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Ways To Travel Faster Than Light Without Violating Relativity

StartsWithABang writes: It's one of the cardinal laws of physics and the underlying principle of Einstein's relativity itself: the fact that there's a universal speed limit to the motion of anything through space and time, the speed of light, or c. Light itself will always move at this speed (as well as certain other phenomena, like the force of gravity), while anything with mass — like all known particles of matter and antimatter — will always move slower than that. But if you want something to travel faster-than-light, you aren't, as you might think, relegated to the realm of science fiction. There are real, physical phenomena that do exactly this, and yet are perfectly consistent with relativity.

7 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Medium.com Alert! by sectokia · · Score: 5, Informative

    Terrible click bait, doesn't mention a single way to go faster than light. Most nerds would already know all of this.

  2. Don't bother reading by gsslay · · Score: 5, Informative

    The whole thing hinges on the phrase in the first paragraph; "depending on what you mean by a "thing", "faster-than-light", and "travel""

    If you want to play around with semantics and definitions, then you've got an article. Otherwise, nothing new here. Speed of light unchallenged.

  3. Re:Medium.com Alert! by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, in that case, this article proves that least bullshit can be accessed at the speed of light.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  4. Re:faster than light never violates Relativity by catmistake · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You're at a very straight, very long beach. Imagine parallel waves striking the shore at a vanishingly slight angle. The point that the wave meets the shore moves along as the intersection of wave and beach occurs. As the waves get closer and closer to parallel with the beach, but not quite parallel, eventually that intersection point will be moving much faster than c.

    But the interesection point between waves and shore doesn't have mass, isn't really a "thing" that's moving.

  5. Really Though, DO NOT Bother Reading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The whole thing hinges on the phrase in the first paragraph; "depending on what you mean by a "thing", "faster-than-light", and "travel""

    If you want to play around with semantics and definitions, then you've got an article. Otherwise, nothing new here. Speed of light unchallenged.

    Yeah ... came here, read the article, want my money back.

    What a complete waste of time this article was!

    Did you know that if you try to send a photon through a solid wooden door, it won't ever make it ... however if you shout at the door, the sounds will be heard softly on the other side? In this case of "breaking the light speed barrier" our calculations show that not only are your vocal sound waves traveling faster than the speed of light but since light never got through the door and time still marches on, you are approaching a speed infinitely faster than the speed of light!

    Mind blown? Or are you just angry that I got you to read that horseshit?

  6. Re:faster than light never violates Relativity by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're at a very straight, very long beach.

    But, I'm in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike so I think I'm screwed.

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    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  7. Re:C is not what people think it means by firewrought · · Score: 5, Interesting

    except for the part about bringing your own fuel

    And the part about obliterating your spacecraft by colliding with interstellar dust at super-high relative velocities. The speed limit for arriving in one piece is way lower than c.

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    -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction