Still pure theory, but founded in some reasonable science. While it may be a good idea, it is still not instantaneous travel which can be had by going 'Outside' as found in 'Children of the Mind'.
There is the theory that if you conquer light speed, you conquer time; meaning you can travel through time. But I've alway doubted that.
For example, let's say you are traveling through space in a faster than light craft and accidently run into another slow moving space craft. Five minutes after the impact, you see the visual image of the slow craft approaching. Isn't that all that is happening? You haven't really traveled through time, you are just experiencing a physical reality and a visual reality that are out of sync. That is more a matter of TIMING than actual TIME.
You crashed into the slow moving space craft at exactly the time it happened, that fact that it took a while for light to catch up to you seems irrelevant.
I guess what I'm getting at is that faster than light travel could create a preceived time distortion, but that's all it would be is preception.
Just passing it along.
Steve/BlueWizard
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
The time differences due to differing frames of reference are not merely perceived, they are real. This has been demonstrated by experiment.
At least assuming our equations are correct, traveling faster than light will be equivalent to travel backwards in time, due to the nature of causality.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
BlueWizard, are you seriously proposing that in 90 years of general relativity being a theory of physics, nobody conjectured that the time effects are just an illusion? Do you really think that you are the first person to consider the idea? Come back when you understand the math of it. You plainly have no idea what you are talking about.
Posted by BandoCommando (Member # 7746) on :
You mean travelling forwards in time. Think about it:
If you use the classic experiment with two atomic clocks, one stationary, and one on an airplane flying around the world, you'll find that LESS time has passed for the clock on the plane.
If I arrive at the same moment of time as another person, but have experienced less PASSAGE of time, then I have, in actual fact, travelled into the future, relative to the other person.
It's travel into the past that we can't do.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Oh dearie, dearie me. We were not speaking of standard time dilation. We were speaking of what would happen if you could travel Faster Than Light. It is different, k?