Physicist: You may have heard that if a technique can be found that allows you to send a signal faster than light, then you can send a signal back in time. The very short answer for why is that relativity causes some problems when you try to define “instant”, and those problems can be used to send signals back in time.
The speed of light is crazy fast, but on large enough distances it’s agonizingly slow. Talking to people on the Moon involves a net 2 second delay, which is a little annoying. If you send a signal to a robot on Mars it’ll take between 8 and 40 minutes to get a response, depending on where Mars and Earth are in their orbits, which is crippling (this is a big part of why the rovers were made to be fairly independent). So why not just create some kind of sub-space, tachyon, ultrawave relay, thingy that allows you to send FTL (faster than light) or even instantaneous signals?
Any physically realizable communication always involves some delay (left), instantaneous communication doesn’t seem to cause any problems (right), but it totally does. In all of these pictures time moves from the bottom to the top.
Relativity does more than just place a cap on the speed that signals and objects can move. It also muddles this question in particular, by complicating what’s meant by “instantaneous”. One of the unfortunate results of relativity is what’s happening “now” depends on how fast (and in which direction) you’re moving. That is, if one person sees that two events are happening at the same time (“right now”), then someone traveling at a different speed will see the two events not happening at the same time.
In particular, if you send an instantaneous signal to somewhere else, then the sending and arriving both happen “now”, but to someone else (moving relative to you) one happens before the other.
Two objects, as well as a couple moments from each of their perspectives. (left) The red object is stationary. (right) The blue object is stationary. Notice that the “nows” of the two objects are skewed with respect to each other.
The details of why can be found here, but for now just keep in mind that when something passes by, the set of things that are happening “right now” for that thing happen later for you in the direction of motion. So, if something passes left to right in front of you, then its now will, for you, happen in a moment and to the right as well as a moment ago and to the left (whens and wheres get mixed up a bit in relativity). It takes a little pondering (done in the link above), but this result actually falls out of the whole “speed of light is the same to everyone” thing pretty quickly.
By the way, that shouldn’t make any intuitive sense, and should be difficult to keep track of, so don’t stress.
So, “instantaneous communication” isn’t as easy to define as one might think. But, if you accept the basic tenet of relativity, that everything no matter how it’s moving is on equal footing, then one person’s instantaneous signal is merely traveling very fast to someone else, or even slightly backward in time to another someone else. So, say you have two objects sending instantaneous (from each of their perspectives) messages back and forth. Because of how they’re moving, while the sender perceives the message being sent and received instantly, the recipient perceives the message arriving a little after or even a little before it was sent.
Since differently moving things have different notions of now, instantaneous signals can zig-zag backwards or forwards in time.
Getting a message after it was sent is no biggie. I mean; write yourself a letter if you want to see that in action. But getting a message before it was sent causes issues (see for example; practically every sci-fi franchise). What those issues are exactly depends on how time travel works (e.g., “Timecop” or “Back to the Future” rules?), and that’s wide open to debate.
There is a “cure” for faster-than-light communication causing causality violations. There isn’t really a problem with signals going back in time, if they only go back in time somewhere else. For example,imagine there was a magic post office in the year 1500 that sent letters from Rome (Rome) to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and one week back in time. Since it took 5 weeks to cross the Atlantic, there’s no risk of paradoxes and causality violations (“Dear Ahuitzotl, in a week Giovanni Borgia is going to be killed. Nothing you can do about it, just thought you’d like to know.”). The real problems crop up when you can send instantaneous messages in two or more reference frames. That allows you to bounce signals back and forth, and thus send a message to yourself in the past. So, the fix is to have only one frame with instant communication (magic post offices only send letters in one direction).
But this cure; picking a special reference frame (a special speed) in which communication can be instantaneous, isn’t really in keeping with the spirit of relativity or observational evidence; that all speeds are equivalent.
What if it is space as the thing that is moving?
Love Long and Prosper
Now, after looking at the word ” space as a thing that moves”,I would like to put forward a question related to Godel’s theory of a rotating universe. According to his theory, we would be able to move back in time, as we move back in space. Why would this happen?Will you please be kind enough to give me an answer to the question?
Unfortunately, I’ve never gotten around to looking into Godel’s physics stuff. Specifically, I don’t know what he meant by “rotating space”. Since movement in general is described with respect to a fixed frame, what is meant by “rotating frame” is a probably a bit abstract.
