Faster than the speed of light - so what?

[minsky1]

Diarrhea is faster than the speed of light.......

While in bed the other night, I could feel a rumble so made a bolt for the bog. Before I could switch the light on, I'd sh*t myself.

[TheFaQQer]

WChefS

How is going faster than light going backwards in time?

Well, Chef posted that tomorrow.

[russell]

If Event A occurs distance D away from observer O then he experience it in T time, but that will feel instant. If you can get information there faster than time T then it will look from the observer that that information was a Deloran with a flux capacitor.

[Spacecadet]

My guess is something to do with going to the speed of light slows down time relative to those not travelling at the speed of light and therefore something to do with only ageing a bit or something .. I don't really get it but I would like to understand it more.

I kind of feel like Mustang must feel like when wandering around Dixons and a spotty teenage assistant asks in a half broken voice if he wants to know more about HD LED TV's or Blu Rays..

Reading the BBC articles it would seem the that the Time Travel element is a bit of fantasy added by the Journalists

[Spacecadet]

If Event A occurs distance D away from observer O then he experience it in T time, but that will feel instant. If you can get information there faster than time T then it will look from the observer that that information was a Deloran with a flux capacitor.

Put it another way

two people are observing another person banging a drum some distance away.
One of the observers is deaf the other is blind. Compared to the blind man is the deaf man able to time travel or in someway beat time? No, the deaf man still sees the drum being beaten after it happened.

Similarly, all "faster than light" neutrinos could offer is the ability to see that something has happened earlier. But you could not detect the event before the event actually occured.

[PAH]

Yep, true time travel isn't done by going faster than light. All that happens is a perceived time travel due to the speed of light.

Similar to how a plane doesn't travel through time just because its noise is restricted by the speed of sound.

If you were travelling faster than light all that would happen is you'd become invisible while being observed using light.

Time not being a constant is down to perception. Like how various animals/insects perceive time passing at a different pace to humans. Hence why it's hard to swat a fly.

[TheFaQQer]

Time not being a constant is down to perception.

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

[d000hg]

Ok,

I know I'm opening myself up to a whole load of ridicule but can someone explain to me what it actually means, as in the known scientific theories that no longer hold true and the associated knock on effects if it is proven (as it seems to be) that things can actually go faster than the speed of light.

What I'm looking for is it put in laymans terms so to say.

I'll give a starting example, so going faster than the speed of light proves Einstein's theory of relativity wrong, ok, so what? scientific theories are proven wrong all the time, what is such the big deal with this particular theory being proven wrong..

can we then in theory do something now we know the theory to be incorrect?

Firstly it doesn't prove relativity wrong, just not the whole story.

It's like you've got an equation y = x + z*0.00000000000000...0000000000000001 - in virtually all cases this is the same as x=y, but in special cases where z is monstrously large, a new term pops into the mix.

As for consequences... dunno yet.

[scooterscot]

The speed does not interest me so much as the medium they can travel through. Solid rock.

If harnessing / modulating neutrinos becomes possible shall satellite communication not become obsolete overnight?

[russell]

Firstly it doesn't prove relativity wrong, just not the whole story.

It's like you've got an equation y = x + z*0.00000000000000...0000000000000001 - in virtually all cases this is the same as x=y, but in special cases where z is monstrously large, a new term pops into the mix.

As for consequences... dunno yet.

Why not use scientifc notation y = x + z*1.0-260 <-- should be power of -260