Time Travel - Faster than Sound Speed

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by zxen, Jan 2, 2015.

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Have you heard of such an experiment before?

Poll closed Jan 2, 2016.
  1. Yes, there's nothing original about what you propose.

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. No, but I'm sure its been done because its obvious.

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. No, you should submit it in a Scientific Journal!

    11.1%
  4. No, because its flawed and/or stupid.

    88.9%
  1. krash661 [MK6] transitioning scifi to reality Valued Senior Member

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    2,973
    except inventing does not consist of attempting to re-establish, establish science. this is the lowest form for uneducated individuals. if you were interested in science, then why not touch issues that needs to be collaborated on ?
    some of us are more than teachers, some of us does this for careers.
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    I gave you an answer in reply to your own statement thus.....
    " But you see the reason was never explained. The article just says 'trust us - it does.' I'm trying to figure it out visually"

    In addition you instigated a poll. The results so far should give you a clue as to what people think of your "thought experiment"
     
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  5. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Brainstorming is great - the thing is, you need to take it to the next step before positing it as even a possibility.

    For example, if you have a thought on how to, say, alter the apparent mass of an object such that FTL travel is possible, you should research if it has been thought of before; once you have done that, research your ideas a bit further to see if currently-known science supports it even being realistically possible (not technologically, as technology can always be advanced).

    Once you have taken it as far as you personally can, then you are ready to "release it to the world" as it were; at which point, the first peer review process starts.

    People will be... brutally honest... as you have seen. There are some who are unwilling to challenge the norm, but in general, any true lover of physics/science/technology will be willing to push the envelope... so long as the premise is sound.
     
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  7. zxen Registered Member

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    21
    That is extremely interesting and easy to understand. If this is true, then does that mean that electromagnetism can be said to be the main force in the universe? So time and space relate in the same way as matter and energy relate? One converts to the other? Its completely counter intuitive. If its true, it must surely mean that you must leave the universe to exceed light speed in the conventional way (no bending or piecing of spacetime or quantum entanglement etc).
     
  8. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Sort of - there are, at present, four fundamental forces that we know about:

    Source


     
  9. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

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    2,394
    Here is the difference between light and sound. Sound requires a medium (such as air) for it to travel through and has a set speed through that medium(~340 m/s in air).

    So let's say that you are listening to a sound that is produced by a source that is at rest with respect to the air. If you walk toward the source, the speed of the sound relative to you will be the 340 m/s plus the speed at which you are walking. If you walk away, it is 340 m/s minus the speed you are walking. Meanwhile, the source will measure the speed of the sound as 240 m/s relative to itself.

    Now consider light. It needs no medium, it travels through a vacuum just a readily as it does through air. There is also another unique aspect to the speed of light. It is the same for everyone. So if you walk towards a light, you measure the speed of light, relative to yourself to be the same as it is when you walk away from the light or are standing still with respect to it. The source always measures the speed of light to have the same value relative to itself.

    It is this unique nature of the speed of light which leads to the effects of time dilation etc. And because this leads to it being the greatest possible speed, this means that there can be only one speed for which this effect works.
     
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  10. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    27,543

    I'm not sure how you can reason that the EMF could be said to be the main force in the Universe from the following....
    "The faster we travel through the dimensions of space, the slower we travel through the dimension of time, and vice versa. Thus an astronaut zooming along at light speed has used up all their speed 'allocation' in the space dimensions, and as a consequence does not travel through time. This would seem to suggest that the speed of light really is the limiting speed within the universe, and if we had no motion at all through space then we would be travelling at light speed through time"

    All it does is explain why the speed of light "c" is the Universal maximum speed for anything with mass.
    Gravity is obviously the force that has shaped our Universe, and gravity is also the force which contributes to why we see time dilation.
    It was also gravity that was responsible for why the Universe went from being Opaque to transparent, and allowing the free passage of light.
    Gravity is also the force responsible for spacetime warpage and the lensing of different distant objects we are able to view.
    There is not too much that gravity is not responsible for.
     
  11. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    It really isn't a thought experiment. You were just asking a question about the difference between acoustics and electromagnetics.

    You want people to give you answers that have been disproven?

    There is nothing to invent here. You are just asking a question, and the folks who studied the applicable physics are helping you understand the answer, without dragging you through a lot of college math and science courses.

    Be sure and thank them for their generosity. In the mean time I would like to thank all the folks who replied because I do enjoy reading all of their answers.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Well, one of four forces.
    Not quite. The quote draws an analogy rather than suggests an equivalence.
    In a way. I'd say "you have to abandon the standard model to exceed lightspeed" which is similar but not identical to "leaving the universe."
     
  13. TBodillia Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    159
    Hey, Zxen, let me explain why I voted "No, because its flawed and/or stupid" and since I didn't see anybody else mention it yet.

    Wiki: Hafele–Keating experiment

    In 1971, they took 4 atomic clocks aboard jetliners and flew around the world, eastwards & westwards. They then compared the clocks with the control clock on the ground. They were testing special relativity (speed) and general relativity (gravity). The predicted differences and measured differences are measured in nanoseconds. No clock went back in time.

    GPS satellites have clocks that move 7 microseconds slower per day than their Earth based counterparts (just because of speed). The satellites travel at ~8,700mph (or Mach 11). They are not traveling back in time.
     
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  14. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    I'm going to guess that he will agree with you on that.

    I think he is trying to drive a wedge into the paradox that happens at v>c, by coming up with an end-around to the physical constraints that require v<<c. It looks like he realizes that since high performance aircraft can break Mach 1, here's a case for v>c which isn't subject to the energy constraint that would require v<<c. I think he was expecting the clock to run backwards somewhere, but as billvon explained, it's the acoustic wavefronts which arrive in reverse order, which is analogous, but not the same thing.

    But your point is well taken, I sense a sort of ruse here, which is cynical about the kind of facts you just posted.
     
  15. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    5,051
    Disagree. When a person has no knowledge of the topic they are trying to investigate, brainstorming is counterproductive and highly unlikely to produce useful knowledge. Brainstroming is only useful to professinoal researchers, who understand exactly what they are looking for and exactly where the entry-point is. For anyone else, it is a near totally useless method for investigating the way the universe works. Learning is a much, much better way to gain knowledge than brainstorming.
    1. You cannot push the envelope unless you know where the envelope is. So:
    2. To attempt to "challenge the norm"/"push the envelope" when you don't know what the norm is/where the envelope is just makes one sound stupid. It certainly doesn't accomplish anything useful.

    If the OP learns something useful here, it won't be because he was brainstorming about it, it will be because people smacked-him in the face with insulting knowledge and some of it manages to sink in.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2015
  16. zxen Registered Member

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    'The fabric of spacetime' as we call it at this point in history appears to hold the secrets to all the forces, including any we have not yet discovered or understood. Gravity does not appear to be a force like the other three known forces, but rather an effect of any matter or energy on this 'fabric'. Its the black sheep of the forces family, and doesn't seem to belong in the list. In my understanding, the curved area of a trampoline surrounding a bowling ball is the same as gravity, wherein the trampoline can be compared to the fabric of spacetime. Even in the case of a black hole, the effects of gravity appear to remain true to this trampoline analogy, wherein a bowling ball could be replaced by a truck, making it too difficult for any of the kids who are on the trampoline (photons) to get out of the very deep well. And I think Stephen Hawking hypothesised that not only is the hole deep, but the fabric may exceed its maximum stretching capabilities, and a hole may be torn in it. So if an entire galaxy of stars are sucked into a black hole and the contents are extremely heavy, the matter inside is not only invisible beyond the event horizon, but also a new smaller universe may have exploded out into an area outside of this universe. Comparatively, light and all electromagnetism appears to be an expression of energy itself, rippling along the fabric and even creating matter. It stands to reason that sound is a part of this force, even if it cannot be heard by human ears without a dense medium such as a liquid or gas, given that the vibration of human vocal chords, a speaker, or indeed a supernova explosion are certainly emanating vibration / energy outward. I would be further confused if there is no detectable energy (ripples in the fabric of spacetime) even 1km away from a person who is shouting in space, given that energy has been expressed from the vibration of the voice box. (Can a speaker pointed behind a spaceship be used for propulsion?) In this way, sound and light are both a part of the electromagnetic spectrum as far as I understand. The relative perspectives of a person who is creating sound and a receiver hearing that person are FUTURE for the first person (who already heard themself shouting) and the PAST for the receiver (who hasn't heard the sound yet but will soon). This is the same as waiting for photons to arrive from distant galaxies, wherein the galaxy would be deemed to be in the future when they emanated waves/particles/strings/foam along the fabric of spacetime, and the past for us looking at them from a long distance away. Given that distance is responsible for these delays, 'time' is a word that could be considered 'slang'. If somebody hits a drum at 11:00:00 am on one side of a football field and a receiver hears it on the other side of the football field at 11:00:01 am, the time the drum was hit was always 11:00:00 am and never at 11:00:01 am. The perspective of the receiver is irrelevant. The truth is always at the source. Waiting for ripples in air or the fabric of spacetime to reach you therefore appears to have no bearing on time, but rather distance. If I were to travel at the speed of sound away from the ripples through the air chasing me from the drum sound, I would not hear it until I stopped and waited for it to catch up (assuming no dissipation for the purposes of discussion). I could travel far away so the sound reached me at 12:00:00 pm, but this is not when the drum was hit at all. 12pm is when the ripples of the point of space where my ears are vibrated with the sound of the drum is true, but the important event was the striking of the drum. Trying to get to the source of the drum BEFORE it was struck (REAL time) at 10am so I can watch it happen later (like Marty McFly meeting his parents before he was born) is a seemingly different subject altogether, and something I think you guys are trying to explain to me with GPS-proven time dilation, which affects REAL time speed in atomic clocks due to the curious way gravity and speed damage our sense of reality because of some kind of universal speed/energy limit of 300,000kmh with no gravity/0kmh at a black hole. This is where I am very mixed up. What is the matter equivalent of 300,000kmh? Is it the mass of a black hole? Is energy simply another word for speed, and mass just another word for matter? And is the temperature absolute zero (0 degrees kelvin) when energy/speed is 300,000kmh compared to the hottest possible temperature in the universe when something is stationary, given the quote from the article. 'This would seem to suggest that the speed of light really is the limiting speed within the universe, and if we had no motion at all through space then we would be travelling at light speed through time' ? Or does temperature not play a role in this? I'm still confused about time travel in relation to speed.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2015
  17. zxen Registered Member

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    I agree with you, but it is an expected outcome in a Science forum that the brainstorming would be hugely assisted by learned individuals such as yourself. I am clearly just curious without knowing the results of lots of experiments. Also, I learn by reading why my ideas have already been proven or disproven. I found no articles on the internet about sound based time travel experiments, so I came here. There were no prerequisites for me to create a thread, and I am quite certain that everyone on this forum has various levels of knowledge. Having said that, Einstein was not a thorough researcher, and it is often a bonus to have someone with a lack of knowledge in brainstorming sessions because they are thinking outside the box the entire time.
     
  18. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    27,543

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    Ummm, your first sentence...Photons always travel at "c", period.....They cannot be accelerated. Photons have no mass. But hasn't this been mentioned before?
    The other sentence about using the speed of sound to prove or disprove time travel is, as your poll suggests in one of the choices...stupid and non applicable. But this has also been mentioned, has it not?

    Here is a link for you to read and learn....
    http://plus.maths.org/content/time-travel-allowed
    Don't forget what one of our greatest scientists said.
    "I see as far as I do, because I stand on the shoulders of giants"

    What I'm trying to say is for you to suggest that we "discuss" your proposed hypothesis, without using or implementing any theory or postulate from already accepted scientific theories, smells to me like what the average anti mainstream troll are always asking.
    It cannot, and will not be done.
     
  19. zxen Registered Member

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    I just realised I wrote 'accelerate photons' accidentally. I was thinking of a bicycle racing circuit like at the olympics but thought the LHC would make a better analogy to overcome comments of flying away from a source. It was badly worded and clearly an accident. Your comment has been written sooner than my more recent comment in which I explored how the word 'time' can be misrepresented when waiting for sound or light waves to reach an observer after they have emanated from the source. Please refer to those questions and have the sophistication of mind to see the point - to determine how time travel into the past could be tested in an experiment. Finding faults in my wording is not hard, but solving the problem is.

