[PvK]

Originally posted by QuarianRex:

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Originally posted by PvK:

For example, if we hook up a drive capable of what would be ten times the speed of light to a Twinkie, and send it five light-years away and back (ten light-years total distance), we'll see it re-appear in ten years time, and history will not be changed, but the Twinkie will only have aged one year. No humpback whales will be saved.

PvK

I have got to disagree here (I know I'm jumping in a little late but what the heck). If equiping a twinkie with a drive system capable of 10x the speed of light it would travel 10 light years in only one year of our subjective time.
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That's where I think you're mistaken/backwards, if you Subscribe to quantum theory. According to QT, in no frame of reference is any physical object allowed to be accelerated to the speed of light. Instead, it will seem to age less quickly, from the stationary frame of reference. So, from Earth, the Twinkie seems to have taken at least ten years to make the trip, but the Calendar clock included as a free gift inside the Twinkie package only shows one year elapsed.

This is assuming that said drive system is capable of instantaneous acceleration and deceleration and so negating the turnaround time at the half-way point.

Yes, more or less. Actually, say "nearly-instantaneous". (I believe quantum theory does NOT have anything to say about instantaneous changes in speed, or things which actually do move faster than light - it just says that pushing something to accelerate it up to the speed of light and beyond, starts affecting time between the frames of reference, instead.)

The subjective effects of the twinkie are the true unknown. If they are the same as light speed then no time will have passed (subjectively) yet 10 lightyears will have been crossed and one year would have passed in the world.

I really strongly agree with the first sentence - what would really happen to the Twinkie. As was pointed out in an earlier post from the peanut gallery, the Twinkie will probably have big problems under massive acceleration, but that's probably best left to Twinkie-ologists. There are whole web sites (well, at least one) devoted to the effects (or phenomenal lack therof) of all sorts of conditions on Twinkies.

As I wrote above, QT has nothing to say about anything moving faster than or at the speed of light. What it does say, is that objects that are accelerated up to the speed of light, will never reach it, because the closer they get, the greater the time effect relative to other frames of reference. From their own perspective, they seem to accelerate as if there were no speed limit, but when they check the clocks they left at home, they will show more time has passed than the clocks they brought with them.

This is the most likely explanation since we have detected forms of radiation that move faster than the speed of light (for the life of me I can't remember what it's called, though I do have it written down somewhere) and they don't show any evidence of time warping properties.

Tachyons are particles that travel faster than the speed of light. There have also been experiments in recent years that seem to have managed to send signals faster than light, but as far as I know, this is not necessarily movement, but cause and effect, which may involve forces and particles which we don't understand. It's quite hard to detect or measure faster-than-light objects and effects, when all of our equipment uses sub-light particles and effects.

As a side note I recently heard that there is strong evidence to support the fact that C is not as constant as we once thought. Apparently the speed of light has been slowing down slightly over the Last several billion years.

Interesting huh?

Yes, it's interesting. However I tend to think modern physicists, as with physicists and philosophers throughout human history, are still extremely overconfident about the degree to which they really understand what's going on at the fringe of their theory and cosmology. I'm not really convinced that they know what they're talking about when they claim to be measuring speeds of light and relativistic effects.

PvK