we have controlled evolution for centuries. example the dog.

No, not at all. Read what I said.



Nothing in the above says that the same thing can't behave as both and therefore be classified as both. Light does. Sometimes in apparently impossible ways.

Not sure, at that speed the wind would probably blow the torch out.

there is only one problem here speed of light is not constant. this is why theory of relativity is still a theory

Different light has different speeds. Just like there are different types of energy. There are different types of light.

great allusion.



i think if and when we start discovering life on other planets, we'll add another taxon above 'kingdom' (or domain, as is used in newer systems) - one to denote the planet the life originates from. there'd be a huge difference between terran animalia and "animals" from other planets reflecting radically different evolutionary histories. the taxons below planet denotation will likely themselves be radically different on other planetary biosystems. but i believe the methods we've developed to discern these differences will be applicable on other planets.



sort of? i don't know if it'd 'pool up', but i'm pretty sure it'd shift towards the blue end of the spectrum regardless of whether it did or not, and it most certainly wouldn't go faster than the speed of light. i just don't know if it'd "pool", if the photons would combine into higher-energy photons, or both. any physics junkies care to enlighten us? (pardon my pun)





different light most certainly does not have different speed. all light moves through space at speed c, which is constant. when light has more energy it has a shorter wave length - more waves squeezed into the same distance. in a sense, it is going faster, but most of the movement is up and down on the sine wave, rather than forward. if you could stretch a UV wave and an IR wave flat, the UV photons would go faster. but instead, they oscilate faster and their net directional gain is constant.

quick example of light having different speeds.

light in a black hole moves at o mph. yes i know but according to science if you push against a wall all day long and you don't move it. you have done no work. thus if light cannot escape a black hole then it isn't moving ie o mph

so light in areas of different gravity will move at a different speed than here on earth.

IIRC a theorist has explained this by saying the light is in fact moving, but since the spacetime curviture in a black hole is infinite it doesn't seem like the light goes anywhere to an outside observer.

even if it isn't moving, it's still expending energy and there is work done - the work of acting against gravity (even if it's futile work). moreover, there's no reason to believe the photons even exist any longer; they could just as easily be reabsorbed into other matter in a way opposite to solar fission.

finally, that light is trapped in a black hole is only postulated since we can't observe light that hit something before it hit the earth, and it's postulated by general relativity. in other words, light would only stop in a black hole if relativity is true. but you're trying to say that it's proof that it's not true.

of course, if you had a better sense of what you're talking about, you could probably avoid contradicting yourself. what point to you even hope to make by arguing that light has different speeds?

Keep in mind too, the space-time warping of a black hole, if such a thing exists. (some scientists now say that what are believed to be black holes may simply be worm holes and black holes may not exist at all.)



According to accepting physics, no, because you can't travel at the speed of light. In order to go that fast, you would have to have an infinite amount of energy, because your mass would increase to infinity and time would come to a complete stop.

You could get really close, but because of the time warping effects, the light from the torch would look quite normal.

I do not know why it is impossible to travel faster than light? just because we don't know how it could be done yet, does not mean it is impossible.

There is one aspect though, before fission was discovered, people thought it was impossible.... but the physics did support fission. However my question is, are there any physics that support the possibility of traveling faster than light?

Warp Drive.

No, I'm serious. I don't remember where I saw this (perhaps in Discover magazine or something), but apparently "warp travel", not too dissimilar than what is depicted in Star Trek, is theoretically possible. Basically, it involves "stretching" space time, so you aren't really moving faster than light, but when you "stretch" the space behind you and "compress" the space in front of you, traveling below light speed would be relatively equivalent to traveling faster than lightspeed through "unstretched" space.

There's also some quantum stuff that allows one to theoretically teleport instantaneously. I think we've already managed to teleport an electron. At least, one electron disappeared and another electron that looked the same came out the other end. Hehehe...

nice!

But accelerating basic matter faster than light is still not theorised as being possible?

i owe you two an apology danielost and Xclusiv8; we were both partly right. light does travel at different speeds, but it isn't dependant on wavelength. light moves slower when it's moving through air, water, glass, etc.



sorry for the confusion on my part.



i remember similar articles, and it's funny becuase i was thinking about another part of them and one concept led me to something related to this thread. i will return to it momentarily.

linear FTL travel and artificial wormholes are claimed possible by some theorists, but IIRC both involve negative energy. negative energy is theoretically possible, but no one's come up with any ideas on how to harvest it. basically, when you've got vacuous space, it has a net rest energy of 0. i made 'net' bold for a reason: that net is the result of quantum phenomenon with negative and positive energy cancelling each other out.

the funny thing about negative energy, according to our current theoretical models anyway, is that it has imaginary mass. this is what made me think of the OP.

energy cannot exist without mass. but what if the mass were in such a form that we could not perceive or otherwise understand it. let's just say the current physical models were right (or right enough), and it's possible for an object or entity to have negative energy and imaginary mass. the first time i learned about imaginary numbers was in algebra when we studied quadradic equations. they occured when you tried to find the points a curve crosses the X axis when it doesn't actually cross.

"dark matter" is a very generic term: basically it's any type of subatomic matter we heaven't measured yet. it was originally called dark because we can't see it with refracted or emitted photons. that could happen for lots of reasons, and if you loot at theoretical types of dark matter, some seems pretty mundane, and some explanations for it are a lot more grandiose. we thought of it because we realized that according to our best physical models there should be a lot more matter in our hubble volume than we can see.

some postulations amount to particles in our universe we simply can't observe. other marginal theories question the amount of matter there should be. but the ones that interest me suggest parallel universes. these hypotheses would also explain the weakness of gravity - which has been the thorn in the side of attempts at theories of everything - by saying that gravity acts across more than 3 spatial dimensions.

bear in mind that these postulations are purely theoretical. the math is sound, we just don't know if it soundly describes anything real. also bear in mind that i'm not a physicist and i'm trying to remember this all off the top of my head. still, if both they and i are at least accurate enough, who's to say 'ascention' isn't possible via controlled transmutation into bodies made of imaginary (extra-dimensional?) mass and negative energy? such beings might possibly have extrordinary powers in our universe, and if they were our future we'd have to do it at least in part by self-conscious genetic manipulation (or at least an increadibly thorough scan of the body and brain, presuming that'd 'capture' everything about you).

i'll leave theological speculation as to what it could mean to those more qualified than i.

It is impossible according to known physics. Particle acceleration experiments have proven that mass does indeed increase as predicted the closer you get to light speed. It would seem to verify that mass would reach infinity at light speed requiring an infinite amount of energy to accelerate further.





Yes, both these methods "cheat" around that rule.

Teleportation does not involve velocity at all. Technically, the object is not moving at any speed. It's just one place one second and another place the next. Quantum teleportation, however is impractical, since you have to produce two sets of bound particles and move them apart to either end of the device by conventional means.

Warp drive also cheats around this by altering the space around the ship. The ship is still traveling under light speed, but the space in front of the ship become artificially less than in should be. To outside observers, however, it would appear to be traveling faster than light--if there was any means of observing it. Light around the ship, however, would still be going much faster than the ship itself and at it's normal speed.



Well, there is another way. With enough regular energy, you could do it, but it would take roughly as much as the sum total of energy in the entire universe. Yeah, like that's going to happen.

LOL. plus i remember a theorist saying that the spacial distortion around a wormhole that was merely big enough to transmist photons (for instant communication) - the spacial distortion would engulf our entire solar system just to send a small radio signal. of course, i don't know if we'd even notice, but all things considered i'm not sure i want to go messing around with spacetime until we've already ascended.

What is causing the mass of a particle to increase? time compression?

Owch! My brain hurts!  

you have to have one first right

Well, it could be phantom pain?? like somone feeling pain in a leg that they no longer have?? lol

Anyway, if you find a topic interesting, usually you will be hungry to understand it as i am, therefore no headache will come.

Try and learn somthing you find booring and ah yea, headaches abound!


Hmmm actually quantum physics might qualify as headache material, even to Einstein??

Or it could be the other way around. Perhaps in this context, the question is even meaningless. We just know that both happen.

(Yes, experiments involving atomic clocks and planes flying around the earth have proven that there is a small time difference caused even by getting up and walking to the other side of the room. Actually, just the motion of the solar system makes our rate of time different from that on any other place in the galaxy. Relative time on our planet, however, will remain so close that you will never notice.)



Yeah, advanced physics will do that. Be glad I'm not discussing quantum physics, where imaginary matter and energy can actually have a very real effect. Actually, for the sake of your own sanity, you might want to forget I just said that.

there are thirteen dimensions the thirteenth is a membrane

Time compression of a particle to me would explain how it can increase it's mass however this time compression would also be reducing the relative speed of the particle, so infact the particle could be traveling faster than light in real terms. The increase in mass is natures way of balancing things out.

As to what are the parameters of this 'balancing' force,,, well that is the big mystery?

Well, assuming evolution hasn't stopped at our current state, it's a matter of evolution.

It took a few million years for humans to evolve into what we are today. Barely out of the trees and still pretty far from any divine like state.

So, it's safe to assume, not in our lifetime.

deleted.

the only answer i even think i know is mathematical. the relationship is hyperbolic, and a hyperbola can't approach both infinities at once. so as it approaches one number, it approaches infinitity on the other axis. or by contrast, as it approaches infinity (mass) it also approaches a finite number (the speed of light in a vacuum).

can't help with a linguistidc answer, though; can't tell you what that means.



evolution is not teleological.