46 minutes ago, qqwertz said:

It just doesn't allow us to travel at arbitrary speed yet, but who knows, maybe some aliens will show us

For those who believe we live in a simulation, all you need is the proper cheat code:

up up down down left right left right B A Start

The fact that this doesn't currently work has led many to believe that we don't live in a simulation.

Hook

5 hours ago, qqwertz said:

And no, I haven't just read that in some internet article, I work in the field.

Well, I certainly value your knowledge and insight as you are actually a Physicist.

However, I have learned in my nearly 55 years that no one has all the answers, no matter how many PhDs they have.

I have also learned that I will never "trust the science" again.

Just as in the past when you had die-hard proponents of the wave theory and die-hard supporters of the particle theories of light, or in geology the Catastrophists vs the Uniformitarians, there are heated debates and disagreements among scientists themselves in al manner of disciplines.

I believe that there is indeed a way to travel faster than light, and the way to do it is to manipulate space itself.

Dave

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

I have also learned that I will never "trust the science" again.

I think you wrote that before in another thread, and that was the reason why I added a bit of general stuff about science in my response above. I have two comments on this:

1) Never say never 😉

2) I don't trust the science either, quite often. Just today I found a mistake in a 30-year old paper by a physicist who is well known in my area (not an important mistake, so all main results are still valid). But that's the beauty about the scientific method: you are absolutely invited to distrust what other researchers publish and to voice your opinion. Just don't be surprised if that opinion is held to the same standards as the research that you criticize. And that has been forged in many decades of forming hypotheses, conducting experiments, and refuting the work of other to replace it with something better. 

Science is a ruthless method, sometimes exhausting, but likely the best method we have to "know" something with a high degree of confidence. It is conducted by people, and people aren't perfect and may be selfish or incompetent, so yes, science is never perfect. However, everyone is held accountable. And if you look at the outcome of it all, you get an amazing and fascinating body of knowledge that, among other things, produces those metal tubes in the air with people in it - much to my enjoyment, and maybe for you, too 🙂

 

 

2 hours ago, dave2013 said:

However, I have learned in my nearly 55 years that no one has all the answers, no matter how many PhDs they have.

I have also learned that I will never "trust the science" again.

I think that applies to a lot of us when The Science is highly politicized.  Two examples I could give would probably get my post removed.

I doubt the Einsteinian speed limit fits that profile.  I could be wrong... 🙂   We can always hope that some day someone will find a way around it.

My own seat-of-the-pants suspicion is that an observer in a space ship accelerating at one gravity would eventually (after about a year, someone check my math) appear to be travelling faster than the speed of light (due to an oddity with time dilation and the Fitzgerald contraction) but an observer on Earth would see them approaching but not exceeding it (someone check my physics).  Thus exhausts my knowledge of Einsteinian physics.

Hook

Edited October 21, 20241 yr by LHookins

1 hour ago, LHookins said:

I doubt the Einsteinian speed limit fits that profile.

Einstein didn't have it all figured out, either.  He came close with his realization that space is a "thing".  His thought experiment of not being able to tell the difference between gravity and acceleration, I believe, was what got him thinking that there is a relationship between motion, space, and gravity.  BTW, some like to call it "space-time", but I don't accept that time is a dimension.  Time does not exist, only space, masses, and motion.  Humans perceive time, but it is not real.  It is an artificial measurement based on a moving mass.  Gravity doesn't exist either.  It is simply the effect of the spatial distortion caused by a mass.

Has anyone ever asked why Newton's third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, holds true?  Why, if I open a valve on a cylinder holding back a high pressure gas, does the exhaust of that gas create a thrust and move the cylinder in a vacuum?  We just accept that this happens but I haven't seen anyone explain why.  Maybe some Physicist has, but I haven't seen it.  My theory is that it is space that moves the cylinder, not the gas.  The accelerating gas distorts the space behind the object and in effect the distortion pushes the cylinder in the other direction.  We are already, in effect, manipulating space in order to accelerate in space every time we launch a rocket , but this is very clumsy and inefficient.  Distorting space this way, by accelerating a mass, requires large amounts of combustible fuel to produce a high pressure gas just to get a rocket with a few people on board into orbit.

Anyway, I believe that if you can distort space enough, you can reach any speed you want.  I think the secret lies with electromagnetism, which again is something not totally understood.  What is the mysterious "force" that causes like poles to repel and opposite poles to attract?  What is this "spooky" action at a distance?  Well, I think it is space being distorted somehow by certain types of materials.  If one day a fusion generator can produce a powerful enough electric field, and then we have the technology to "shape" it correctly, then this may produce enough spacial distortion in the chosen direction to produce a meaningful acceleration.  Doing it this way would also likely be much more efficient.

Just my crazy theory.  Yeah, I think about this stuff a lot.

PS: Both gravity and magnetic field strength vary according to the inverse square law, that is, the force diminishes with the square of the distance between objects.  Is this a coincidence?  I don't think so - they are related - by space itself.

