become like a bible for naive materialists, so I have to deal with him in order to argue my case, because a lot of people think that the title of this book wasn't a lie.] But science ignores the question of consciousness all of the time, mainly because it's so hard. When scientists do consider it, many of them go with a tortured materialist explanation a la Daniel Dennett. But when they do so they have to wrestle with the problem of mind/body dualism (Idealism doesn't have this problem, but Dennett seems ignorant of that and considers an assault on mind/body dualism enough to dismiss all non-materialist views). More importantly, materialists have to explain how consciousness exists at all in a materialistic universe. The idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter is mystical magical BS, the very thing that material
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The longer one practices physics, the more entrenched prevailing thought becomes. The "trap" of science is that eventually it becomes its very antithesis: a religion, one based upon perceived facts. The word "perceived" escapes notice, however, and the physicists become the acolytes of the "church" of science. Those acolytes then defend their religion to the death. Your new idea is heresy.
Have you read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn? I think that you would like it.
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I'm not calling a conspiracy. Recent discoveries have led me to a questioning of fundamentals. Take the EM Drive for instance. The experiment has repeatedly shown that the drive is creating thrust from electromagnetic energy in a vacuum but that shouldn't be possible. I really goes against convention. The EM Drive is basically saying that a vacuum is not empty and there is something there for the EM Drive to push against. Since we might have gotten the concept of what's in the space around us wrong, what else have we gotten wrong?
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
I completely agree, all I'm saying is that faster than light travel doesn't make sense because speed of light travel is actually INSTANT. So, you are going to have to define what you mean by faster than light travel, because I don't know how you can get somewhere faster than instant.
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OK, let me come at this from a more philosophical angle. Which came first, energy or matter? AFAIK, current mainstream cosmology would have to say that energy came first, at least if you hold with the Big Bang Theory. You can convert energy to mass and vice-versa, but when you look closely enough matter is fundamentally a product of energy (think of what an atom truly is). So is the everyday material world even "real" then, if solid matter is merely an "illusion" created by tiny energy clusters sparsely distributed through vast quantities of empty space? Well, it's as real as real gets, from the experiential viewpoint, because there's no "more real" world that you can visit. However, that doesn't mean that matter is the foundation of reality itself, it's just the foundation of our experience of reality. But what is it that experiences this reality? There is one truly undeniable statement in philosophy, one statement that is more certainly true than anything else that can be said. It was famously stated by Descartes as "I think, therefore I am." In other words, the fact that I am able to contemplate being proves that, in fact, being is a thing and that I exist. Importantly, the only thing that we can be so certain that exists is consciousness. Consciousness is the only thing that experiences reality, and so in some sense reality is always defined in terms of consciousness (even for materialists, who have to deal with the sensory problem). You cannot, in good intellectual faith, ignore the question of consciousness if you seek an accurate understanding of reality. [I'm going to beat on Daniel Dennett a bit here because his book Consciousness Explained has become like a bible for naive materialists, so I have to deal with him in order to argue my case, because a lot of people think that the title of this book wasn't a lie.] But science ignores the question of consciousness all of the time, mainly because it's so hard. When scientists do consider it, many of them go with a tortured materialist explanation a la Daniel Dennett. But when they do so they have to wrestle with the problem of mind/body dualism (Idealism doesn't have this problem, but Dennett seems ignorant of that and considers an assault on mind/body dualism enough to dismiss all non-materialist views). More importantly, materialists have to explain how consciousness exists at all in a materialistic universe. The idea that consciousness is an emergent property of matter is mystical magical BS, the very thing that material
I've read up a little on the conscious angle. It's an interesting blend of physics an philosophy and I think I could attempt sum it up as "the universe exists the way I observe it because I am the one observing it that way." The point that I am trying to make with this sub-thread is that there could be some fundamental flaw in our current perception of physics but time has turned theory into doctrine and it has become nearly impossible to change direction due to the 100+ years of momentum that has built up behind it. To me, a lot more things make sense when you boil the entire universe down to three things: natural energy (the stuff that makes up particles), kinetic energy, and some still undefinable force that keeps the natural energy from existing everywhere simultaneously.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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I completely agree, all I'm saying is that faster than light travel doesn't make sense because speed of light travel is actually INSTANT. So, you are going to have to define what you mean by faster than light travel, because I don't know how you can get somewhere faster than instant.
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True, there is no shorter distance then zero. To me, FTL is traveling in excess of 300,000 km/s.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
Yeah but....you are. You are travelling infinitely fast from your perspective. If you are travelling at the speed of light, your rocket ship can instantly arrive anywhere in the universe INSTANTLY. I think that's what you are missing about the whole relativity thing. Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
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Yeah but....you are. You are travelling infinitely fast from your perspective. If you are travelling at the speed of light, your rocket ship can instantly arrive anywhere in the universe INSTANTLY. I think that's what you are missing about the whole relativity thing. Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
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True, there is no shorter distance then zero. To me, FTL is traveling in excess of 300,000 km/s.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
Allow me to clarify for a second. You see an awesome star you want to visit. You look into the night sky, and you see a supernova exploding. You want front row seats to this event, so you jump into your speed of light ship to go look at it. You get there instantly, i.e. you have aged say 1 second, but when the ship stops at its destination you will have found that the supernova is gone. But how? You got there instantly! Well that's simple...it's because the light you were looking at from Earth was 20 billion light years old, so the star actually exploded 20 billion years ago. You got there instantly, but "instantly" near the star is 20 billion years later than the light you are seeing from earth. So if you don't believe in time travel, this is the fastest you can go. If the star exploded 20 billion years ago and it's now dead, you can't get to the star as it was 20 billion years ago. You can begin your journey now at infinite speed from your perspective and see how it looks NOW, 20 years after that supernova explosion that the light just got to you from. If you have an alternate proposition, such as multiverse theory, then I'm all game, it's possible. But you can't have no time travel and faster than light travel, it just doesn't make sense. If you explain a theory of how that would work where I can picture it working then I'm all for it being possible, but as you've laid it out, it won't work.
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Allow me to clarify for a second. You see an awesome star you want to visit. You look into the night sky, and you see a supernova exploding. You want front row seats to this event, so you jump into your speed of light ship to go look at it. You get there instantly, i.e. you have aged say 1 second, but when the ship stops at its destination you will have found that the supernova is gone. But how? You got there instantly! Well that's simple...it's because the light you were looking at from Earth was 20 billion light years old, so the star actually exploded 20 billion years ago. You got there instantly, but "instantly" near the star is 20 billion years later than the light you are seeing from earth. So if you don't believe in time travel, this is the fastest you can go. If the star exploded 20 billion years ago and it's now dead, you can't get to the star as it was 20 billion years ago. You can begin your journey now at infinite speed from your perspective and see how it looks NOW, 20 years after that supernova explosion that the light just got to you from. If you have an alternate proposition, such as multiverse theory, then I'm all game, it's possible. But you can't have no time travel and faster than light travel, it just doesn't make sense. If you explain a theory of how that would work where I can picture it working then I'm all for it being possible, but as you've laid it out, it won't work.
I get what you are say, of course the star won't be there, you're 20 billion years too late. I get that. I guess what my brain isn't getting the jump from faster than light to instantaneous travel. To me faster than light is just that, traveling faster than 300,000 km/s (I'm ignoring the limitations on speed here).
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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I get what you are say, of course the star won't be there, you're 20 billion years too late. I get that. I guess what my brain isn't getting the jump from faster than light to instantaneous travel. To me faster than light is just that, traveling faster than 300,000 km/s (I'm ignoring the limitations on speed here).
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
Well then you're in luck - get up to close to the speed of light and you will get there instantly. If someone on earth is looking at you as you make your journey then it will look like you are moving at the 300,000km/s, but at that speed space in front of you is compressed so much that you get there instantly, and space behind you expands so much that 20 billion years will have passed on earth. Hence why "everything is relative" - there is no "absolute" frame of reference in the universe, everything changes in relation to everything else.
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I've read up a little on the conscious angle. It's an interesting blend of physics an philosophy and I think I could attempt sum it up as "the universe exists the way I observe it because I am the one observing it that way." The point that I am trying to make with this sub-thread is that there could be some fundamental flaw in our current perception of physics but time has turned theory into doctrine and it has become nearly impossible to change direction due to the 100+ years of momentum that has built up behind it. To me, a lot more things make sense when you boil the entire universe down to three things: natural energy (the stuff that makes up particles), kinetic energy, and some still undefinable force that keeps the natural energy from existing everywhere simultaneously.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
If you haven't done so already, you should read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. It's about exactly what you're saying about science and resistance to new ideas.
