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Posted by michael gonzales on April 15, 19102 at 22:04:08:
In Reply to: An explanation of one of Einstein's expiraments that still allows FTL travel. posted by AnonT on April 18, 19101 at 23:48:14:
: As far as I can tell, Einstein's idea that nothing could go faster than light came from an expirament where he tried to get electric current to move faster than light. He got it up over .9c, and when he increased the voltage enough that it should have been above c, it was only closer. He then surmized that things simply approach light speed, but can never surp it.
: However, as we all know, light speed is the fastest that an electromagnetic wave can move. Electric current is accelerated by the particles in electromagnetic waves. When the electrons approached light speed, fewer and fewer electromagnetic waves were hitting the electrons because they were moving too fast for the waves to catch up. The closer they got to light speed, the fewer waves hit them. Had they hit light speed, no electromagnetic waves would have hit them, so they would no longer have been able to accelerate.
: However, this simply means that you cannot use electromagnetism to accelerate something above light speed. This does not rule out all faster than light travel, it simply means that we will have to use some other means (transferring momentum, manipulating gravity, etc.) in order to achieve it. It also means that Einstein's theory that time gets screwy as you approach light speed is not necessarily right.
: So far, the main proof that I've seen that near-light-speed travel screws up time is that radioactive particles, such as muons leave residue further than they would using Newtonian mechanics, leaving the idea that time was different for the particle as it got so close to light. However, these particles decayed, and the time of their decay vs. the time they would have decayed while staying still was how they supposedly proved that they were going faster than light. Since they decayed and were destroyed, their residue was what was being measured. Since they were going near light speed, and the particles which made them up would not simply stop moving when the particle broke apart, the residue would have continued moving further even after the particle had broken apart. That explains how the residue was found far further than the particle would have traveled, without the particle having made it that far.
: Therefore, Einstein's ideas that nothing could travel faster than light and that time is different at near light speed are not necessarily correct, they're still theory.
: If anyone has any expiramental evidence that disproves any of Einstein's ideas, please let me know. I'm trying to write a paper on the subject, but it seems like anytime I hear about an expirament that proved Einstein wrong, the evidence disappears before I get the chance to use it.