 

Dave

Edited October 22, 20241 yr by dave2013

8 hours ago, LHookins said:

[1] I doubt the Einsteinian speed limit fits that profile. 

[2] would eventually appear to be travelling faster than the speed of light

 

7 hours ago, dave2013 said:

[3]  BTW, some like to call it "space-time", but I don't accept that time is a dimension.  Time does not exist, only space, masses, and motion.  

[4] Has anyone ever asked why Newton's third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, holds true? 

[5] Anyway, I believe that if you can distort space enough, you can reach any speed you want.  I think the secret lies with electromagnetism, which again is something not totally understood.  What is the mysterious "force" that causes like poles to repel and opposite poles to attract? 

[6] Both gravity and magnetic field strength vary according to the inverse square law, that is, the force diminishes with the square of the distance between objects.  Is this a coincidence?  I don't think so - they are related - by space itself.

Nice discussion. Here are some comments.

[1] You can absolutely doubt that there is a universal speed limit. In fact, a major international collaboration already published experimental results that neutrinos are faster, but their results were shown to be wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_OPERA_faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly)

[2] Something like this happens often in astronomy. You don't even need acceleration, just a high speed and an odd angle between velocity and direction to the observer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superluminal_motion)

[3] You are right that time is what a clock (a moving body) measures and nothing else. However, in the theory of relativity, time and space are interwoven, so you can't separate a time dimension from space dimensions in it. Of course, relativity could be wrong, but it has been tested billions of times. Every time you use GPS you need to take into account relativity, otherwise the system wouldn't work.

[4] It does not in general. For instance, the magnetic force between two charges does not obey Newton's third law (https://van.physics.illinois.edu/ask/listing/23692). The law is valid for some of the most important forces we use (the inverse square law type). But generally, momentum conservation replaces it. One then must consider the momentum carried by the magnetic field as well.

[5] You are not alone. Some people even do experimental research on how to use electromagnetic the Casimir effect to create a warp drive (https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/harold-whites-warp-drive-research-casimir-effect-insight.1010056/). However, almost no researcher believes that this will work, the amount of negative energy is just too small.

[6] Beautiful question. The inverse square law is indeed no coincidence. It is a consequence of two facts: (i) we live in three space dimensions, and (ii) both gravity and electromagnetic fields travel at a fixed speed (the speed of light). Imagine you have a source of electromagnetic fields that sends out a short signal with a specific amount of energy. That signal spreads out on the surface of a sphere since it moves at constant speed. In three dimensions, the surface area of a sphere grows with the square of the distance (=radius of the sphere). Since the total amount of energy is conserved, the fields must decrease with the inverse square law to cancel the increase of the area.

2 hours ago, qqwertz said:

[1] You can absolutely doubt that there is a universal speed limit.

I meant that the speed of light wasn't politicized like some other things we've had to deal with lately.  🙂

I'm currently reading Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" a few pages at a time in between various fiction.

Thanks for the links.

Hook

21 hours ago, dave2013 said:

I believe that there is indeed a way to travel faster than light, and the way to do it is to manipulate space itself.

All we need is to develop a "folding engine" to achieve FTL speed... 🤓

11 hours ago, qqwertz said:

both gravity and electromagnetic fields travel at a fixed speed (the speed of light)

Perhaps because they are manifestations of the same thing, IE spatial distortions.  Why does gravity, which according to physics is a spatial distortion and not an electromagnetic wave, "travel" at the same speed as electromagnetic radiation?  I understand that they spread out in all directions which is analogous to a sphere, but why do supposedly different forms of energy travel at the same speed and have their "field" strengths behave in the same way?  My answer is that all waves are spacial waves and those waves travel at the speed of light, which itself is a very high frequency spatial wave.

I believe it may be that they are not two separate things, but merely spatial waves created by two things, one very noticeable made by a large mass like a planet, and the other very subtle made by oscillating billions or trillions of electrons.  The spacial waves created by oscillating tiny electrons are extremely small and not at all noticeable until their power is greatly amplified, whereas the effects of spatial waves created by a very large mass like a planet are more readily observable.

Current science says that "charged" particles emit electromagnetic waves when they are moving, but what if these waves are merely spacial waves and not some separate phenomenon?  After all, when you increase the power of a radio transmitter, what are you actually doing?  Well, you are increasing the amperage and/or voltage and thereby oscillating more electrons, that is, more *mass*.  We don't notice these spacial waves because they are so tiny and have no observable effect on other masses that we encounter in our daily lives.  We have to use a metal antenna which is a conductor that contains trillions of easily moveable electrons and then greatly amplify the resulting oscillations of those electrons in order to get any noticeable effect.  Now, what if I oscillate a small metal ball?  Wouldn't that set up bigger spacial waves that would move a mass of the same weight that is nearby?  Well, no, because again it takes an immense mass to distort space enough for it to be detectable by ordinary means.  In theory, if the mass difference is large enough, one should see the effect on the smaller mass, however.  I would like to see an experiment done in a vacuum using one large mass, like a 1000kg metal sphere, and a tiny mass like a 1mcg metal sphere, and then move them near each other.  I believe that once the tiny mass gets close enough, it would move toward the larger mass. They would have to be extremely close as the 1000kg mass produces a very tiny spatial distortion that falls off quickly with distance.

