Physicists: Is this idea valid?

[Ready4Change]

An idea occurred to me a while back, and it still makes sense to me. Don't think I've posted on this here before. Apologies if this is a repeat.

The idea is that everything, all physical objects we can observe, are all traveling at the speed of light.

What do I mean? Here's how I try to explain it.

As I understand it, Special Relativity says that as an objects speed in X,Y,Z space increases, it experiences a decrease in the passage of time. Iow: it's motion through time slows. And as it nears the speed of light in space, it's motion through time nears a complete stop.

This means to me that all objects have a velocity 'budget' of the speed of light. An object at rest in space spends it's entire velocity 'budget' for motion through time. In other words, it is moving through time at the speed of light. In order to move through space at all, it must, through some universal accounting system, withdraw that velocity from it's motion through time.

In other words, for any object, its velocity through space plus its velocity through time = the speed of light.

Does that make sense? Is it old hat for people in physics? If so, is the transfer of 'speed' from velocity in time to velocity in space linear? Iow: if I am moving at .5 C in space, am I moving at only .5 speed in time?

Thanks.

[sakabatou]

1. Well, no, otherwise it's mass would be enormous.

[Lochloosa]

2. How would you know?

:shrug:

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. You would have to explain the concept "moving at .5 speed in time"

..as opposed to "moving in space".

speed = distance/time

Therefore, using normal definitions, time cannot have a speed.

[Ready4Change]

12. As I was thinking of it...

Speed through time was like the ticking of a clock. If you were moving faster, the clock was ticking faster. Of course to you the clock was ticking the same as always, but to an outside observer it was speeding up or slowing down.

So again, as I was thinking of it, a clock at total rest would be ticking at 'normal' time. As it began moving its ticking would slow down, to the point it would barely be ticking at all as it approached the speed of light.

However, a post below about Relativity and how there is no 'absolute' point of rest knocks this idea for a loop. Some issues there I've never quite grasped.

[jdlh8894]

4. What happens when something moving

hits a vacuum? No friction or reflection. Does it lose all of it's velocity,or just die?Or,does it rebound(get smacked back)?

[TheMadMonk]

10. Not quite. One hypothesis has it that inertia is the effect of "friction"...

with the quantum foam that permeates space. Which theoretically allows for inertial mass and gravitational mass to be decoupled. This would give us the inertialess drive of science fiction fame. Turn the idea on it's head and "thrust" against the foam for a reactionless drive. Either way you can accelerate very quickly to high velocities without making jam of passengers and crew.

[jdlh8894]

11. See, you are using "hypothesis" and "theoretically"

What ACTUALLY does happen? Please give me answers!

[TheMadMonk]

17. If the hypothesis is correct. The theory follows. What happens?

Who knows. If we did, we'd either have a busted hypothesis, or a potentially workable theory.

[Ready4Change]

14. Hitting a vacuum makes little sense.

Vacuum isn't 'stuff.' It is a lack of stuff. Thus there is nothing to hit. An object moving through a vacuum just keeps on going.

Compare that with an object in air. Air is a gas. It's 'stuff.' Moving through air creates drag, because the object has to push the air out of the way, and because once the object has passed the air gets sucked back in behind it. That consumes the energy of the objects motion, which will eventually slows the object down.

Water, being denser than air, creates more drag, and slows an object more quickly. That's why most airplanes are faster than most water craft.

[zipplewrath]

5. No

Space and time are the same "thing". Energy and mass are the same "thing". There is no "velocity through time".

[jdlh8894]

7. You never knew my Dad

Whatever the task was,"Son , you better get the VELOCITY going or we won't be home in TIME for supper!"

[zipplewrath]

8. Velocity versus speed

I've tried several times to explain the difference between velocity and speed to my better half. Those conversations have convinced me not to approach space/time.

[Hokie]

6. You are missing the point of relative motion

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity dispensed with the concept of an absolute velocity "in space". Before Einstein physicists postulated space filled with an invisible, massless material called ether through which objects moved. The problem was that all measurements of the speed of light yielded the same result no matter the motion of the the object relative to light. Einstein started with this premise, that the speed of light is invariant and not dependent on the relative motion of the observer and built a new concept of space and time that included time dilation and the other "weird" effects of relativity. Another feature of the SToR is that it doesn't matter which object of two objects in relative motion you consider "at rest" the equations yield the same results. Therefore, even if you consider the earth "at rest" and everything else in the universe to be in motion you would get the same results.

Another point is that to any observer the passage of time "feels" the same. The time dilation effect only means that observer X traveling at nearly the speed of light relative to observer Y perceives that observer Y's clock is running slower. (Coincidentally, Observer Y perceives that Observer X's clock is running slow also).

Einstein once wrote that "relativity" was a poor choice of name for his theory. He would have preferred that it had been called the Theory of Invariance.

[Ready4Change]

13. I've always wondered how that reconciles with reality.

I think of the tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment) where they flew atomic clocks on board airplanes, one flying East and the other West, and obtained different results which were said to verify Relativity.

From what you (and Special Relativity) say, both of the clocks, in looking at the other plane, should have expected the other planes clock to have fallen behind. However one of the clocks had gained measurably compared to the other. That would seem to violate expectations.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. I think that will be a version of the 'twin paradox'

in which one twin goes off in a rocket, returns, and both of the twins see that the travelling twin has aged slower. Because one is accelerating (and decelerating), what each experiences, and see happening to the other, is not truly identical, and so it is not a real paradox when though through carefully. Wikipedia attempt to explain it (don't ask me, I just trust people when they say it's been thought through OK): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. No.

God no.

[wildbilln864]

16. what of this?

the faster an object travels the less time it takes to go from point a to point b.
so travel 120 miles at 60 mph and it takes 2 hours...
do 120 mph and it takes 1 hour...
at 240 mph it takes 30 minutes and so on...
so can a certain speed be reached where is takes zero time to reach point b from point a? What would that speed be? The speed of light?
And if that speed could be reached, what if it was exceeded?
:hi:

[RagAss]

18. That would be eternity....the absence of time and space.

[wildbilln864]

24. no, I don't think so...

what would be eternity? :shrug:

[Ready4Change]

26. You have described an 'approaching infinity' limit situation.

The deal with those is that you can never 'reach' the limit. There is no certain speed to reach zero time, as you put it, for crossing from A to B. It takes infinite speed. In every instance where you are close to infinite speed, there is yet another instance that is closer (faster) still.

As a fan of sci-fi I find these limits highly frustrating. It's why I love various sci-fi methods of getting around these limits, like hyperspace or space folding. But so far, in physical reality, we are stuck with limits.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. No.

Point A and point B are 120 mph.

The fastest possible time it could take to get there is 0.00065 seconds at the speed of light, which is much more than 0.

[caraher]

19. Read a good book on relativity

It's not that hard, and you'd see pretty quickly where these speculations based on fragments of things you've heard about relativity fall down. A textbook I'd recommend highly on the subject is Unit R of "Six Ideas That Shaped Physics" by Tom Moore. He has an especially good discussion of the various "kinds" of time in relativity.

[Ready4Change]

20. I'll keep an eye out for that.

Thanks!

[dimbear]

21. Good first cut, add in

a couple of refinements. Your relative speed through time and your relative speed through space add quadratically, not linearly. Of course they have to be expressed in commensurate units, where the speed of light in the vacuum and the speed of an object in time in free space at rest are both 1. Then the sum of the squares of the two as influenced by motion remain 1. Secondly, this is only exactly true in free space, away from the influences of fields.

Pretty much the heart of general relativity. Enjoy.

[Ready4Change]

25. Influence of other fields

For simplicity I've been thinking of objects in isolation from any other influences. So the sum of the squares is a seemingly easy thing. In reality I understand that there is no such thing as being free of other fields in our universe.

Still I'd think that for any object that the sum of the squares would still be 1, viewed from within the chosen frame of reference. The components of the velocity vectors can be highly complex, but are consistent, again, within their own frame. Say, for a ball bearing sitting still on my desk, total components would be things like the rotation of the Earth, it's orbit around the Sun, the Sun around the Galaxy, the galaxies motion through the universe. Also needed would be the effects of the masses involved and their effects on time/space. (In other words, things way beyond my level of competence to understand in anything more than a very generic way. :) ) But including all of that isn't necessary if I am comparing the time/space frame of that ball bearing and, say, another that have just thrown through the air nearby. I can just compare the two ball bearings and assume the rest of the surrounding space is uniform.?

[dimbear]

28. It should be comforting

that the deviation from 1 in that equation is very very small unless the forces involved are very very large. If you aren't ordinarily orbiting near the surface of a star or standing near a magnet so powerful it could pull the iron out of your blood, it can pretty much be ignored.

[txlibdem]

22. In 11 dimensional space, the speed of light is no barrier

I'm not talking about the holographic universe which is thought to have infinite copies of our universe, each of these sometimes referred to a dimension, though they are technically universes in their own right. I refer to the theory, based on string theory, which posits that our universe contains not just the 4 traditional dimensions we are familiar with (length, width, height and time as the 4th) but instead contains 11 dimensions.

There should be a connection between each point in space-time that is shared between all 11 dimensions. My theory is that one of these dimensions is tiny, as small as the size of the universe at the point of the big bang. I'll call it the 5th dimension because I like that musical group (http://www.amazon.com/5th-Dimension-Greatest-Hits-Earth/dp/B000002VDS).

If all points are connected among dimensions then we need only to channel our motion to that 5th dimension. As it's size is so tiny, a minute movement within the 5th dimension would result in a proportionally huge movement in "normal space" as we know it. From the perspective of an outside observer you would appear to vanish from your point of origin and immediately reappear at your destination point.

The 5th dimension could be any size, actually, I just picked that out of my hat. If it were, as an example, one light year from end to end that would mean that you could travel anywhere in the universe within a year or so and anywhere within our galaxy in seconds to minutes.

Just some food for thought.

[Ready4Change]

23. Going with you idea for a moment...

To have a point to point translation between your small 5th and our observable X/Y/Z dimensions, I'd think you'd want to use a 5th,6th and 7th.

