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Mathematicians Extend Einstein's Special Relativity Beyond Speed of Light
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that despite an apparent prohibition on faster-than-light travel by Einstein's theory of special relativity, applied mathematician James Hill and his colleague Barry Cox say the theory actually lends itself easily to a description of velocities that exceed the speed of light. 'The actual business of going through the speed of light is not defined,' says Hill whose research has been published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 'The theory we've come up with is simply for velocities greater than the speed of light.' In effect, the singularity at the speed of light divides the universe into two: a world where everything moves slower than the speed of light, and a world where everything moves faster. The laws of physics in these two realms could turn out to be quite different. In some ways, the hidden world beyond the speed of light looks to be a strange one. Hill and Cox's equations suggest, for example, that as a spaceship traveling at super-light speeds accelerated faster and faster, it would lose more and more mass, until at infinite velocity, its mass became zero. 'We are mathematicians, not physicists, so we've approached this problem from a theoretical mathematical perspective,' says Dr Cox. 'Should it, however, be proven that motion faster than light is possible, then that would be game changing. Our paper doesn't try and explain how this could be achieved, just how equations of motion might operate in such regimes.'"
Don't waste your money. It employes nothing harder than algebra and simply restates what physicist's have said about tachyons for years. Can't see how they slipped it passed the reviewers.
When you use a fourier transform to put a signal into frequency domain you end up with positive/negative components. If you then bandshift, the negative component becomes positive and will actually exist when broadcast. But only the positive part is actually a physical thing. It's... weird.
But you know what I mean. All the equations of motion work if we negative mass, but that alone isn't any reason to think that negative mass exists. Was that a better example?
The math works, but that doesn't mean I have actual, physical negative frequencies.
Exactly. Two more simple examples: ;-)
1st: Pythagoras
a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Let a = 3 and b = 4.
Which leads to c^2 = 25, result is +5... Not quite: (and congrats to those who could follow without a calculator
There are two results, +5 and -5 mathematically, however, only one, +5, makes sense in a physical world, since there is no negative length.
2nd: Give me a few (hundred?) years and I'll come up with a mathematical model where the sun, planets and the rest of the universe is circling around the earth.
It wouldn't make sense whatsoever, but mathematically it still would be true.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Says anonymous coward on a free website that posts links to other authors' content with summaries that are either 100% inaccurate or simply copy/pasted from the article's first paragraph...
Well, tachyons aside, basically yeah.
I have not read the piece, but I am confused how this is 'new'. The behavior of the equations for values larger then C were things we went over in undergrad physics. You can not go the speed of light, but higher or lower works.
Well, not quite the same... the sound barrier was an engineering problem.. plenty of math saying people could break it but building a plane that didn't shake itself to pieces was non-trivial.... in this case the math doesn't work out and we don't have any known paths for getting past this.
At first I wondered why someone called you a retard. Then I read your blog. I think the whole universe is just a little bit dumber since you wrote it. I guess no one can force you to understand the universe. The un-nerving part is that you try to induce others into error. I wonder what happened to you that you have such a desire to be believed. Why don't you put the ground-work in and educate yourself and try to make real discoveries about the myriad things that are still left to be discovered, instead of making up hokum about very basic, verifiable observations that flawlessly predict quite a number of things and upon which a great deal of other observations rely.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Forget that whole "We just consumed all the energy in the universe and collapsed into a blackhole business back there!"
There are two different quotes by the authors in the summary that pointed out they weren't trying to suggest ways that could be accomplished, only what would happen if it were. What more do you want, THREE different quotes from the authors saying "WE'RE NOT SAYING SUCH A THING IS ACTUALLY POSSIBLE!!!"
At one time Einsteins theories weren't testable either and were just neat thought experiments.
There's a difference between "aren't testable using current technology" and "can never be testable with any possible future technology".
No sig today...