It might just be the engineer in me trying to find ways to abuse the rules and get the universe to do what I want it to. But before different now frames, time dilation and Lorentz contraction where explained to me at the same time, when I heard an explanation about just one of them I would have thoughts like ‘well if now frames can be adjusted with just acceleration why don’t we use an accelerating telescope to get a fast time video of how a distant galaxy formed over billions of years’. Then I read an explanation of the three effects at the same time and while there may not be as many fun exploits when they all apply together it make a whole lot more sense.
https://www.askamathematician.com/2011/01/q-why-does-relativistic-length-contraction-lorentz-contraction-happen/
If instant communication violates relativity and so on, would it be possible for FTL to not be instant? I say this since a photon, from its own point of view, leaves, flies, and arrives at the same time.
The post here is a little careful about what an “instantaneous signal” is. Clearly the time of something should be zero. But while the time light experiences getting from place to place is zero, for everyone else time passes. So, to stick to what is more intuitively meant by an instant signal, an instant signal is defined as being sent and received simultaneously from the point of view of one particular reference frame (one particular relative speed). In fact, a straight “FTL path” is only instantaneous to one frame of reference, which is what gives rise to the whole “in some frames the signal is going back in time” thing.
There’s another old post that looks at this from another angle.
I remember reading about entangled particles separated by large distances being used for FTL communication. As soon as you know the spin of one, you know the spin of the other, regardless of how far away it is. Since this allows for FTL communication, I must have something wrong. Could you explain this sometime, or link to where it’s already been explained?
This talks about it, but you’re right; there should be a dedicated post.
I think consciousness must come into the equation an entangled particle will instantaneously interact with its twin , but an observer could never see this effect, because he or she are stuck in linear time; thus cause and effect can never be violated in our universe.
Alan
Hi, talking about FTL communication, I have a simple thought experiment, suppose we can find an object say a rod made out of very hard and rigid materials (like diamons), the rod may not have to be very long, let’s say 1 meter in length, one end of the rod is attached to a button and the other end is my finger pushing the rod, when the rod is pushed, the other end should move “at the same time” and hence pressed the button. Now, since nothing travels faster than light, even at 1 meter range, if I replaced the apparatus with a torch light 1 meter away from the light sensor, it would still take about 3.33 x 10^-9 sec for light to reach the sensor. So the diamon rod seems to be able to “transmit” information faster than light since both end of the rod should travels “at the same time”?
Well, 1 meter may be too “expensive”, but any arbitrary length the results will be still the same. The question is, and I know it’s not possible, why not? Thanks.
There’s an old post about exactly that!
If every thing in the universe is rotating around some axis,planets suns solar systems -etc,and some say the universe it self rotates,?-Then the big question that science has ducked and weaved around,is still not answered and yet is taught to children in schools as a absoulute given ,-that there is no out side of the known universe.
If the universe indeed rotates then a medium must exsist out side our universe to allow this.
What is truth,?
Darren,
A couple of things:
1) Why does the Earth’s rotation have anything to do with what may or may not be “outside” the universe? I don’t follow your train of thought from one to the other.
2) The universe is rotating, is it? Relative to what? How do you know? How COULD you know?
3) Science has “ducked and weaved around” very little. Your very question is one that theoretical physicists around the world have pondered. They have as many guesses as there are people working on it, and we may never be able to test any of these hypotheses anyway. Unless you know of a way to get out of our universe and have a look!
4) “Outside our universe” is a tricky concept to talk about with laymen. While there very probably is something out there, the confusing part is that no matter how far you travel in any direction, you’ll never find the edge of the universe. There isn’t one. Not from the inside, anyway! That, I think, is what you have misunderstood as “there is nothing outside the universe”.
5) Do you think this should be taught to our kids before or after quantum mechanics? That’s taught to kids, right?
This is a bit more in the direction of travel, but the same principle applies I think.
Say we have 2 planets, for arguments sake lets say they are 2 lightyears appart. Now from planet A and B are both stationary. A spaceship travels between the two, at 0.99c, so the time it takes to reach B is a bit more than 2 years, no problem there, still within the speed barrier. A second craft with FTL capabilities woud traverse that same distance at 2c (purely hypothetical of course), and thus halve the time the clocks on the planets measures its time between departure and arrival. So the time it takes to reach planet B from A, from either planet’s clock’s perspective is only 1 year, and would arrice there before a beam of light. The craft returns to planet A and thus the total time away from planet A should read 2 years. This violates the “speed barrier” but not really causality since the craft still arrived after it departed. So how exactly does exceeding the speed of light violate causality? I’m aware of the donkey-car and the bicycle analogy, but even then, if you would technically collide with the car before the light of you reach it, you become infinitely close, and you constantly radiate light before actually colliding. So technically the light and yourself should reach itself at the same instant, think of the (sinx)/x as x tends to 0 = 1 kind of thing. I’m sorry if this seems uninformed but i’ve been reading a shit-tonne and I can’t get my head around this.