OK, enough ranting.  I am well aware that I could easily be proven wrong.

If anyone ever actually proves my theory correct, though, then all I ask is that I be given due credit.

Thanks.

Dave

 

10 hours ago, dave2013 said:

f anyone ever actually proves my theory correct, though, then all I ask is that I be given due credit.

 

Hmm... if such an eventuality is manifest, then I'm afraid all you'll get is a cat point from me. I'll make it a gold one, though, if I'm in a good mood.

11 hours ago, dave2013 said:

 Why does gravity, which according to physics is a spatial distortion and not an electromagnetic wave, "travel" at the same speed as electromagnetic radiation?

If one believes that relativity is correct, then the answer is simple: all particles (or fields, it's the same in quantum theory) are characterized by a few parameters: their mass, their spin (something like an internal rotation) their electric charge, and two other charges (weak and color charge, but they only matter in nuclear processes). Electromagnetic waves and gravity are the only known fields that have zero mass, and such waves must travel at the speed of light.

Regarding your theory, one thing worth thinking about is the main difference between gravity and electromagnetism: the former always generates an attractive force, whereas the latter is repulsive for like charges but attractive for two particles that have an opposite sign of charge. This is something you can easily test yourself, you only need two plastic rods and two pieces of fur. If you rub the rods with the fur, electrons get transferred from the rod to the fur, so the fur becomes negative and the rods positive. The rods then repel each other while rod and fur attract each other. You would need a pretty good device for measuring forces in this case, though. It might be easier to get a van-de-Graff generator which does essentially the same but much better.

However, if you are considering this difference, you will do science: you formulated a hypothesis, someone brings up something that the hypothesis may not explain, and you think about whether you can refute it or if you modify the hypothesis. I hope that doesn't spoil the fun because it is great that you care enough about nature to give it so many thoughts.

Peter

7 hours ago, qqwertz said:

Regarding your theory, one thing worth thinking about is the main difference between gravity and electromagnetism: the former always generates an attractive force, whereas the latter is repulsive for like charges but attractive for two particles that have an opposite sign of charge.

Yes, this is something I can't explain.  My theory is essentially trying to explain all forces as "simply" spacial distortions, and all types of energy as kinetic energy.  I run into trouble with gravity being only an attractive force, and then there's the nuclear force issue...

I've just never liked the idea of charged particles exerting a mysterious force.  It seems to me that, like gravity, there must be some medium that they affect and through which the force is transmitted, like space.  I've wondered if perhaps the spin of a particle distorts the space in such a way as to make it compress or bend, thus attracting or repelling other particles.  

As far as the atom is concerned, I can explain electrons not being sucked into the nucleus due to their fast orbits and centrifugal force keeping them away.  As for what keeps the protons together, I don't know.  Maybe the neutrons play a role, that is, somehow their spin counteracts the spins of the protons so that they don't repel each other?  Then I have to explain where all that energy comes from when the nucleus is busted apart without explaining it as mysterious "nuclear" energy.  I've pondered that this may simply be massive kinetic energy from all the particles being hit and then speeding away at relativistic speeds, thus creating a lot of heat and light due to friction.  I'm sure this could be calculated. 

Cool discussion.

Thanks for your knowledge and interest.

Dave

5 hours ago, dave2013 said:

've wondered if perhaps the spin of a particle distorts the space in such a way as to make it compress or bend, thus attracting or repelling other particles.

 

Spin is just an analogy. It's not spin as you know it. It's more like an intrinsic form of angular momentum.

 

5 hours ago, dave2013 said:

As far as the atom is concerned, I can explain electrons not being sucked into the nucleus due to their fast orbits and centrifugal force keeping them away. 

 

I'm wondering if you are regarding electrons as particles orbiting the nucleus. If so, then they would indeed spiral in toward the nucleus. They aren't though, they are better described as akin to a cloud within the atom. 

Edited October 23, 20241 yr by martin-w

55 minutes ago, martin-w said:

They aren't though, they are better described as akin to a cloud within the atom. 

WOW!  To an old electronic technician/engineer who learned the theory of electron flow and now finding out they are just a gas within the atom blows my mind.  Is the picture I have of electrons flowing through a conductor all wrong?

If so, I wonder what the next theory that blows your gas theory out of the water will be.

Noel

41 minutes ago, birdguy said:

   Is the picture I have of electrons flowing through a conductor all wrong?

If so, I wonder what the next theory that blows your gas theory out of the water will be.

Noel

Uh, Noel that picture is all wrong!  Electrons don't flow....the wire moves.