    Good article, by the way. Thanks. It basically says you'll get a nobel prize if you help me solve the problem of reverse time travel.
    'In brief: The laws of physics allow members of an exceedingly advanced civilisation to travel forward in time as fast as they might wish. Backward time travel is another matter; we do not know whether it is allowed by the laws of physics, and the answer is likely controlled by a set of physical laws that we do not yet understand at all well: the laws of quantum gravity. In order for humans to travel forward in time very rapidly, or backward (if allowed at all), we would need technology far far beyond anything we are capable of today.'
     
  20. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,543
    Nothing with mass can ever reach "c" [speed of light in a vacuum] PERIOD!

    I thought the article I posted explained it quite admirably from the PoV of a layman.

    Let me give you another....We have sub atomic particles called muons,
    These particles are produced in the upper earth's atmosphere and have a half life of less then two microseconds. We should not be able to detect them on Earth in the numbers that we do, and the resulting difference is what is calculated taking into account relativistic time dilation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
     
  21. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,543

    I'm not out to find any fault in your wording, although it does help if proper recognised scientific terms are used.
    I was simply correcting what I thought was a dramatically wrong inference, [as you originally put it] and with regards to your problem.
     
  22. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    27,543
    A few points.....Science forums are open to any and all "Tom Dick and Harry".
    Most of those offering alternative hypothesis always seems to be in the area of SR, GR, the BB, Evolution and Abiogenesis.
    All those scientific theories are for many reasons damn well near certain as any scientific theory could be.
    Any scientist, cosmologist, let alone an unqualified layman, will almost certainly need to run the gauntlet with regards to what they are proposing and what they are suggesting.
    All our present theories entailing cosmology had to do the same thing before gaining theoretical status.
    Some of those Tom, Dick and Harry's have a religious agenda driving their fanatical urge to somehow usurp what generations of professional scientists have discovered......Others are dreamers, with delusions of grandeur, that see them selves as rewriting 20th/21st century cosmology, from behind their computer....
    Check out out alternative, pseudscience and cessopool sections.

    As a layman, the first thing you should learn, is that in all likelyhood you are not going to replace or invalidate any of the theories I have mentioned.
    That is certain.
    Nothing wrong in thinking for one's self, but part of thinking for one's self, is to realise that as a non professional, you must also take into account, proven and validated scenarios and postulates that have become an integral part of cosmology for more then a 100 years.
    Don't forget those giants I spoke of. And don't forget the great man Albert Einstein that gave us SR and GR was also a totally humble human being, quite willing to admit when he himself was in error.
     
  23. zxen Registered Member

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    The previous article you sent me said 'Another example is a proof by Hawking that to make a time machine, no matter how one goes about it, one must use exotic matter — matter with negative energy — as an integral part of the device; wormholes illustrate this, but it is true in general.'

    It appears that the ability to surpass light speed to travel back in time is impossible, based on the accepted speed limit of the universe. Therefore the theory about exceeding the speed of light to go back in time is outdated, and the entire premise of my experiment was flawed given that it was based upon it. Seeing things, or hearing things BEFORE they happen at the source appears to be unachievable by traveling at high speed - the best that can be achieved using this method is to be closer to the source than anyone else so that you can perceive it before others do, but you are condemned to only perceive it AFTER it has happened. This is a revelation to me, and I thank you all for showing me why my experiment would never work, not only by traveling faster than sound, but also by traveling faster than light. If a person was able to leave this universe where the speed of light is no longer the speed limit, it may be possible, but this is outside of the original premise and it becomes an alternative method of backwards time travel to what the traveling quickly method proposed. This does not mean that reverse time travel is not possible, but it appears impossible using that method. Traveling fast slows time from the traveler's perspective, and while this phenomenon is amazing given our everyday life experiences, it is still forward time travel, which is what we do every day anyway.

    I will read your attached article on Time Dilation.

    In relation to the electromagnetic force, the nuclear forces and gravity, is it possible that these forces do not exist separately at all, and that the universe is simply a spacetime fabric that is denser in certain places than others? For example, a bed sheet can be flicked to create waves along it, has dents in it when objects are placed on top (or if its all one material we can say that it has dents when it has knots in it / is denser), and can even be ripped and folded. I'm asking if the fabric of spacetime is all there is, and if it's properties simply behave in a fairly intuitive manner that are easily understood when compared to the gelatinous equivalent of a bedsheet. Therefore the Unified Field Theory could be explained entirely through the understanding the fabric of spacetime?
     

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