Faster-than-light communication for sending signals instantaneously or back in time seems to be possible based on GR (general relativity):
1. GR seems to allow faster-than-light spaceship travel, aka “Star Trek warp drives”, in theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
NASA is looking into it, but there are a lot of problems of course.
2. GR also permits wormholes and time loops, but the theoretical problems there remain scary.
3. Distant objects in the universe move apart at speeds exceeding light due to the expansion of the universe. This effect, known as Hubble’s Law, is apparently not an inherent law of physics but rather the effects of a kind of “momentum” imparted on most space that causes it to expand. This also suggests that manipulating spacetime using GR can be used to reach superluminal speeds.
Quantum entanglement doesn’t seem to be a useful mechanism for communicating faster than light due to the apparent randomness involved. There is also the problem that after decades of experimentation, no one has been able to prove that non-local entanglement actually exists – google “loopholes in Bell test experiments” and you will see. Einstein’s “local realism” is still compatible with all experiments up-to-date.
Murdakah’s question is valid and should be answered first. But let me also pose a separate, but related comment.
Frankly, I don’t believe instantaneous communication can violate causality. First of all, a more useful definition of the term “instantaneous communication” would be information that is received at the same moment it is sent in ALL frames of reference (perhaps not observed at the same moment, but occur at the same moment, like how we know the cosmic microwave background was emitted billions of years ago as opposed to when we observe it). Let me clarify, the sender would, of course, know that the message is received immediately, regardless of the distance separating them. Additionally, the receiver, knowing that the message is transmitted instantaneously, would know that it was sent exactly when he receives it. Now, to the sender, he would observe the message being received when light from the receiver reaches him (probably well after he gets a reply, but I’ll get to that later); the receiver observes the message being sent when light from the sender reaches him. Essentially, this is where I believe most physicists get confused (and I’m a cosmologist, so I know the usual thought process). Both people “know” when sending and receiving take place, regardless of what they observe. If the receiver sends a reply instantaneously, causality is not violated for him because he got a message and replied; a linear time process. The sender doesn’t violate his causality because he necessarily receives the reply after he sent the original message. The confusing part is this: to an outside observer that is not part of the conversation, it is possible to WITNESS the receiver get a message and reply before the sender sends it. While many physicists claim this is still fine and dandy, they often obfuscate the problem based on this idea such that you could convince yourself a problem arises.
However, remember how I noted that the sender and receiver observe that the message and its reply are sent after they receive them? And we were fine with that? Good. In fact, that is the entire situation. Regardless of velocity, both general and special relativity state that all events that happen in the same location in a given reference frame are causally linked. Meaning, that to the sender, he can never receive a reply before he sends the message; they send it, they know the other side receives it right away, then (again, regardless of reference frame) a small amount of time passes while the other side makes the reply, then the reply is sent and the sender receives it necessarily after sending the initial; in all reference frames). The fact that it is possible to be in a frame where it would seem like the reply is sent before the message is irrelevant.
Let me give an example, the speed of sound is fixed for given atmospheric temperature and pressure. We know the speed of light is faster. Imagine you had a device that made a loud bang when you turned it on and it emitted a radio signal at the same time that turned on another similar device that you know (you know!) could only be turned on by the first device. In theory, you could be in a reference frame where you hear the bang of the second device before the bang of the first. Does this mean the second one turned on before it was told to? No, that’s just silly because we know the radio signal travels faster. The observer is just hearing the irrelevant bangs, where the radio information is what should be focused on. In essence, our situation is the same (I know the relativistic differences, but the underlying point of the metaphor remains valid). For any communication, FTL or instantaneous, it is impossible for the sender to receive a reply before sending the initial message (and I challenge anyone to give me an example contradicting that statement that is both understandable to the layman and does not rely on any other posts (it’s easy to cite another post and avoid giving the logical consideration that this requires)); that is, it is impossible unless you were to disregard a fundamental concept of relativity – an event that occurs in the same location as another but at a later time in one inertial reference frame, occurs at a later time in all inertial reference frames.
