Einstein's general theory of relativity

[dev_ocean]

i know it may not be relevant but i have to ask what happens when i body(if it could) achieve speed equal or more than that of light , i know its mass will be infinite but than what will it explode or it will travel through time?

[darkes]

Originally posted here by dev_ocean
i know it may not be relevant but i have to ask what happens when i body(if it could) achieve speed equal or more than that of light , i know its mass will be infinite but than what will it explode or it will travel through time?

As you, say according to Einstein's theories this is not possible, because you would need an infinite amount of energy to get a body to the speed of light.
However, there has been speculation that certain fundemental particles can travel backwards in time - there have even been one or two scientific experiments that appear to show this to be true. Very strange!

The reason that gravity appears to be instantly transmitted, is that it is very difficult to destroy an object (star, planet etc.) - even if it expodes or becomes a black hole then it still has the same mass, and hence exerts the same gravitational affect (more or less). To some extent it is the 'more or less' bit that is being tested today.

[(V)/\><]

according to Einstein's theories this is not possible

well, the theories are just that - theories - and they don't explicitly forbid faster than light travel, so you can't say that it is not possible.

on the particles traveling back in time...they are anti-particles traveling forward in time, same thing. for example, an anti-electron traveling forward in time (as they do) is the same as an electron traveling backwards in time. and you say darkes that there have been experiments that have proved this to be true. this i am not sure of, but i will go look in a minute. but if it is true, then it may be possible to construct an anti-gravity bubble(or a bubble of gluon particles traveling back in time) around a body, to shield it from the crushing centerfugal forces of gravity (or gluon praticles traveling forward in time) and attain a speed of that equal to or greater than the speed of light. in saying that though, anti-particles are supposed to anniliate particles, and vice-versa, so good luck trying to maintain that bubble.

but don't take my word for it, check it out yourself.

on your travels check out String Theory...another theory...around since the 60's...explains light as vibrations in the 5th dimension( with time as the forth dimension, the vibrations would be in the 5th, or the 4th spacial dimension), with gravity residing in a higher dimension. the fundamental belief with String Theory is that things simplify in higher dimensions.

ooh just remembered...didn't some guy encode music on a laser beam and make it travel 5 times faster than light? light has mass (because it is effected by gravity) just like we have mass, just alot more that a photon of light................

oooohOOOOOOH, last point to ponder. in StarTrek when they go to "warp" and travel faster than light, they are effectively TIME TRAVELLING!!!forward. aRRRRR, capt'n Kirk failed to carve this into his log.

[LarrySmith]

The3ntropy said in his antipoint comment to me

"The speed of light is 166,666.6(repeating)"

Since this comment is entirely wrong I inquired who the sender was. This is his email back to me:


"I gave you negatives because you are providing false information. If you don't know something, keep your mouth shut. And if you want to post information and facts, look them up or know them before you do.

Also it was a one line post in an interesting thread."

__________________
--en·tro·py
1.) A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.
2.) The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
3.) Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.

____________________________________________________________________


I admit my post was a one liner......poeple have a right to neg that if it's a post building ploy.
BUT the speed of light "166,666.6 (repeating)" ???

He is in need of some schooling. rotflmao

I Gave an approx. speed of 186,000 miles per second and that is the accepted constant for the speed of light.

[x acidreign x]

Originally posted here by dev_ocean
i know it may not be relevant but i have to ask what happens when i body(if it could) achieve speed equal or more than that of light , i know its mass will be infinite but than what will it explode or it will travel through time?

the reason this is not possible is the same as the answer to your question... as a physical mass approached the speed of light, setting aside the fact that it would need an infinite amount of energy, the objects mass would decrease exponentially, before eventually disappearing altogether. hehe cool, huh?

and about gravity traveling at the same speed as light, yes the effects of gravity SEEM instantaneous, so do the effects of light to us, the speed is not within our perceptual range. that having been said, given what i know about light and gravity, i think light is actually slower, because light is waves, and gravity has to do with the movement of sub-atomic particles, which in the field of lasers, are emited by chemical lasers, which are said to be faster than normal lasers, which are light. i could be wrong.

