One piece of evidence suggesting that FTL travel is not possible is the lack of alien visitation or of tourists from the future. Without FTL travel, there could be all sorts of advanced alien civilisations questing towards us at a pedestrian 0.990c. If FTL was possible, then there is a chance that one of these civilisations would have perfected it, and would have popped by to say hello/eat us.

No, it's not your fault, I did ask a simple question, but I was hoping the answers would be a bit more... involved.

But I see more people have posted, I'll go read the new ones now. And 26 votes, alright! Most are negative, but still, it shows people have interest. lol


The main thing that bugs me is the exponential rate at which the human race is advancing. In 1000 years we might look back and see our current selves like we see ants. And what about 1000 years after that? And 1000 years after that. And etc. Eventually, assuming we don't all kill each other, we'll reach a state of near-God-hood. If there's any possible way of manipulating the structure of the universe to trick it into allowing us a short-cut through space, to link 2 points in a way that is faster than a straight line... would we not have figured it out by then? (in the several thousands of years we've had to advance).


In regards to the lack of alien visitors argument, I think that other alien races could have achieved FTL before us, but that if that was the case, they would just be all long gone by now. Either having burned themselves out as a civilization, or moved on to another region of space.

There ways that we are advancing "exponentially" (I put it in quotes because you'd need some kind of numerical measure to be sure it was exponential, but you can take the word as a common hyperbole).

There are some areas where we are not advancing very rapidly. For example, we have not been increasing the amount of propulsion you can get from chemical propellants. We've hit a wall on that one. We will not continue increasing the speed and complexity of electronics at the current rate for much longer. We have not been making steel much stronger...

My point is that in some things we are still taking great strides, but in others, no. Getting to FTL travel is likely something you can imagine, but never do.

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Forming opinions as we speak

I to will offer an opoligy... I did not intend to sound belittling... It is a question of interest... we are still talking.
Talking of folding space and worm holes does little to lift this out of the 'fiction' realm. I note that you are not alone in voicing ideas of optimism in this regard.
I try to avoid going down that road. For me those ideas are fictitious. As yet unfounded by science. As much as I attempt to ignore such. I can not do that completely. It only takes one 'fact' and I'm with you and supportive of that.
Yes there might be countless civilizations that we may never know of because they are just to far away at our restrictive lesser than light speed reality. Thats not actually a fact, ( we do not know of any ), but a certainty I can accept.
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I voted for yes its possible but humanity will never achieve it. My reason being that solid evidence suggests that mass particles and anything made up of them cannot travel at or faster than light. But there is a slim possibility that there are massless particles (for want of a better word) that may /do travel at superluminally speed, i'm only aware of the concept of this but not if there is any theoretical evidence to support it..

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ooops..... wrong forum!!!

Well, the way Philippe worded it, "Is faster than light travel possible?" I figured he meant human travel. You don't need "massless" particles to exceed light speed. Quantum tunneling accomplishes it, I believe. This apparently results from the uncertainty principle. If there is anything in the Universe that is beyond manipulable control, the uncertainty principle would be it.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Ultra high energy cosmic rays travel at close to c and they didn't require anywhere near infinite energy to achieve that. I would agree though that current propulsion vehicles would rely on accellerating particles to near c and it's probably not possible to push these particles any faster.

If we are to exceed c then we need to understand why gravity can apparently communicate instantly and harness that force.

Near c isn't c and greater.

No we don't, as gravity is also limited to c.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Are you certain? I know that most wormhole theories are extremely hypothetical and do make a lot of assumptions, but I thought that this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive had worked out the math in such a way that it didn't violate Special Relativity.


I tried to word the poll in such a way that all the opinions could be covered. Option 2 is intended for those who believe FTL "travel" does occur in nature, but that it will never be fully mastered by humans to develop actual means of travel.

Is that tested?

Well I was thinking more along the lines of the impending technological singularity. Like... what if within the next 50 years, computer technology having continued to advance gives us cybernetic enhancements. And suddenly people can think and learn at the rate of computers. Add to that 1000 years of advancement, and it's hard to imagine just where we will end up.

I woudln't be so bold as to suggest something like transcendence or ascension. But... it still makes you wonder, you know?


I think they sent up a satellite that is going to be testing gravity waves soon. I forget what it's called.

A test was performed in 2002 using data from VLBI measurements of Jupiter's transit across the line-of-sight of a quasar (a bright radio source).

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Was it conclusive?