To sum up the main point: in order for instantaneous communication to violate causality, you can boil it down to the scenario where a recipient of an initial message must send a reply BEFORE he receives the message, and it must be true for an observer in the recipient’s inertial frame. An observer in any other frame is essentially just hearing the bangs but missing the information (refer to my example above).
@Dan: I agree completely with you. And your interpretation is almost exactly what my thought process was. Again this has to do with the fact that the actual time between the messages, recieved and sent, no matter how small, won’t violate causality. It seems to me (I’m probably wong, and please correct me if I am!) like the when it seems if it violates causality is from the difference in ship-time, since the time on one space ship will move faster, and consequently will receive a message at a ship-time of say 13:00 and the the message has in fact been sent a few after from the other space ship, say at 17:00 ship time. The messagges are time stamped to make this easier to keep track of (You need to assume a third observer for this to work)
Murdakah,
In your first comment, you imagined that the ships were taking off from two stationary planets. I would say it’s pretty much impossible for two planets to be stationary relative to each other, especially if they’re that far apart. But as to talking about the ship’s travel time, my memory of the Lorentz equations is a bit rusty, and I don’t have time to sit down and work with them just now, but I’m sure that would help here. Give me a day and I’ll get back to you.
In your second comment, where you went wrong is in saying one ship’s clock is faster than the other. What actually happens is that each ship’s occupants see the other ship as being slow. And they’re both right. Click through this link from the article (under the second diagram: “The details of why can be found”) to read about that, but in a nutshell our old friends Alice and Bob are moving away from each other. After a while, if you ask Bob the time, he’ll tell you “it’s t=7 here, which means it’s only t=5 for Alice right now.” Hop in your Tardis to see Alice, and sure enough it’s only t=5 there. But she’ll point out that it’s only t=3 for Bob. Tardis back to Bob, and yep, t=3. Say hi to your past self while you’re there.
Dan,
The problem with instantaneous communication is that there’s no such thing as instantaneous, because there’s no grand, universal now. Time is a localized phenomenon, so there’s only “here-and-now,” never “there-and-now.” This isn’t just physicists getting confused because it takes time for the light to travel from an event to our eyes (I’d like to think we’re a little smarter than that), this is (to quote that article I linked) “literal and physically real.”
@Alasdair, You’re right, I was being overly simplistic. Physicists are much smarter than that. However, while it is true that to any observer, the concept of now is an entirely local phenomenon, one can still have something that is instantaneous the way I defined it. Let me offer 2 separate reasons.
First (and I think this is the more understandable reason), the concept of a “local now” is entirely based on the principle that the fastest possible speed at which information can travel is light; not because of our ability to observe something, but because of the relativistic and causal effects that apply when sending information at or near the speed of light. If you pay close attention to the original progression of logical thought surrounding relativity, you see that the idea that events outside each other’s light-cones cannot be causally linked spawns from this principle AND it (the part involving the word “causality”) is only applicable to scenarios where information does not travel faster. Thus, if we start with that principle as one of our premises, it’s not surprising that we find instantaneous communication to be meaningless and FTL communication to be impossible. It is a case of “let f(x) be valid over [0,A]; determine validity of f(B>A); function is invalid”. And before you say “physicists are smarter than that”, no they aren’t. There are MANY examples in the history of science where blatant logic has been ignored (a recent, but slightly poor example is believing in the existence of magnetic monopoles, which heavily relies on div(curl(vector_potential)) != 0, which is opposite a mathematical identity).
In fact, the concept of “now” being localized is a special case of a more generalized idea. Whatever the fastest possible speed that information can be sent at, the now for anything outside of this cone cannot be determined. If you receive a message and you know (hypothetically) that it was sent instantaneously, then you CAN deduce that wherever the sender is and whatever time his watch says, at that very instant, his finger is on the send button (I will elaborate on why his now is your now in reason 2). This is, in a way, true for any speed of information.
Aside: Yes, it is true that for non-instantaneous messages, when you receive the message, it is impossible to determine what the sender’s watch might say, even if a time-stamp is included (excepting cases where you can predict their trajectory), but you can always be sure that at some point in your and his proper pasts, his finger was on the send button (which necessarily preserves causality).
Thus, you can have instantaneous communication because the localization of “now” updates with the fastest speed of information transfer.
