Repeat After Me: "There's nothing special about C"
Hello!!! McFly!!! DeLorean’s dead already! Can we stop pretending that even a highly modified “normal” vehicle will ever be able to reach or exceed the speed of light? Think we can grow beyond the fantasies that movies like Back To The Future try to sell us?
We first need to stop treating the speed of light as some mysterious, unbreakable barrier. It is nothing more than a simple phase transition based on a specific range of vibrations. It is “like” (fractally similar) the speed of sound. We once thought that was an unbreakable barrier, and then we eventually broke it. But it took a new vehicle, which had a new look, and was based on new concepts…made possible by many scientists, most notably Ernst Mach and his characterization of the speed of sound and what forces a body undergoes as it matches, and exceeds the speed of sound.
Einstein is to Speed of Light as Mach is to Speed of Sound. Einstein showed us what the light barrier really means in terms of observation, gravitational frames, and matter-in-motion dynamics. And it is really no surprise at all to classically-trained dynamicists (a la Newtonian physics) that Einstein told us that Energy is proportional to a “velocity-squared” term. This is EXACTLY what Newtonian Mechanics has also told us! When we shift from the “barrier” of sound to the “barrier” of light, all we do is change WHICH relative velocity term we are using to engineer the energy phenomenon.
What follows is the direct example from basic subsonic and supersonic aerodynamics. See if you can use this knowledge of the speed of sound to understand how we will have to analyze (and interact with) light and light speed, by thinking fractally.
(-) Subsonic, incompressible flow dynamic pressures (which generates the aerodynamic force of Lift that we use to achieve flight) is computed as a function of air density * airspeed velocity-SQUARED. At low speeds we can assume air density remains constant, and the velocity of a vehicle moving through the air obeys a SQUARED Power Law. If we double velocity, we get four times the amount of pressure force (Lift/Drag). We say that dynamic pressure is “one-half times rho times V squared”.
**(+) Transonic, Sonic, and Supersonic flow dynamic pressures ** do not have constant air density, so the same “V-squared” equation we use subsonically will not work supersonically. We now shift to calculate the dynamic air pressure (which still creates those Lift/Drag forces) in terms of total air pressure and the square of the vehicle’s Mach number (Mach 1.0 is traveling at the speed of sound). We say that dynamic pressure now is “one-half times gamma times Pressure times Mach squared”.
Did you catch the distinction between these two? Can you re-frame that distinction now in terms of LIGHT speed? Notice how subsonically we can talk in terms of absolute velocity of some body with respect to the airmass it moves through. But transonically, sonically, and supersonically we must shift to a RELATIVE measure of the body’s velocity with respect to the speed of sound in the airmass fluid. Would it not make sense that we must also recognize a “Relative Shift” in the velocity parameter when we move up to the velocity of light? Let’s see if we can work out the parallel:
(-) Subluminal speeds are similar to subsonic speeds. In the sonic range we consider airmass density (Mass per unit volume) is constant. In terms of motion at speeds well below the speed of light, we assume a body’s mass is the constant, and we can still express the velocity of some body as an “absolute” measure since it is nowhere near the speed of light, where a body’s mass does not remain constant.
(+) Transluminal, Luminal, and Superluminal speeds are similar to transonic, sonic, and supersonic speeds. Just as we shift to the RELATIVE measure of a body’s velocity in relation to the velocity of sound through the air medium, we must also shift to a RELATIVE measure of a body’s velocity in relation to the velocity of light through the “medium” of our SpaceTime universe. At sonic speeds we use Mach number. At luminal speeds we use Warp number… the ratio of the body’s speed with respect to the speed of light throughout the SpaceTime metric of our universe.
How about if I now state a prediction that will outdo some of Titor’s? In the next few years you will begin to see light dynamics become much more scientifically quantified in terms of how we can engineer the metric of Massive SpaceTime. Whereas now we all know that a body that travels supersonically creates waves we call Mach and Shock waves, it will become part of the common scientific knowledge that a body that travels superluminally creates waves we may come to call Warp waves. These Warp waves will modify the fabric of SpaceTime. We will come to connect the phenomenon of these Warp waves with reported UFO phenomenon where a triangular shaped vehicle is suddenly visible, and then just as suddenly INVISIBLE to an OBSERVER.
And while, as an engineer I know the mathematics well enough not to be a betting man, I am laying my “spiritual money” on the probability that the 3-dimensional, vehicle of counter-rotating light beams called a Merkaba will be the first vehicle to transit SpaceTime at superluminal velocities.
All this by 2012?!?!?!? I think Zerubabbel, OvrLrdLegion, CAT, Transient, and so many other excellent contributors here have a lot of hard work ahead of us to make that happen on schedule! Let’s get cracking ladies and gents. )
RMT
