It's official: FTL is impossible

[Tan Ru]

Wait a minute.............

Is this story related to the time-travel story on Yahoo?

http://news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-scientists-show-time-travel-impossible-150026913.html


***Without time-travel, how are we supposed to get the whales back??

 

[Deckerd]

It's all about time travel. Presumably an object sent through a wormhole is sent far into the future relative to the time of the start point. Therefore if it came back it would again be sent far into the future, so the original start point would be far back in the past.

 

[Ronald Held]

It is impossible for those who says so, for they will never achieve it. IMO that experiment does not prove it cannot be done.

 

[Mysterion]

It is impossible for those who says so, for they will never achieve it. IMO that experiment does not prove it cannot be done.

Huh?

Opinions have no bearing on data from an experiment. the data is what it is. What are the flaws in the experiment that lead you to the conclusion you state?

 

[Dac]

Personally I don't give a rats ass about time travel - that's always been too confusing. As long as some day we humans are visiting other worlds* on a regular basis I'll be happy.

*Other worlds that are not in this solar system.

 

[Lindley]

It is impossible for those who says so, for they will never achieve it. IMO that experiment does not prove it cannot be done.

Huh?

Opinions have no bearing on data from an experiment. the data is what it is. What are the flaws in the experiment that lead you to the conclusion you state?

I have to agree with him that the path from the experimental result to the over-arching conclusion is not clear at all.

 

[Mr Silver]

I think everyone is getting ahead of themselves, this is one study that has failed to confirm the existence of FTL velocities. As Deckerd and some other have pointed out, the BBC does like to "sensationalise" such things and its been wrong before.

Besides the very concept of FTL travel is impossible in any known sense anyway. First of all we have no practical means of propulsion, how can such speeds be attained if there is no method of propulsion? Sub-atomic particles cannot travel past a certain point, which has already been determined and there is no way to test these theories on objects that aren't bound by biochemical makeup and the elements as of yet.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I think everyone already knew that you can't exceed c using conventional (thrust-based) propulsion methods, though this perhaps provides more concrete confirmation of it.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If the exponentially-increasing energy required for fast motion is due to drag from virtual particles (in some highly abstracted sense), then perhaps we can generate some kind of field which encourages virtual particles to form less frequently in a given area.

Some sort of enhanced version of the Scharnhorst effect perhaps.

 

[Skellington]

So Einstein's theories are validated yet again and the universe's speed limit remains intact. This is in no way surprising, nor even disappointing really.

 

[Mr Silver]

That would be Smith's theory of relativity...

 

[FPAlpha]

If it is indeed possible to travel to other systems or even galaxies in a reasonable amount of time it will be discovered sooner or later (if humanity doesn't destroy itself by then) because there's just so much we don't know and discover each day.

Technologies we thought impossible are reality today and who knows what will be possible in 100 years? If you go back 200 years or more and tell people about planes at best they'll ignore you as a weird guy with funny ideas or you'll be put in an asylum for your own safety.

Maybe it will be an accidental discovery like penicillin when a bright mind wakes up one day and goes "Hey.. this is an interesting idea" or it will be a long process of scientific study.

And coincidentally i'm hearing the title music of "The Big Bang Theory" right now on TV

 

[Skellington]

That would be Smith's theory of relativity...

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrsN8iTwFiw[/yt]

 

[YellowSubmarine]

There's one question I'd be more thrilled to find an answer to before looking for ways to travel faster than c: What happens when we throw causality down the drain?

 

[Mr. B]

Sooner or later, any scientist who says "that's impossible" looks like an idiot.

 

[Bill Morris]

With the syrup-eating worm, he would be subject to Einstein's rules only if he tried to push through the barrier upon those rules were based. Instead he ate the barrier a little at a time, and the barrier closed in behind him, pushing him forward. That was his means of propulsion. So he was not at all subject to time dilation or the notion of going back in time if he exceeded the nomal limit. And the worm's normal means of propulsion was not needed and not used at all until he reached his destination. The only "wormhole" involved here was the temporary vacuum he created in front of him by taking in a mouthful of the barrier.

Extrapolating that to spacecraft, a device that eats through the fabric of space serves as warp drive, impulse drive, and intertial dampers. allowing point-to-point travel at any desired speed with no g-force, no relativistic time effects, and no need for fuel--totally subversive.

 

[MANT!]

Sooner or later, any scientist who says "that's impossible" looks like an idiot.

Might I suggest Clarke's 3 laws...

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Nerds don't weep..they just bypass the rules...

 

[PurpleBuddha]

If some form of FTL is possible, we need all the theories that come before saying it is not. The greatest source of knowledge science gives comes from the rotting remains of the numerous falsified theories throughout history. In falsifying theories we learn so much. We discover new directions to take and we make unsuspected discoveries. We not only learn which ideas were wrong, but gain new ones in the process. While on the one hand I believe it to be completely foolish to declare something like this as impossible, on the other it gives science a very concrete direction to proceed one day in discovering the way to achieve FTL should such a feat be possible.

 

[Bill Morris]

If some form of FTL is possible, we need all the theories that come before saying it is not. The greatest source of knowledge science gives comes from the rotting remains of the numerous falsified theories throughout history. In falsifying theories we learn so much. We discover new directions to take and we make unsuspected discoveries. We not only learn which ideas were wrong, but gain new ones in the process. While on the one hand I believe it to be completely foolish to declare something like this as impossible, on the other it gives science a very concrete direction to proceed one day in discovering the way to achieve FTL should such a feat be possible.

Right, but it does often make life miserable for people who actually do the work. A scientist with a new idea can go through decades of ridicule, denied grants, expulsion from teaching (or voluntary resignation rather than teach what one believes is wrong), divorce, heart attacks, etc.

And about new discoveries, some math problems were long considered impossible to solve. At the bottom of this Wikipedia page is a list of problems that were eventually and unexpectedly solved, and these are only fairly recent examples. And that's with "an exact science."

Unsolved math problems recently solved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_mathematics

 

[YellowSubmarine]

If some form of FTL is possible, we need all the theories that come before saying it is not. The greatest source of knowledge science gives comes from the rotting remains of the numerous falsified theories throughout history.

You know, even if some form of FTL is possible, the results that state that it is impossible might still be true? In fact they most likely will be, unless everything that we know is wrong.