Aside: Yes, I know relativistic effects still apply. And as long as an observer induces velocity through the EM force OR is in part composed of EM fields when moving, they will continue to experience relativistic effects near the speed of light. But for the record, that has no significant effect on communication if the information is not bounded by c.
Reason 2: This may be a little ill-presented, but I appreciate the patience you’re giving it. Instantaneous communication is independent of what both parties’ “now” is. I’ll begin with some meaningless tautologies. Everything that exists in the universe exists in the universe. The exact state of each thing that exists in the universe (knowable/unknowable/entangled/etc.) at any arbitrary instant of time, for a specific observer, must exist exactly at that instant of time (otherwise the thing doesn’t exist). From these tautologies alone, I can conclude that regardless of what our separate “nows” might be, if you exist in the universe (even if I cannot possible know of your existence), then at my “now” (which I define as an exact instant of time, not an infinitesimal time step), you must exist in some form and as an exact state (which I might never be able to determine) simply because you exist, and a time-step of 0 is Lorentz and many other kinds of invariant. I can call the state you exist in at my now, “your now” because I know that regardless how time plays out after or before that point, at that point it is your present (i.e. now). Thus, there is, in fact, a “There-and-now”; it’s just that “now” can only refer to my now, which I can artificially impose on you.
Now, because I can impose my now on any arbitrary existing location (by virtue of its existence), had I means of sending information instantaneously, I would be able to send it to said location at my imposed “now”, which for all intents and purposes, the receiver would consider their “now” (even if it is different). Furthermore, if you subscribe to the idea that the proper time of anything can only progress forward (a necessary criterion when developing all cosmologies), then we have essentially linked the progression of time and causality of the two locations. While time may still progress at different rates, it must now inevitably progress in the same direction. Thus, a response might not be received instantaneously, but since your time and my time must move in the same direction, I can no longer receive a response before I send my initial message; thus, preserving causality and allowing me to say “There and now”.
If you review the procedure for defining events as space-like (the kind where “now” becomes blurry), you can observe that the “now” of two locations is impossible to determine because of the lack of a causal link between them, and there is no causal link because of the limitations imposed by the speed of light (the effects of relativity only build upon those limitations). Thus, in a hypothetical universe where I managed to send information instantaneously, the definitions describing where now is broaden enough to allow me to say that the exact moment I send the message and you receive it represents a “now” that we were lucky enough to share.
If you happen to have a counter-point, I’d love to read it. I’m finding this to be quite fun (in an educational way).
PS, your example was flawed. With Alice and Bob, your key word was that each “sees” the other ship’s clock as moving slower, but that’s as much an effect of light itself as relativity. The clocks might “seem” to say one thing, but in reality, at a given instant, they would both show times that are non-paradoxical (probably the same thing if they both underwent the same acceleration ala general relativity).
@Alasdair: I see what you mean but for the sake of the experiment, just assume the planets are stationary. Secondly, what about the effects of time dilation? An atom clock in the ship moving faster would literally count slower, and the one moving slower will “tick” faster. Every thing that I’ve read seems to indicate that time dilation is a litteral effect, rather than an illusion. At least, that is what everyone believes.
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People keep getting something confused: The speed of light is the fastest possible speed BECAUSE of special relatavistic effects, not the other way around.
What it boils down to is this: physicists were solving an equation to use fundamental constants to determine the speed of light relative to an arbitrary frame of reference … and the relative velocity of the arbitrary frame of reference cancelled out. The equation that defined the speed was solely dependent on constants. So reference and velocity don’t change it.
That means that if I hold a flashlight in one hand the photons will travel away from me at c. But if I aim a gun in the same direction and fire … from the perspective of the bullet the photons will STILL be travelling away from it at c.
Let’s say it was a super special magical bullet that travelled at 200,792,456.2 m/s
This does not mean that the photons would travel 99,000,456.2 relative to the bullet … instead the bullet would observe the bullets to be travelling away;
there is no violation between them. As relativity said no object with Mass can exceed the speed of light. It never say there is ways u can transmit information faster than the speed of light as in quantum entanglement. In fact quantum entanglement can be used to proof the validity of relativity theory eg time dilation,
How can the universe be said to have no boundary and/or be of infinite size shen it started at a small size, and has not yet (or ever) expanded for an infinite amount of time?
Irrespective of whether the metric expansion of space is effectively faster than light (us it?)
