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[kaijyuu]

Does this mean we might be able to gain temporary immortality out of this?

Think more like putting someone into suspended animation, or stasis.

If we could move near or at that speed, we, too, could "time travel" forward.  But not backward.
It is impossible to go backward, unless we can somehow figure out how to move in negative spacetime.

Throw the thing into reverse?

Sorry, you can't just reverse the polarity

[TheBronzePickle]

Relativity always seemed off to me. I mean, yes, you're going at the speed of light, hooray! That clock you're looking at behind you isn't moving! Then you look forward and the clock in front of you is moving twice as fast. If you're going even faster, the clock behind you might be going in reverse to you, but the clock in front is still spinning ever faster. Look to the left or right, and while things might be flashing past you before you can really get a good look at them, but one would imagine they would be operating at normal speed.

It seems to me like in the end the universe would balance out.

Of course, Einstein probably saw something I missed.

[Jay]

Does this mean we might be able to gain temporary immortality out of this?

Not really.  When you hit the speed of light, relative time is stopped.  That includes you.
And your computers.

Yeah.  When we do achieve actual SOL or FTL travel, we'll need something external from our vessel to actually control it while it's at that speed.
At 99.9%, sure, our computers will still work, but hit 100% (or above) and time stops for them all the same.

[Itnetlolor]

Fantafuckingtastic. There went your science.

Why did this happen? This must not be real.
Good thing we wont be able to use this for anything.

LUCID DREAMERS DO A REALITY CHECK

...Nope, not dreaming. Looks like you guys aren't part of my mind, darn.

This seems...I dunno, I'm quite baffled. I'm sure physicists are going to be having a wonderful time if this turns out being accurate. I am certainly interested.

I've noticed a good metric crapton of reality has been getting rather unrealistic nowadays (outside the "Reality" TV shows). I think this is what is meant by the statement "The End of the World as We Know it".

On that note, I feel fine.

[Fenrir]

Yeah.  When we do achieve actual SOL or FTL travel, we'll need something external from our vessel to actually control it while it's at that speed.
At 99.9%, sure, our computers will still work, but hit 100% (or above) and time stops for them all the same.

Why would we need the computers to work if everything inside it is frozen in time?

[Zrk2]

Dammit, just when my teachers finally told me what they were teaching me was up-to-date.

DAMN YOU CEEEEEEEEEEERRRRNN!!!

[Jay]

Why would we need the computers to work if everything inside it is frozen in time?

Well...
See that moon?
That one, right there?
Yeah, you kinda...  don't want to ram into that thing at the speed of light.
How are you going to avoid it, exactly?

[TheBronzePickle]

Could someone explain to me why relativity supposedly behaves the way it does?

[Zrk2]

Google can do a much better job than me.

[Glowcat]

I'm going to hit this thread with the spoil sport skepticism fairy.

I know it's difficult to sit in your seats calmly when modern psychics looks as though it's about to be told off but it'll save you a lot of disappointment to not get your hopes up if this turns out to be nothing. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to be a hypocrite and imagine this is the real thing.

[Fenrir]

Why would we need the computers to work if everything inside it is frozen in time?

Well...
See that moon?
That one, right there?
Yeah, you kinda...  don't want to ram into that thing at the speed of light.
How are you going to avoid it, exactly?

By not aiming your FTL ship at it in the first place. The universe is a vast place, so I think that collisions would not be much concern.

I am not sure how one would stop this theoretical ship, as I can but suppose that it would not coast to a stop, but I doubt one would need to be able to steer.

[kaijyuu]

Something going the speed of light probably wouldn't care about going through things, anyway. Whatever hits the hardest gets hurt the least, and something with rest mass going the speed of light has A LOT (ie, infinite) energy propelling it. It'll obliterate anything it touches and be pretty much undamaged itself.

[Osmosis Jones]

Time is relative.
The object traveling FTL will have the effects of time upon them slowed.  Probably stopped.  POSSIBLY reversed.
However, it does NOT allow them to travel BACKWARDS in the "universal" spacetime.
I'm sure you're all familiar with a game that supports some form of time compression?   For those subatomic particles in the LHC, time IS being compressed.

This is kinda wrong, sorry Jay, but it's an easy mistake, and I'm being pedantic

Time is relative.

However, it does NOT allow them to travel BACKWARDS in the "universal" spacetime.

These comments directly contradict each other; specifically, your first comment is correct, the second implies the existence of a 'universal spacetime'. This is false. There is literally no such thing; time is defined purely subjectively, you cannot determine time without defining a frame of reference. There is no universal frame of reference, ergo there is no such universal spacetime. That said, if you mean an observer spacetime, it's true enough.


Any way, I originally thought you said something different and dug up this link. It's still pertinent to the discussion in general though; FTL information transfer breaks causality. This is almost always missed by sci-fi writers though :/

Proof is here. It looks scary, and it is kind of mind bending, but it's possible to work your way through it with first year uni maths and physics.

Hence why this result means a lot; it overturns very fundamental physics if true. VERY fundamental.

[GlyphGryph]

Okay, so, I've got one question about this:
Is it possible that the "speed of light", as we know it, simply... isn't?

What if there IS a maximum speed, and all the things we believe about it hold, but for some reason light can't actually reach it, even in a vacuum?

And Neutrinos, for whatever reason, can either reach it or get closer.

What implications would that have on things? I mean, clearly we have situations where light travels, on average, slower than c - how did we come to decide THIS was the maximum we were seeking?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah.  When we do achieve actual SOL or FTL travel, we'll need something external from our vessel to actually control it while it's at that speed.
At 99.9%, sure, our computers will still work, but hit 100% (or above) and time stops for them all the same.

Maybe a quantum computer, if we can build such a thing, could do it? From what I understand of quantum physics, it could exist in a quantum state in which it is not traveling at or above the speed of light, and thus be able to continue functioning? I'm just throwing that out, I don't know if it'd work.