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Well then you're in luck - get up to close to the speed of light and you will get there instantly. If someone on earth is looking at you as you make your journey then it will look like you are moving at the 300,000km/s, but at that speed space in front of you is compressed so much that you get there instantly, and space behind you expands so much that 20 billion years will have passed on earth. Hence why "everything is relative" - there is no "absolute" frame of reference in the universe, everything changes in relation to everything else.
As interesting as this discussion has been, it's almost quitting time here so I'm off to enjoy the weekend. Have a pleasant evening.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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As interesting as this discussion has been, it's almost quitting time here so I'm off to enjoy the weekend. Have a pleasant evening.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
You too! I should correct a previous statement - I meant to say time is compressed/expanded in front/behind you not space. That's what they are talking about when they refer to "time dilation" in relativity.
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Yea, you have to be jovial while exploring lines of thought that run counter to established beliefs. If you want proof that time travel is impossible, thank history. Do you think for a second that if time travel were possible somebody would have already traveled back in time and assassinated Hitler in the trenches of France during WWI? We're human and I am certain some American would have done it just to prove that it could be done. :laugh: I also don't think that black holes exist or at least not in the way that we currently think that they do. The point is that we use math to describe the universe but it doesn't work in reverse. While Hawking is a brilliant mathematician, just because you can prove something exists on paper does not mean that it exists in reality. I find it far more probable that the phenomenon that we think are black holes are really just the dead cores of the very first stars. Since black holes where accepted in mainstream physics, some people have gone to great lengths to try and prove it and thereby preventing other avenues of thought. I see them as very large bodies of normal matter with large proportions of radioactive material. The radioactivity will keep them very hot for a long time, continuously spewing radiation into space but other then that they behave like any other celestial object. Until we get close enough to one to take real-time measurements, it is still an educated guess either way.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); } Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
Foothill wrote:
We're human and I am certain some American would have done it just to prove that it could be done. :laugh:
Who said Hitler is not the result of that time-travelling?
Foothill wrote:
I also don't think that black holes exist or at least not in the way that we currently think that they do. The point is that we use math to describe the universe but it doesn't work in reverse. While Hawking is a brilliant mathematician, just because you can prove something exists on paper does not mean that it exists in reality. I find it far more probable that the phenomenon that we think are black holes are really just the dead cores of the very first stars.
The simpeler explanation is the more probably one. Doesn't sound as exciting though.
Foothill wrote:
I see them as very large bodies of normal matter with large proportions of radioactive material. The radioactivity will keep them very hot for a long time, continuously spewing radiation into space but other then that they behave like any other celestial object. Until we get close enough to one to take real-time measurements, it is still an educated guess either way.
In that case, I'll rather go for the romantic view that there is an entire universe inside every black hole :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)
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Yeah but....you are. You are travelling infinitely fast from your perspective. If you are travelling at the speed of light, your rocket ship can instantly arrive anywhere in the universe INSTANTLY. I think that's what you are missing about the whole relativity thing. Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
Mike Marynowski wrote:
Pick the further thing in the universe you can think of. If you get your ship up to 99.99999% the speed of light, you will literally get there in a second.
So, if you go slower than light, you travel further than light itself travels in a second? I'm going to re-read this thread later on again, I must have missed some things :thumbsup:
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)
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Phase velocity can exceed the speed of light - it may be exploitable, but for sending information and not any physical objects. It all comes down to the relativistic mass of any object with mass. As it approaches the speed of light its mass approached infinity - so acceleration becomes impossible. An interesting caveat to that could be that as anything with any mass approaches c, they all approach the same mass. Which causes all sorts of conflicts, logically - and one might as well accelerate an entire planet as accelerate a grain of sand as they'll take the same effort in the end. Special relativity does bend the brain, a bit.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
W∴ Balboos wrote:
as anything with any mass approaches c, they all approach the same mass
The problem here is that you are treating infinity as a quantity, which leads to all sorts of paradoxical things. Infinity is a concept not a number, it has no quantity that can be compared to some other quantity. This is why mathematicians talk about approaching infinity rather than infinity itself as a number. Besides, before the object approached "infinite" mass, the universe would collapse around it and destroy everything anyway, because gravity. You would destroy the universe before you approached the speed of light, even leaving aside the fact that you used up most of the energy in the universe in the process.