But that still leaves a question as to HOW to 'channel motion' between dimensions. What buttons do you push to effect this channeling of motion?

[txlibdem]

29. Uh-oh. You're asking me for specifics.

Yikes. :-)

5th, 6th, and 7th dimensions to connect spatially to each point of the X, Y, and Z dimensions of what we call "normal space?" Good question. I'm not sure I can twist my brain enough to imagine what shape a 5th dimension would be. String theory, or more accurately M Theory, posits a number of structures that could confound my feeble attempts to visualize the true shape of things. Membranes, P-Branes, strings with open ends, strings that loop, are all things that I am having trouble visualizing at this late hour. My only observation is that time, the 4th dimension, does not exist in triplicate but instead a single dimension for time serves all 11 dimensions equally.

In a BBC documentary I saw M-Theory was raised as one possible solution to the observations to date that also ties together all the different versions of string theory as well as the thought that gravity actually interacts in 5 dimensions and not only the 3 that we are familiar with.

Though a full description of the theory is not yet known, the low-entropy dynamics are known to be supergravity interacting with 2- and 5-dimensional membranes.

This idea is the unique supersymmetric theory in eleven dimensions, with its low-entropy matter content and interactions fully determined, and can be obtained as the strong coupling limit of type IIA string theory because a new dimension of space emerges as the coupling constant increases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory#M-theory_and_membranes

And here is a blurb on the show I mentioned.

Parallel Universes is a 2001 documentary produced by the BBC's Horizon series. The documentary has to do with parallel universes, string theory, M theory, supergravity, and other theoretical physics concepts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Universes_(documentary)

[Ready4Change]

30. Heheh, trust me, I'm not!

I'm adlibbing on this. I put out my idea much to have it knocked down so I could find out WHY it did or didn't pan out with current physics thinking.

Might that BBC M-Theory documentary you saw have been the one based on a book I read called 'The Elegant Universe' by Brain Greene. I read that a couple times, trying to stretch my math resistant mind around his attempts at describing strings in lay mans terms. Can't say I ever 'got there,' but it was fun exercise. It posited that many paths of string theory needed 11 dimensions to work issues out, and that all but the standard three were sort of 'unexpanded,' even while they still had effects. I wasn't directly implying that your idea would use 'those' 7 extra dimensions. But if actual physicists, on their level, can posit extra dimensions, seems to me we, on our level, can certainly toss around the idea of a few more here and there. ;)

I think of the Time dimension as being like a string of still shots of the other 3 dimensions. Like a stretched out roll of film. (an idea that works better nowadays, if you think of the film being a 3D movie!) In one direction along the time dimension, you see advancing images of the future. In the other direction you would see images from the past.

But, from our perspective, for some reason, we are restricted to only moving in one direction, towards the future. We can, apparently, speed up or slow down the progression of 'images.' (By moving faster or slower in space, for example.) But we can't move backwards, and we can't QUITE stop the forward motion completely. (Maybe coming closest at places like the event horizon of a black hole.)

[txlibdem]

31. I agree that one needs a specially affected brain to be able to think like that

I would be too adhd to read the book. But I enjoyed the documentary and found it thought provoking.

It seems likely to me that once we have a fuller understanding of the actual makeup of the universe we live in, including all 11 or more dimensions and all the interactions between us and them, we should be able to make use of that knowledge to travel faster than light and possibly even enable near-instantaneous travel to any destination in the universe.

The thing that makes me think that there must be some kind of connection on a very deep level is the concept of quantum entanglement, which Chinese researchers have used to send data 16km (10 miles) without any sort of transmission.

Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.

Quantum teleportation is not the same as the teleportation most of us know from science fiction, where an object (or person) in one place is "beamed up" to another place where a perfect copy is replicated. In quantum teleportation two photons or ions (for example) are entangled in such a way that when the quantum state of one is changed the state of the other also changes, as if the two were still connected. This enables quantum information to be teleported if one of the photons/ions is sent some distance away.

http://www.physorg.com/news193551675.html

Edit to add: The way this linked article above tells it, the only thing keeping us from instantaneous quantum communications between any two points in the universe is the ability to transport one of the entangled photons the desired distance away without affecting the delicate connection between it and the photon that must stay behind.

Taking this thought to a (possibly unwarranted) extreme, if we sent one half of the entangled pair out on a space probe to the other side of the universe the laws as we understand them state that you would have instantaneous communication across the entire length of the universe. How can that possibly be? My answer is that there is something that is a natural part of the structure of the universe that has always connected all points in the universe to all other points. I got to thinking about it and decided that a 5th dimension that did not follow the rules that caused the expansion of the known universe yet retained a connection or interaction could explain quantum entanglement.

We know that gravity is limited by the speed of light but according to some theories the particle that causes the effect we call gravity must be traveling not only in the 3 familiar dimensions but at least one other as well. This tells me that, in addition to the probably tiny 5th dimension, there are other spacial dimensions that are perhaps as large or larger than the size of the universe we know. At least that's how it seems to make sense to me.