0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
PeteI think you are being a little unfair as I have tried to answered all of your questions in a non ambiguous manner. Everything I have written is, I believe, consistent and fits in with what we know. I am not proposing anything that is not possible. It was not my intention here to write a scientific paper.
PeteAlthough you choose to ignore it I have already addressed those points.
It could be argued that anything traveling faster than c would travel backward in time.
Reinterpretation PrincipleThe reinterpretation principle asserts that a tachyon sent back in time can always be reinterpreted as a tachyon traveling forward in time, because observers cannot distinguish between the emission and absorption of tachyons. The attempt to detect a tachyon from the future (and violate causality) would actually create the same tachyon and send it forward in time (which is causal).However, this principle is not widely accepted as resolving the paradoxes. Instead, what would be required to avoid paradoxes is that unlike any known particle, tachyons do not interact in any way and can never be detected or observed, because otherwise a tachyon beam could be modulated and used to create an anti-telephone or a "logically pernicious self-inhibitor". All forms of energy are believed to interact at least gravitationally, and many authors state that superluminal propagation in Lorentz invariant theories always leads to causal paradoxes.
I think the notion of FTL things going backwards in time is a misinterpretation of relativity. I think the equations yield imaginary clock speeds, not negative clock speeds. Time depends on cycles, and photons don't cycle unless, as in my model, they are locked in orbit around one another. A particle consisting of a pair of orbiting photons experiences a cycle of time each time its photons make one circuit around their common center. That cycle is a constant from the particle's point of view, but it varies with relative speed of an outside observer. The photons move at the same speed to all observers, but they travel farther per cycle around a moving center than around a stationary center.
Quote from: Phractality on 12/05/2012 20:05:27I think the notion of FTL things going backwards in time is a misinterpretation of relativity. I think the equations yield imaginary clock speeds, not negative clock speeds. Time depends on cycles, and photons don't cycle unless, as in my model, they are locked in orbit around one another. A particle consisting of a pair of orbiting photons experiences a cycle of time each time its photons make one circuit around their common center. That cycle is a constant from the particle's point of view, but it varies with relative speed of an outside observer. The photons move at the same speed to all observers, but they travel farther per cycle around a moving center than around a stationary center. Light is an electro-magnetic wave. Waves have wavelength and frequency. Frequency is cycles per second.
Quote from: MikeS on 13/05/2012 08:27:50Quote from: Phractality on 12/05/2012 20:05:27I think the notion of FTL things going backwards in time is a misinterpretation of relativity. I think the equations yield imaginary clock speeds, not negative clock speeds. Time depends on cycles, and photons don't cycle unless, as in my model, they are locked in orbit around one another. A particle consisting of a pair of orbiting photons experiences a cycle of time each time its photons make one circuit around their common center. That cycle is a constant from the particle's point of view, but it varies with relative speed of an outside observer. The photons move at the same speed to all observers, but they travel farther per cycle around a moving center than around a stationary center. Light is an electro-magnetic wave. Waves have wavelength and frequency. Frequency is cycles per second.Light doesn't cycle in its own reference frame. A photon has only one cycle, and that is only by theorizing that the electromagnetic field at a point in space cycles as the photon passes. In the reference frame of a particle, a photon only exists at the instant it is emitted or absorbed. The duration of that instant can only be assigned a duration with respect to cycles that occur within the particle. The situation is somewhat different if we're taking about a continuous radio wave radiating from an antenna. Yes; it has cycles in an inertial reference frame. An observer can count those cycles as they pass. A hypothetical observer traveling at the speed of light with the radio wave would not observe its cycles; to him, time could only be reckoned relative to something other than that wave. Of course, no observer can travel at the speed of light, so it is meaningless to say that such an observer would not experience time. That observer is purely imaginary, and for him time is imaginary. Likewise, for an imaginary FTL observer. His time is imaginary, not negative.
It is my understanding that anything traveling at the speed of light (e.g., a photon) does not experience the passage of time. Since "speed" is defined as 'distance / time', the term (speed) becomes indeterminate without time, or 'undefined' if time = 0. So, I have to wonder, if light, and everything else "traveling" at light speed (everything in the universe except for us and our tangible "reality") is not subject to the passage of time, might it be that those things are not "traveling" at all; that the speed of light is actually zero, and it is our frame of reference that is "traveling" at 299792458 m/s? Might that explain why, regardless of the relative motion of the source vs. the observer, the speed of light is always seen as the same (constant) value--because it is actually (some cosmic "value" for) zero, and zero = zero = zero? Additionally, if something does not experience the passage of time, is it possible for it to change (i.e., age, decay, evolve, etc.)?