[slarty]

Clearly if gravity *can* travel faster than light, then maybe we can use it to communicate with aliens too far away for EM radiation to reach them within our lifetimes.

Sure there might be minor technical issues with creating large enough gravity waves for aliens to recieve them

I suspect not however and I have read that it travels at exactly c

[(V)/\><]

from some things i've read, gravity doesn't exactly "travel" at "speed".
it is one of the four fundamental forces in our physical universe, and is a cosmological side effect of a property that causes matter to attract other matter. hence gravity forms a 'field' around large bodys, whose effects are felt less the farther away from the large body you are.
gravity does not suddenly "travel" to one side of a large body, making gravitys effects on that side stronger. nor does it "travel" out into space. its more like a dense fog, that thins and clears the further away from the large body you go.

[rcgreen]

Standard experimental techniques exist to determine the propagation speed of forces. When we apply these techniques to gravity, they all yield propagation speeds too great to measure, substantially faster than lightspeed. This is because gravity, in contrast to light, has no detectable aberration or propagation delay for its action, even for cases (such as binary pulsars) where sources of gravity accelerate significantly during the light time from source to target By contrast, the finite propagation speed of light causes radiation pressure forces to have a non-radial component causing orbits to decay (the "Poynting-Robertson effect"); but gravity has no counterpart force proportional to v/c to first order. General relativity (GR) explains these features by suggesting that gravitation (unlike electromagnetic forces) is a pure geometric effect of curved space-time, not a force of nature that propagates.

http://www.ldolphin.org/vanFlandern/gravityspeed.html

So it seems to have been determined by experiment that gravity is detected
instantaneously, and not with a delay, which could be measured if it only
exerted its effects at the speed of light. So, even though the strength
of the gravitational field is weaker with distance, you could still instantly
detect motion in a distant object because its gravitational pull would be from
its new position as soon as it moved, and not with a delay.

So, maybe with this knowledge, we could fashion a communication technology
that would communicate without the limitation of light speed. This would have to be
made practical before you could ever hope to talk to aliens in distant galaxies.
What good would it be for them to recieve your transmission many lifetimes
after it was sent?

[geepod]

the spoeed of light may be 186,262 miles per second but the effects of gravity are not instantaneous as it depends on where you are in the universe, the laws that relate to relativity are based on a universal rule not bound by here on earth !

just thought i would point that out as a few of the posts are assuming the rules that apply here on earth ! Which are based on the earths mass and the moon and the sun etc etc !

[Bortz]

Ok folks here's my two cents on the subject . . . I see gravity commonly referred to as a force but it really better thought of as a "weak" effect of attraction between masses. All masses, visible or not, are effecting all others simultaneously. The problem is that gravity, being "weak" is effected greatly by the distance between masses; it becomes an "observable" effect in the local vicinity of the mass.

There are still weird things we don't understand about the whole mess. For example, our galaxy Milky Way is in a cluster of galaxies called the Virgo cluster which includes, I believe M81, the Andromeda galaxy and maybe 4 other galaxies in the same general vicinity of space. As with all other observable matter, the whole Virgo cluster is hurtling thru space away from the "center" of the Universe. The issue is that the Andromeda galaxy has been observed to be accelerating towards Milky Way. A look towards the acceleration vector, for the source of this effect, is empty space. Impossible. So the scientists have placed a massive object where none can be seen called "the Big Kahuna". Meanwhile M81 will collide with Milky Way in some odd billion years on it's way to "the Big Kahuna". I don't know about you, but I am really perplexed by this observation.

Something to think about: how could a black hole prevent light from escaping if gravity was constrained to the speed of light? Must it not be capable of imparting a vector acceleration greater than the speed of light (simultaneous qualifies here) opposite to the photon's vector of travel?