If the universe is expanding superluminally, since no instantaneous action can have an effect faster than the speed of light, you never interact with the “boundary” of the universe in any way. It is therefore always retreating away from any observer, save one on the other side of the expansion, but this doesn’t really help since there can’t be anyone on the other side since 4-D spacetime does not exist yet. It might be possible for “stuff” to interact on the other side of the boundary with each other, but not across it. It’s the same as during the big bang. We can never know what happened at time < 0 , but we can observe some of what happened after t=0, which is where we are now.
At least, that's what I think.
If this is true:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/150207-chinese-physicists-measure-speed-of-einsteins-spooky-action-at-a-distance-at-least-10000-times-faster-than-light
Then:
If you and I each have one of a pair of entangled particles, would I know when yours changes state because mine would do likewise at exactly the same time? I don’t need to know the nature of the change, I just need to know a change happened. If you took a trip to Neptune, and we agreed that upon your safe arrival you would change the state of your particle, then would I know exactly when you arrived instead of waiting 4 hours for your electronic transmission?
@Tinman45
Nope! There’s no way to transmit information using entanglement. Entanglement is basically a kind of correlation (there’s no spooky action-at-a-distance). There’s a post that talks about that in a lot more detail here.
Signaling or “information transer” is the words game. Wave function (non-relativistic qm) defines the farth particles instantly. Just as the Newtonian gravitation. So the physicists were so decisive in non material wave function nature. This impossible feature was named nonlocality.People who does not believe in the “impossible”, search for some superluminal wave function(not the particle) velocity that does not contradict the limited signal velocity of the particles.
The Theory of Relativity or the “Block Universe” concept is only valid between -c and c.
Special Relativity (SR) and Lorentz Ether Theory (LET) produce the exact same equations. The Lorentz Transforms used to produce your Minkowski Diagrams comes from LET and SR adopted it.
I have been a physicist studying this issue for years. No one in the physics community can scientifically say that either interpretation is wrong because both produce the exact same mathematics. Without a difference in mathematics no experiment can tell the difference. I can show you some comments written by physicists on this issue.
With SR and LET the principle of Relativity holds for all values -c to c. However, LET sets one reference frame as “universal.” That is all times, length contractions, and simultaneity occurs relative to that frame. It can be shown with LET that since ALL of those are true for this single frame we can translate these to all other frames for values less than or equal to c claiming any other frame can mathematically become an equally valid reference frame (the transforms are more complex but consistent). I believe this becomes what some call the a “hyperbolic Minkowski coordinates” which are still valid coordinates. In LET at speeds greater than c the principle of relativity breaks down. That is you can tell which reference frame is the “universal frame/preferred frame” at speeds c or greater (if you could ever observe from that position!).
Here is some math:
In both LET and SR you can use a triangle to show that:
t rate = t’/t = (1-(v/c)^2)^.5 for SR
t rate = c’/c = (1-(v/c)^2)^.5 for LET
I am defining t rate = gamma
Both results are identical as the observable t’ is the same:
c’/c * t = t’ and c/c * t’ = t’
(because of the slowdown in time c’ becomes c in LET in the moving frame also).
Likewise I have derived all of SR/LET with the Doppler Shift Equations:
Classically (v away is positive in the form below):
fms = f * 1/(1+v/c)
fmo = f * (1-v/c)
Using LET then:
fms = f * gamma/(1+v/c) = f * (t rate)/(1+v/c)
fmo = f * (1-v/c)/gamma = f * (1-v/c)/(t rate)
Notice that the two situations above are completely different mechanistically.
It can be shown that:
fms = fmo = ((1-v/c)/(1+v/c))^.5 = Relativistic Doppler Shift in SR (just input gamma and do the math)
The exact same analysis can be done for wavelengths showing that f*wl = c (in either SR or LET).
Simultaneity:
fms = fmo = f * (1-v/c)/gamma (either theory)
In either theory given a certain value of f that value is proportional to time. That is I can set my clock to tick with a given frequency in my own frame (frequency = cycles/time so I can say 100 cycles of a beam = 1 s). How that ticking appears in another frame will then work through the Doppler Shift. That is:
t’ = t * (1+v/c) / gamma
Also c t = x for light propagation for either case.
t’ = (t + t*v/c)/gamma = (t + v x /c^2)/gamma (SR/LET t Lorentz Transform)
Likewise (I can also set distance to inverse wavelengths wl = distance/cycle so I want cycles/distance just like I had cycles/time for f):
wl’ = wl * gamma/(1+v/c) which means: x’ = x * (1+v/c)/gamma = (x + vx/c)/gamma
= (x + v t)/gamma (SR/LET x Lorentz transform)
BOTH simultaneity equations are derived from LET. Actually Lorentz came up with the transform first before Einstein (in 1904).
