The speed of light has been broken ! "allegedly"

The problem I have with *everything*, which never seems to be questioned, is: how exactly are we supposed to measure speed in the first place?

It is ALL relative to something.

For example, I'm driving 100mph down the road, but the road (from the earth's spinning) is moving at x mph, and the earth is moving at y mph (orbiting the sun), and the sun is moving at z mph (spinning of the milky way galaxy), and I'm sure the galaxy is moving also (expansion or contraction of the universe etc).

So how can we measure the actual speed of anything? Everything must be relative to something, there is no defined "point" in the universe where we can say "right, we are now completely still", so what's to say that we are already travelling at the speed of light, relative to some object, somewhere in the known universe?

Maybe I'm being too philosophical about it, but is this what einstein was getting at? The whole "relativity" thing? There is no "zero", there is no "completely still", so there is no specificially defined "speed", as depending on what other objects you are comparing your speed to, you could be travelling at any speed... surely?
 
Heofz said:
Maybe I'm being too philosophical about it, but is this what einstein was getting at? The whole "relativity" thing? There is no "zero", there is no "completely still", so there is no specificially defined "speed", as depending on what other objects you are comparing your speed to, you could be travelling at any speed... surely?
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Yeah that's basically it. Speed and velocity only have meaning compared to a reference point. Although we will never be moving faster than the speed of light compared to anything due to the effects of special relativity. Einstein wasn't actually the first to have the idea of relativity, I forget who it was that did (or at least the first person to write it down). Einstein's theory of special relativity built on that work.
 
Heofz said:
The problem I have with *everything*, which never seems to be questioned, is: how exactly are we supposed to measure speed in the first place?

It is ALL relative to something.

For example, I'm driving 100mph down the road, but the road (from the earth's spinning) is moving at x mph, and the earth is moving at y mph (orbiting the sun), and the sun is moving at z mph (spinning of the milky way galaxy), and I'm sure the galaxy is moving also (expansion or contraction of the universe etc).

So how can we measure the actual speed of anything? Everything must be relative to something, there is no defined "point" in the universe where we can say "right, we are now completely still", so what's to say that we are already travelling at the speed of light, relative to some object, somewhere in the known universe?

Maybe I'm being too philosophical about it, but is this what einstein was getting at? The whole "relativity" thing? There is no "zero", there is no "completely still", so there is no specificially defined "speed", as depending on what other objects you are comparing your speed to, you could be travelling at any speed... surely?
Click to expand...

You are right, everything is relative but the speed of light isn't which is the whole point of relativity.

Its invariant over a lorentz transform. in english that means that its the same no matter how fast you go.

sid
 
Due to the nature of quantum tunnelling, there is small albeit non-zero probablity of light travelling faster than itself.

They've probably detected this light by some clever expt.


sid
 
Here's another question...

As light travels slower through different mediums (i.e. the reason behind light being distorted by water/transparent/translucent materials etc), who's to say in the first place that a vacuum is the fastest possible route in which light can travel? What if what we know as the "speed of light" is actually much higher? (or even infinitely higher?). If there's one thing I've learned in physics, that's to never take anything for granted, so most people will say "of course in a vacuum it'll be fastest", but is it really?

Maybe there's some kind of medium we as a human race have not thought about where this could occur? As far as we know, light travels at its fastest through nothingness, but could we be wrong? And I'm not suggesting light travelling through some kind of physical matter might be faster, because surely it will never be. But what of other things? What "other things", you ask? Well who knows ;)
 
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Heofz said:
Maybe there's some kind of medium we as a human race have not thought about where this could occur? As far as we know, light travels at its fastest through nothingness, but could we be wrong? And I'm not suggesting light travelling through some kind of physical matter might be faster, because surely it will never be. But what of other things? What "other things", you ask? Well who knows ;)
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so it's not made up of stuff, and it's not made of nothing... :confused:
 
Heofz said:
Here's another question...

As light travels slower through different mediums (i.e. the reason behind light being distorted by water/transparent/translucent materials etc), who's to say in the first place that a vacuum is the fastest possible route in which light can travel? What if what we know as the "speed of light" is actually much higher? (or even infinitely higher?). If there's one thing I've learned in physics, that's to never take anything for granted, so most people will say "of course in a vacuum it'll be fastest", but is it really?

Maybe there's some kind of medium we as a human race have not thought about where this could occur? As far as we know, light travels at its fastest through nothingness, but could we be wrong? And I'm not suggesting light travelling through some kind of physical matter might be faster, because surely it will never be. But what of other things? What "other things", you ask? Well who knows ;)
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I agree as I also did physics and think the same way. IF you open your mind a bit, new theorys and answers can be easily created when faced with a problem.

For instance, we see everything "up-side-down" and can only hear certain frequencys by ear.... so that begs the question: What else can't we see, do, hear, feel?

What if we were to find a new liquid based element which can accelerate (via distortion or something) light through its substance? baring in mind that we have a whole universe to explore full of wild and wonderful materials no doubt!

Just food for thought :)
 
Heofz said:
Here's another question...

As light travels slower through different mediums (i.e. the reason behind light being distorted by water/transparent/translucent materials etc), who's to say in the first place that a vacuum is the fastest possible route in which light can travel? What if what we know as the "speed of light" is actually much higher? (or even infinitely higher?). If there's one thing I've learned in physics, that's to never take anything for granted, so most people will say "of course in a vacuum it'll be fastest", but is it really?

Maybe there's some kind of medium we as a human race have not thought about where this could occur? As far as we know, light travels at its fastest through nothingness, but could we be wrong? And I'm not suggesting light travelling through some kind of physical matter might be faster, because surely it will never be. But what of other things? What "other things", you ask? Well who knows ;)
Click to expand...


I've heard that light does travel faster through certain materials with negative refractive indicies, however, speed of information exchange is always less than c.


sid
 
$loth said:
I don't believe that something could arrive before it has left, bunch of ******.
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It didn't arrive before it left, it just arrived before they expected it to.
 
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