The computational singularity may or may not occur, but even if it does, can it make the impossible possible? Take a chimp and put him at the edge of a cliff. He knows that if he steps off the cliff edge he will die. Put a much smarter human in the same position, and he too will know the same thing.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

FTL involves the possibility of reverse time travel and I have serious issues with that.

"The speed of light is a constant to all observers regardless of their inertial frame of reference."

That statement is rather easy to say but it has some extreme implications. Going faster that light isn't the problem, going any fraction of the speed of light is the big issue. All massless particles travel (propagate) at the same speed. That speed will be the same no matter who measures it. Give a particle any mass at all and it propagates slower than light and it will have a different speed as measured by different observers.

It's important to remember that all speeds are relative, except the speed of massless particles such as light. They always travel at light speed. For everybody, everywhere.

What I'm trying to say is that it's not a matter of speed, it's a matter of how you relate to the rest of the Universe. Somehow you would have to "decouple" from the Universe to achieve true FTL.

Pretty much. There were some criticisms which were later quelled. The result, c, was within the error bars, which admittedly weren't small, but were certainly bracketing c, and not tending to infinity.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

But the human can design a helicopter, or build a bridge, or a number of other things.

Let me approach it another way, to help explain a bit where I stand on the matter. I was discussing the subjectwith a friend on another forum, and I was trying to convey the difficulty in achieving FTL. So he tells me, "But what if we were to come across a revolutionary discovery that made us rethink what we think we know about science." to which I replied, "To reach working FTL travel, we would probably need 8 such revolutionary discoveries, at least."

If we ever do hit a technological singularity, or something similar to it, everything that is knowable will gradually become known. I just think that given enough time (and I mean a LOT of time), and pushing forward quickly enough, we will find something.

Something beyond special relativity, or string theory, or anything we've seen before. Something we currently can't imagine.

Progress can often be graphed as an S-shaped curve.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

How do you figure that? We could achieve that today by applying a constant acceleration over long periods of time with, say, an ion drive.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Time doesn't guarantee anything except increased entropy.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

You missed my point. Some things simply cannot yield to computational analysis, no matter how much of it you bring to bear.

Well, you can always invoke magic, but then the discussion stops being scientific.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

The problem is that you are measuring that speed from the starting point. You would say that the craft is moving at X speed relative to you. If there were people on that craft and they measured the speed of the light coming from some random place in the Universe they would get the same result that you would get if you measured the same light from the same source. So how fast is either of you really going relative to light speed?

Actually, I certainly hope it does Jeff. Otherwise predicting the future becomes very hard. I mean... what would be the result of a singularity? We start building orbitals?


No I think I do get it. The chimpanzee could never imagine a way to design and build a way to cross a chasm or cliff or what-have-you. Just as we currently cannot imagine a way to overcome the limitations placed on us by the light speed barrier.

No, I think you didn't. It's not about thinking how to cross a cliff, it's about knowing that you can't - same realization, two vastly different levels of intellect.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Widely-separated parts of the Universe are moving away from each
other FTL. Objects falling into a black hole are moving away from the
outside Universe FTL.

In order for the expansion of the Universe to accelerate, something
completely unknown has to happen everywhere simultaneously.

Lots of people have been looking for FTL, for a long time. I don't think
anyone was looking for acceleration of the cosmic expansion, because
the idea was completely unexpected. That is the biggest difference.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Today we can't figure out a way to add 2 and 2 and get an answer that isn't 4. Do you think someday will be so advanced that we can?

It's that kind of a problem, although more complex. We are dealing with the way the Universe works at a very basic level. It's not a matter of speed nor is it a matter of energy. It's a matter of how we physically relate to the rest of the Universe. We exist within a framework, we are bound to it, we are a part of it and within that framework FTL is a nonsensical proposition.

Only spacetime is expanding FTL.

They are? Can you support that?

Yes, some repulsive force.

People were looking to break FTL because it's a cool topic. Accelerated expansion wasn't expected, but I'm sure there would have been proposed models in the literature which described such a scenario. Just like there were models about the curvature or flatness of space. Unexpected results happen all the time, which is what drives science forward.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

I have a hard time grasping four-space, but if we could 'warp' out of our trammelling dimensions, then we would access the time line where everything that ever happened is sumultaneous with everything that ever will, from where it seems achieving FTL will smear the unlucky pioneer evenly throughout infinity.
It might be fanciful, but the answer's the same - No.
My compliments to the grace of PL's dialogue.

Does Einstein count? Just adjust the value of his cosmological constant and you can expand, contract or stabilize the Universe.

Sure, but he added the term to make the universe static. He did not believe his own equations.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.