Travel at Speed of Light...pretty cool vid

[DAB]

so i should dress warm and pack light?

[NeedSpeed]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

Or warping space, but in that case you're not actually moving in real space near the speed of light. My previous descriptions only apply to moving in our standard 4-dimensional space-time at nearly light speed. If you were in a warp bubble moving faster than the speed of light, your velocity in the local space-time inside the warp bubble would be roughly zero. There are some simulations on the internet that shows what it would look like if you were in a faster-than-light warp bubble.

[Cybercowboy]

Nah, that's not how it would look. Why would the stars streak by? Even at 100x the speed of light it would still take days or weeks to reach the nearest star. They would be creeping up on you, not streaking by.

[DAB]

what if the universe has no end, but we can only 'see' so far presently?

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by DAB

what if the universe has no end, but we can only 'see' so far presently?

It's actually the case that the universe is larger than we can see. There is entire swaths of the universe that are so far away that, due to the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang, light from them will never reach us. Some cosmologists suspect that the visible universe is perhaps 1/10th of 1% of the entire universe.

[NeedSpeed]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

Nah, that's not how it would look. Why would the stars streak by? Even at 100x the speed of light it would still take days or weeks to reach the nearest star. They would be creeping up on you, not streaking by.

How dare you question the Enterprise. May V'Ger have mercy on you.

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by NeedSpeed

How dare you question the Enterprise. May V'Ger have mercy on you.

I guess if the Enterprise can go several thousand times the speed of light, you'd see some streaks from stars going by. Probably. Maybe.

No matter what they will not appear to be normal color though. Probably blue-shifted into the extreme gamma spectrum or red-shifted to radio waves.

[NeedSpeed]

[Sneaks]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

It's actually the case that the universe is larger than we can see. There is entire swaths of the universe that are so far away that, due to the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang, light from them will never reach us. Some cosmologists suspect that the visible universe is perhaps 1/10th of 1% of the entire universe.

It is actually mind blowing to think that the things we see in the night sky, may not even exist at the present time. That star you saw last night, may have died out a million years ago, or more.
I'm of the belief that there is no end to the universe. It' just endless space that continues on for infinity.

[lspencer534]

Originally Posted by Sneaks

It is actually mind blowing to think that the things we see in the night sky, may not even exist at the present time. That star you saw last night, may have died out a million years ago, or more.
I'm of the belief that there is no end to the universe. It' just endless space that continues on for infinity.

Yup.

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by lspencer534

Yup.

For all intensive porpoises.

[Sneaks]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

For all intensive porpoises.

That's some serious mammals right there.

[Scissors]

So...for even more fun, there are some stars that we can see, but where we will never be able to see the light they are currently emitting (assuming for a moment that they even still exist, which they don't). Stars which are 28 billion light-years away we can see, even though the universe is far less than 28 billion years old.

Chew on that.

[Scissors]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

I guess if the Enterprise can go several thousand times the speed of light, you'd see some streaks from stars going by. Probably. Maybe.

No matter what they will not appear to be normal color though. Probably blue-shifted into the extreme gamma spectrum or red-shifted to radio waves.

Warp 9.999 is 199,516 times the speed of light, which means it would take 13 minutes to get to a nearby star, and 6 months to cross the galaxy. So still no stars streaking by unless you're really close to a couple.

[RED-85-Z51]

But what if i had a machine, that could move seamlessly not only across space, but time as well,..powered by something powerful, such as an exploding star, suspended in time, always on the verge of becoming a black hole....

[86RAG]

Originally Posted by RED-85-Z51

But what if i had a machine, that could move seamlessly not only across space, but time as well,..powered by something powerful, such as an exploding star, suspended in time, always on the verge of becoming a black hole....

[RED-85-Z51]

Originally Posted by 86RAG

Trippy aint it...

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by RED-85-Z51

But what if i had a machine, that could move seamlessly not only across space, but time as well,..powered by something powerful, such as an exploding star, suspended in time, always on the verge of becoming a black hole....

In lots of sci-fi stories, the ship is powered by a singularity. However that works.

[Madmikeee]

Originally Posted by Cybercowboy

According the to Einstein's theory of General Relativity, time will slow down in the presence of a large gravitational field. Here on Earth the effect is very small, but if you were to hover close to a neutron star it would be very noticeable. This isn't just a theory, it has been experimentally verified many many times, and our GPS satellites take into effect the small time difference they experience in the lower gravity they feel up in orbit.

The stuff I was talking about earlier is covered in Special Relativity, which does not take gravity into account. But it's really all part of Relativity, it's real, it's not just some unproven concept, it's very real.

What it really tells us is that there is no "universal" clock that is correct. Every place in the universe experiences the flow of time uniquely. Nowhere is special. Here on Earth we experience time move slower than would be the case if we were floating somewhere out between Earth and Mars. Take two clocks, synchronize them, and then move one out to that point in deep space. Wait a few years, and bring them back together. The one in deep space will be a few seconds ahead of the one that sat here on Earth.

If instead you moved one clock to be a few miles from a massive neutron star or black hole, what would happen? Well, when the clocks were brought back together, they could be years different. The clock by the black hole will have barely even moved, possibly if it is close enough and the black hole is massive enough. If you fell into a black hole and could somehow remain in one piece as you went through the event horizon, you would experience time coming to a stop and you'd never actually get to the black hole itself. An observer watching from afar would see you just disappear into the event horizon, and you'd look to them as if you were frozen in time just before you disappeared.

These theories were explained very well in the movie interstellar, obviously some license was taken and it was , somewhat, dumbed down for the average viewer but for all intensive purposes (yes I did that on purpose ) it was pretty spot on. A lot of people HATED that movie, the wife and I LOVED it.

[Cybercowboy]

Originally Posted by Madmikeee

These theories were explained very well in the movie interstellar, obviously some license was taken and it was , somewhat, dumbed down for the average viewer but for all intensive purposes (yes I did that on purpose ) it was pretty spot on. A lot of people HATED that movie, the wife and I LOVED it.

I haven't seen it yet, plan on getting the blu-ray in a couple of weeks when it comes out.