Astrophysicists working out of the University of Texas at Brownsville have been studying an interesting pulsar about 10,000 light years away from us (a pulsar is a highly magnetic, spinning corpse of a dead star). Over the course of three days of monitoring, radio waves emitted from the pulsar seem to have been traveling faster than the speed of light.
You might have heard that faster-than-light travel is impossible. This is not entirely true -- there are a couple of catches which allow for F.T.L velocities. One such catch, as originally proposed by Mr. Einstein, is that something can travel faster than light if it does not contain information. This physical law has been observed on Earth in experiments, but with this pulsar (if confirmed), this is the first time this sort of thing has been observed off of our planet. What does or does not constitute information in this context however, is the subject of both rigorous study and debate.
The radio pulse from the pulsar is suspected to have picked up some of the excess speed by passing through a cloud of neutral hydrogen atoms, which causes the radio waves to increase their electromagnetic wavelength (a process called "anomalous dispersion").
(Note: pictured above is some other pulsar, not Pulsar PSR B1937+21 from this research. Pulsar PSR B1937+21 is the second fastest spinning pulsar yet cataloged, and spins about 642 times around every second.)
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the value of Quantum Mechanics as a tool to explain the role of quanta in our universe. This theory states that there is also a classical explanation for the paradoxes such as EPR and the Wave-Particle Duality. The Theory is called the Theory of Super Relativity and is located
at: http://www.superrelativity.org
This theory is a philosophical attempt to reconnect the physical universe to realism and deterministic concepts. It explains the mysterious.
Nevertheless, some objects travel nearly (very nearly) at the speed of light, for instance, binary "neutron stars" may orbit and gradually attract each other at the speed of light before they collide each other:))))
So the pulsar in the aforementioned research can be a bit contentious!!!
I think anyways. I don't profess to be an expert. But that is my understanding of the matter. The force of gravity (which is still not fully understood) also is able to affect objects faster than light, I believe.
Breaking the speed of light is impossible in the sense of the energy involved would be infinite, but there are special cases, and work-arounds. The multiverse is a strange and infinite place where anything is possible by the nature of it being infinite.
Yes, the universe is just too big to understand properly...if there were God, he must be a great mathematician and physicist that can create complex formulae that human beings don't quite understand yet...
In terms of gravity, I'd learnt that "gravity" is nothing but a curvature of space time... but "gravity" and of course, "dark matters" have something to do with our expansion of universe since Edwin Hubble's discovery of expansion of our universe...for instance, some "quasars" are also moving away at nearly light speed from our Milky Way galaxy:))
All in all, as time goes by, our ever-increasing technologies can unlock some unknown secrets within the very fabrics of our universe and beyond...
I think physics will continue to be mysterious for pretty much forever for us humans. The more understanding of the universe we have, the stranger and stranger it seems to get.
Dark matter is another entirely huge, and fascinating, question mark.
Oh forgot to mention earlier quantum entanglement also in way, can be seen as operating at faster than light velocities. If you synchronize two objects in this way, they can affect each other near instantly over vast distances. For example, if you separated two quantum entanglement objects, and had one on Earth, and one on Alpha Centuria, if you changed the state of the one object the other object would near-instantaneously reverse its state to reflect the change. This is theorized to happen at the 'speed' of somewhere of 10,000 times the speed of light. However, this method can not be used for any sort of information transfer, due to physical laws.
I love this stuff
It has something to do with the multiple dimensions of universe:)
I don't know that much about, nevertheless, there must some unifying mechanism(s) that control everything in our universe and other (if exist).
Now, let me refer back to ancient Greek time when Zeno, the founder of "Stoic ideas", argued that even time has some kind of bodily substance (materialism) that everything can ultimately be referred to a "single unifying principle (monism) (Staniforth 1964: 10).
I personally believe that "quantum mechanics" operates with different "patterns and nature", but we can somehow unify "quantum mechanics" with our existing laws of physics.
Simply because, everything has purpose for one another in their existence within universe; the mechanism which is operating and controlling our universe can be explained by every nature of (physic) phenomena which we understand thus far...
