Speed of Light - anyone got alternative views as to whether this is the absolute Universal limit ?

Answer 1

No. Except we don't know everything yet! ~

Answer 2

there are theories now, about particles being faster than light, its called the theory of autonomous molecular motion. It describes particles called tachyons hypothetical particles that move faster than photons (light). Another possibility is time travel and warp drives to bend the fabric of time. Einstein once postulated a theory of a worm hole. picture a long city street and bend from one end to the other, and you create a tube leading from your position to your destination. thus creating a short cut through time. And also according to theory from Steven Hawkins about blackholes, light cannot escape a blackhole, thus its gravitation is so strong it literally takes everything with its "hole" in the fabric of space and virtually time. so you chose which is the best? I like the sound of a blackhole personally basically its a wormhole, yet way powerful! who knows maybe below the end of the "hole" would be an opposit dimension? now wouldn't that be crazy!

Answer 3

Yup.

My model of the Big Bang has particles traveling comfortably at what may be a thousand times the speed of light - in our universe.
It has to do with Newton's model of universal gravity, Einstein's relativity applied as he intended, and absence of other forms of energy as the local universe collapses. IF you understand Newton and Einstein, then the model is easy to understand. If you don't I think it may still be easy to understand.

Also, the model for the Sun, and every star in the universe, includes a core which is antimatter. The fundamental property of all of this antimatter, is that the combined speed of particle vibration and linear motion is for all moments faster than light. Since this core is in a different universe, the relative speed is unimportant to our universe.

I model two kinds of gravity - one for each of two major universe types. To easily understand these two types of gravity, the text first walks you through the proof of their presence as demonstrated by nuclear and thermonuclear explosives. Loads of fun by itself.

Black Holes discusses the conservation of Energy as matter travels between the two major universes.

This model of astrophysics is new, and is most heretical. It is also well documented.

This is not your Father's astrophysics.
Hope you enjoy it!

Answer 4

1) Transluminal propagation of information violates causality. The universe does not tolerate contradiction.

2) Lorentz Invariance. Given any achievable velocities V1 and V2 and *any* finite lightspeed, the bound on the relative velocities of V1 and V2 as viewed by any inertial observer cannot exceed

(V1 + V2)/[1 +(V1)(V2)/c^2]

This is transformation of velocities parallel to the direction of motion. For velocities at an arbitrary angle theta, Jackson gives

u_parallel = (u'_parallel + v)/(1+(v dot u')/c^2)
u_perp = u'_perp/(gamma_v(1+(v dot u')/c^2))

3) Internal inconsistencies in SR (meaning inconsistencies of a purely mathematical logical nature) automatically lead to contradictions in number theory, itself, and arithmetic, since the mathematics of Minkowski geometry is equiconsistent with the theory of real numbers and with arithmetic.

Answer 5

Conceeding that we don't know everything about the universe, our present understanding is that the speed of light is an absolute. There have been studies on theoretical particles, called tachyons, that travel faster than the speed of light and can never go slower than the speed of light. Hence they get around that nasty requirement from special relativity which requires an infinite amount of energy to accelrate a particle from below the speed of light to the speed of light. Tachyons have not been observed to date - people have looked for evidence of them.

"Warps" and "worm holes" are different approaches to travel above the speed of light that have their roots in general relativity. This theory is really about gravitation. However, space and time are treated as equals in this theory, and the space-time continuum is looked on as a 4 dimensional structure that can have local curvature. The idea of a "warp" is that somehow you create a "short cut" through these local curvatures (usually sci-fi stories postulate another "space" not in our continuum but a super set or subset of it, sometimes called "subspace" ala "Star Trek") so one appears to have travelled faster than light. We don't know if this is possible or how to do it. Worm holes come in two flavors (another device used in sci-fi stories). First is the notion that black holes reconnect to space-time somwhere/when else in the form of a white hole. The wary space traveller then enters the black hole and comes out in a very short time (by his clock) somewhere/when else and hence has appeared to travel faster than light. Now I say wary traveller because our understanding of black holes is that the gravity gradient (rate of change of gravitational force with respect to distance from the hole) is so great, that the traveller literally will be pulled apart as the gravity one one side of his body may be hundreds to thousands of time greater than the gravity on the other side (away from the hole).

The other flavor is worm holes created by a phenomenon called vacuum fluctuation in which a particel and anti-article are spontaneously created by the background vacuum in space-time, and then annihilate themselves leaving zero energy as before. It's due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principal and the feature of space-time that has this ground state of particles and anti-particles in the vacuum that you don't ever see. Back to the story - so our intrepid traveller now figures out a way to use this ground state energy to create a small black hole, which then creates a corresponding white hole and travels through it. Again, we don't know how to do this.

This was probably more than you wanted to know, but hey, you asked.

Answer 6

Yes, in your dreams you see things changes with no time that means they move faster than speed of light; Dreams are connected to reality, think about it.

Answer 7

there is nothing in our current theories that can travel faster than light as anything traveling faster than light should violate Einstein's theory of Special Relativity.
also the De Broglie phase velocity of a body,when calculated is faster than light but as it travels in groups,the De Broglie group velocity is considered which is equal to the velocity of the body.Hence it will not violate Special Relativity.

Answer 8

key to time travel this one!
i dont know if thats max speed but if you can beat it . say travel at a million times the speed of light away from earth for 65 years, then look back with a very powerful telescope you should be able to see the dinosaurs

Answer 9

stop thinking of speed as time and the possibility's open up to much more. the saying work smarter not harder comes to mind, Lets find a way of travelling without moving!

Answer 10

the speed of darkness is faster than light. have you ever noticed how quickly the dark flees when you turn a light on in a dark room?

Answer 11

Yeah! how fast does gravity travel