12 ms·
I'm always a little disappointed when these experiments are unable to disprove General Relativity. I keep hoping that they'll discover something slightly wrong
by magduf 8y ago
I'm always a little disappointed when these experiments are unable to disprove General Relativity. I keep hoping that they'll discover something slightly wrong about it, which will quickly lead to us figuring out how to develop a practical warp drive which doesn't require negative or nearly infinite energy.
- jjoonathan 8y agoYeah, but small c might be the only thing keeping the giant space lizards on the other side of the galaxy from invading Earth.
- magduf 8y agoI'm willing to take that risk. I want to take a vacation on Risa.
- hellofunk 8y agoQuantum entanglement suggests strongly there are forces in the universe that travel much much faster than the speed of light, or rather, travel in a way in which speed does not matter.
- magduf 8y agoI am certainly no physicist, but quantum physics really makes me wonder if we're living in a simulation, and QP is just the actual resolution of the simulation.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y agoInteresting thought. Thanks for the existential crisis.
- jjoonathan 8y agoNot really, unless you stick with the Copenhagen interpretation. There are others. I don't think it's a coincidence that going on a century of experimentation with entanglement has yet to yield even a theoretical mechanism for transferring information.
- roywiggins 8y agoThere's even a theorem that transferring information with entanglement is impossible according to quantum theory as we know it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
- hellofunk 8y agoThen how does this work? https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-transmit-earth-to-space-quantum-entanglement.html https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-transmit-earth-to-s...
- vacuum_collapse 8y agoYou need a classical information channel in combination with quantum entanglement. This is explained here for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation Because you need the classical information channel you are still limited by the speed of light and hence cannot transmit information faster than light.
- hellofunk 8y agoThere have been many successful experiments transferring data between entangled particles. Here is one: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-transmit-earth-to-space-quantum-entanglement.html https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-transmit-earth-to-s... “...quantum teleportation allows faithful transfer of unknown quantum states from one object to another over long distance, without physical travelling of the object itself. Long-distance teleportation has been recognized as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation. However, the previous teleportation experiments between distant locations were limited to a distance on the order of 100 kilometers...”
- jjoonathan 8y agoThat's not faster than light. The wiki article clarifies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
- ENGNR 8y agoAgreed, either the universe knows the future or locality isn't enforced in a way we currently think is possible (ie one or more of our dimensions are just virtual dimensions not bound by the speed limit) The second seems the most likely to me!
- cwillu 8y agoOr the universe cheats by decohering into branches, one for each possible self-consistent configuration.
- macspoofing 8y agoI never thought of c being a real problem to space travel. Sure, on the timescale of our lives c is sloooow because moving between stars automatically necessitates a multi-generational approach and/or huge amount of resources. The big problem however, is that we have no place to go. We are tied to earth. Our bodies are made for a specific gravity constant, specific distance from a specific star, specific atmospheric mix of gases, a pre-existing DNA-based fauna and flora, etc. Quite simply, when it comes to colonization: there's no place like home. Every other place sucks for our bodies. Once we achieve the singularity(tm) and upload our consciousness (or get replaced by AI), we can turn down the clock speed on the matrix (say turn 1,000,000 real years into 1 matrix year), and like magic c stops being a practical limitation. Sending message (or travelling) from one side of the galaxy to another would take a 'matrix month' .. turn the clock down even further and you can make galactic communication instantaneous.
- rwcarlsen 8y agoYou could actually reach almost anywhere in the galaxy within a single human lifetime (the traveler's lifetime that is) using only 1-G constant acceleration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_ac... No FTL required. We just need to figure out how to use propellant efficiently enough among a few other slightly difficult challenges.
- macspoofing 8y agoThe challenge is still communication (it's going to take you 100k years to send a message from one end to another) and synchronization (it took you 60 years to get to your destination, but hundreds of thousands of years have passed for your peers)
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThis can be solved by simply not communicating.
- error_logic 8y agoI like to imagine the Universe with the effects attributed to inflation and dark energy actually being explained by inverse curvature from antimatter (think relic antineutrinos). Every particle (including photons) would follow the curvature of spacetime, but antimatter would cause inverse curvature, and photons (perhaps bosons in general) would be passive rather than acting on it (inertial "mass" / momentum only). This flies in the face of the Equivalence Principle, and requires that light's wavelength shifts due to the relative time where its energy is measured--not because of an equal and opposite gravitational interaction with the masses causing the gravitation. Perhaps the most nonsensical consequence is the behavior of a particle-antiparticle pair co-accelerating to infinity...unless their eventual merger through relativity (length contraction) and quantum mechanics (tunneling into a merged state) actually explains the mechanism for annihilation. The only testable prediction I have: Distant galaxies will be "too mature" for their apparant distance in space and time, meaning that the light has aged more than the distances would suggest (time slows in the presence of a gravity well, and would do the opposite for regions of space with inverse curvature--see above, re:inflation and the very start of the Universe).
- throwaway37585 8y agoAntimatter has opposite charge, not opposite mass. Antimatter is not antigravity.
- codethief 8y agoI actually feel the exact opposite way when it comes to successful tests like the present one. Namely, these tests often also rule out modified theories of gravity which, to me, suggests that, by often considering more or less random (read: ugly) and little-justified modifications of general relativity, these theories have been looking in the wrong place when it comes to explaining dark matter (and, possibly, dark energy). …which, for me, not only makes the mystery of dark matter all the greater but also makes me appreciate Einstein's beautiful theory even more. :)
- TomMckenny 8y agoI keep hoping they'll find some discrepancy that somehow lets us mesh QM with it.
- EastLondonCoder 8y agoI have yet to see any ftl scheme that doesn’t break causality in some reference frame. I have a hard time fathoming a universe where cause and effect are disjointed, this leads me to think ftl is impossible. As other commenters are pointing out, c is not a big problem with long life spans and relativistic time contraction.