With LET there is a symmetry that is formed. However, it differs because the net effect is ONE frame undergoes simultaneity, length contraction, and time dilation. Instead of all frames gong under time dilation and simultaneity in SR. These effects work out perfectly to transform all frames from -c to c into equally valid reference frames.
However, the result of this would be a breakdown of the principle of relativity for values greater than c.
LET is internally consistent as is SR for values from -c to c. They predict the exact same thing. It is a philosophical matter on which one is chosen as no practical experiment can tell the difference between the two because the math is the same. In LET Minkowski coordinates your transform at a speed greater than c is not valid. Any object traveling at a speed greater than c would chase down its own light or waves it already transmitted. In a sense some of its own light would travel backwards. Just like a pilot traveling faster than the speed of sound can chase down his own sound waves (like he is chasing down his own past). Time is moving backwards but what time? In LET there is an asymmetry. However, with LET you cannot claim that the universe is also traveling faster than light so its light would not travel backwards for any other observer. There is simply a breakdown in the principle of relativity at speeds greater than c in LET. However, both theories predict speeds greater than c are not possible (both theories can accommodate a form of General Relativity that is mathematically similar).
SR is preferred over LET because LET invokes the existence of a preferred frame that simply doesn’t matter for any speed –c to c. The very frame work of LET easily leads to this result as it did when the two Doppler Shift Equations became equal. I have never found anything ad hoc about it (early on Lorentz did add some ad hoc terms but that was because he didn’t fully understand it yet). However, unless you can move at a speed greater than c the “universal frame is superfluous.”
SR is not valid at speeds greater than c and GR is not valid all the way to the center of a singularity. These may very well be short comings of our mathematical models as consistent alternatives could (or do) exist. However, again the extra complexity is superfluous until some experiment can prove or disprove it.
The “spirit of relativity” is only valid within tested ranges of c and should not be taken as cannon outside of these values.
Here is a explanation I found given by John Bell of what I said (showing that it is not a crackpot idea).
“A little later in the same BBC interview, Bell suggested that a preferred frame of reference might help to explain nonlocality and entanglement.
[Davies] Bell’s inequality is, as I understand it, rooted in two assumptions: the first is what we might call objective reality – the reality of the external world, independent of our observations; the second is locality, or non-separability, or no faster-than-light signalling. Now, Aspect’s experiment appears to indicate that one of these two has to go. Which of the two would you like to hang on to?
[Bell] Well, you see, I don’t really know. For me it’s not something where I have a solution to sell! For me it’s a dilemma. I think it’s a deep dilemma, and the resolution of it will not be trivial; it will require a substantial change in the way we look at things. But I would say that the cheapest resolution is something like going back to relativity as it was before Einstein, when people like Lorentz and Poincare thought that there was an aether – a preferred frame of reference – but that our measuring instruments were distorted by motion in such a way that we could not detect motion through the aether. Now, in that way you can imagine that there is a preferred frame of reference, and in this preferred frame of reference things do go faster than light. But then in other frames of reference when they seem to go not only faster than light but backwards in time, that is an optical illusion.”
(The Ghost in the Atom, P.C.W. Davies and J. Brown, ch.3, p.48-9)
If one reference frame is “preferred” as Bell describes then non-locality can occur without backwards time travel. The principle of relativity still holds but only at speeds of v c.
Many notable physicists also have similar ideas. Unless we can travel faster than light or signal faster than light it can’t be proven with any known method. SR is just simpler because it requires fewer principles but FTL travel may not lead to causality problems (if it is possible at all).
I simply don’t know and I am a little skeptical when people try to use a SR outside of testable limits. Reality does not have to follow a law of “fewest” principles. However, there is no point in adding principles until experiments can support/refute them. There is also no point in upholding a theory in a currently untestable domain.
Well there is an obvious candidate for a preferred frame. Most of the matter in universe is moving quite slowly and has been since the BB – the CMB is highly isotropic. If anything is going to give spacetime a preferred frame it is likely to be the centre of inertia of this gently drifting cloud of mass that we call home.