Do to the fact that we are still a fledging race how can we say that there is nothing that
Travels faster than light
when there is a whole universe out there whit Meany mysteries
That we don’t now of yet
1) There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on a big beach. There are trillions of stars; more than 80 billion galaxies. And this is just our universe; I think it is likely there infinite universes. [I.E a multiverse, not a universe]
2) Life is not that unusual that it only happens on one planet in a galaxy. That's a ridiculous notion that I can't believe many people think is true. It is a naturally occurring process, deriving out of chaos; thus even if one in a million planets had life there is tons of life in the universe. If life happened here, it means it is possible, and with the number of planets that are out there, it is practically inconceivable that it only happened in our average, far out in the outer fringe solar system. That makes no rational sense.
3) Life evolves. Survival of the fittest is a rule of life. Complexity, and intelligence, is a great survival mechanism, thus, any planet that has life has pretty good odds of developing intelligent beings after millions of years of evolutionary inter-species conflict.
4) Look at what the human race is capable of this many thousands of years into our civilization. The Internet, nanotech,biotech, etc. An extraterrestrial race could have potentially invented fire millions of years into its history. Thus,I think it is highly probable that they would advance to the point where they can move faster than light. And there are methods of traveling faster than light that even many of the more.. stringent/unimaginative physicists would probably even say are feasible for an advanced race, such as traveling through wormholes.
A hundred years ago hardly a single scientist would have believed half the stuff we are capable of doing now. Imagine how much things will change 5,000 years from now, if we survive.
That about sums up my thoughts on the matter. I think it is absurdly improbable that there are not F.T.L traveling civilizations in the universe, if not our galaxy. I've met some fairly smart people that think we are the alone in the galaxy, and I just don't see how anyone could think that, all things considered.
Science is so complicated; Most people don't understand even the simpler, outdated theories of the stuff of life, and their only exposure to DNA is CSI Bull. I don't think I could ever be a scientist, the science behind how this stuff works goes way over my head. I just try to grab the implications, the meanings, and just what is going on in simple words these days xD.
The fact that we exist and have the ability to think, convey information to each other, and grow as a species in a cultural and scientific sense had such an extremely rare chance of happening that it's quite possible there are no 'aliens'. We've only found one other planet that would be habitable to creatures we can fathom, but it was destroyed a while ago. I read a hypothesis once of how many planets there probably are in the universe that aren't barren and can sustain life (that we can fathom), but I forget the number sadly. And the chances of scientifically and technologically advanced life living on those planets was a very, very small number. It's possible that aliens exist, much more probable that they have existed in the past I think, but there's no way to know until we find some evidence one way or the other. So far the only evidence, is the lack of evidence about any aliens.
Hellfire: I think that will come to pass.
Lorx: Good stuff..! Two quick things: even if the number was a "very, very small number" .0000001% of 60 billion of galaxies filled with planets still turns out to be a massive number, that would take me a long time to write out. 2nd point: once a civilization reaches the point where it can travel interstellar space, either faster or slower than light speed, I think it is highly likely that they will be around for millions of years... nothing can take them out at that point. Unnlless there is some sort of planet eating space monster out there or something
But that isn't what I wanted to say. Mainly, that I am excited to see that radiowaves can be have their wave-lengths modified by magnetic forces similar to those which we have available on astronomical hand. This could allow for some form of massless transfer. But this precedent requires certain breakthroughs that are yet to come.
CptBoots - I think you hit the nail on the head.
What you're describing could also be called rudimentary subspace telementry/radio and IMOHO the very basis for the establishment of galactic scale civilization.
How? Having such an ability to communicate would allow for the establishment of vast galactic scale civilizations to stay in sync and in touch with its inhabitants.
Just think. Having near instant communictions with any of our space probes and vehicles. Even here on earth such an ability would be immensely valuable for remote robotic control and communications.
I believe this entanglement concept was alreadydemonstrated over 30 years ago.
So what are we waiting for?
Cheers!
You can not use quantum entanglement for the purposes of communication ( which also follows btw, the rule that information can not travel faster than light.) When I first heard of quantum entanglement I thought exactly the same thing. The problem is a bit complex so I'm going to suggest checking out this page over here for the explanation:
http://everything2.com/title/Quantum+entanglement+and+faster+than+light+communication
Basically you can't really tell which state is which in an entangled object unless you are able to know the state of both. Like many things in the quantum world, it is a bit of a wacky situation.