I wrote too fast with my math. So I am completely consistent with the conventions of the Lorentz Transform please note that the following equation was correct:
fms = fmo = f * (1-v/c)/gamma (either theory)
However, I accidently changed the – sign to a positive sign so the following equation should have been (as I was only changing f out for t):
t’ = t * (1-v/c) / gamma
Which would make the following:
t’ = (t – t*v/c)/gamma = (t -v x /c^2)/gamma (SR/LET t Lorentz Transform)
and
x’ = (x – v t)/gamma (SR/LET x Lorentz transform)
Please pardon my mistake. Also remember mechanistically the two forms of the equations for fmo and fms are VERY different in LET. (however, the observable f and wavelength becomes the same because fms=fmo and wlms= wlmo). People sometimes suggest that LET doesn’t make sense because of simultaneity. Again I say mechanistically one Doppler Shift equation is corresponding to someone receiving a signal in a universal frame and one is not. However, BOTH become the same. Besides even in SR you CAN do all the math off of your own frame which in a way makes your frame “universal.” There is a consistent but asymmetrical mechanism. This yields a consistent but asymmetrical application of simultaneity, length contraction, time dilation, etc. Since there is no way to detect which frame is doing which internally Einstein’s genius came up with the concept of reciprocity. That reciprocity may not be the fundamental mechanism as an underlying preferred frame can fit perfectly into the math. Taking reciprocity to speeds beyond c is way beyond the scope of SR as theory or tested.
I think this concept is important because the principle of relativity could break down at some point (we have hardly cracked the surface of what we can explore even with our biggest particle accelerators) and LET is more apt to explain how this could happen. Relativity couldn’t fundamentally explain it. So values approaching c should be the focus. No one knows what happens beyond c.
It is dangerous to take any physical theory as cannon because nature is as complicated as it is not as complicated we want it to be. Scientists become almost religious with theories like relativity.
I’m going through all the user posts, but so far I conclude that The Physicist explanation is complete bunk. Or at least the explanation he gave is very and the diagrams make no sense at all.
He seems to confusing the hypothetical case of instantaneous communication with special relativity. “Instantaneous communication” implicitly means special relativity does not apply. It would be more like a case such as a worm hole connecting two distant points in space.
If The Physicist disagrees, please clarify the explanation.
These arguments are often used to try to disprove Alcubierre’s warp equations, but they only apply because the Lorentz transform is assumed to always apply. A “warp” bubble as described by Alcubierre exists outside normal space time. It carries its own inertial frame, and the Lorentz transform does not apply to space within the bubble, it only applies at the boundaries of the bubble as I understand it.
As a side question, don’t we KNOW that FTL relative velocities are possible, since black holes exist? Their gravity well effectively accelerates everything (including photons) beyond C by compressing space itself, forming the event horizon. Theoretically, given a big enough gravity well in front of a ship, and a balancing negative energy (possibly through Casimir vacuum effects between some parallel plates arrangements? [Instead of fabled “exotic matter”…]) behind it, the space inside the warp bubble and everything it contains (including light emitted by the ship) would continue to behave normally on the local frame. Once a photon inside the bubble reaches the boundary of the bubble, from it’s own perspective nothing happened, it simply exited the bubble into normal space wherever it happened to intersect at the moment it hit the boundary of the field, and continues on its merry way at C.
To a distant observer, the bubble would appear to be a single point moving faster than C, but in reality a distant observer cannot actually see anything, because the bubble exists only as a probability of it “leaking” photons across space. If the inside of the bubble emits no photons, the bubble effectively ceases to exist (a distant observer could not actually observe it).
Define: observable event A occurs simultaneously with observable event B.
If both events occur simultaneously, causality is violated?
Therefore, all observable events are ordered and sequential–but never the same order as viewed by different observers?
Sounds like a setup for all kinds of horrific existential “race conditions.”
Either way, the importance of split and isolated twin/entangled particles is not the “speed” of signal, but the “security.”
There is no set of scientific thinking or theorizing which is safe from being completely outdated when the time comes that mankind needs to move beyond it, and so it is with all of this convoluted reasoning about how you cannot have instantaneous communication because there is somehow no such thing as anything happening at the same time in two different places under the tenets of relativity theory. If anything should be a giveaway to the failings of that theory, it should be such borderline nonsensical thinking as that, akin people saying you cannot go to far in one direction because you will fall off the edge of the earth in those days when many thought the earth was flat. Of COURSE instantaneous communication is possible and doable. All you really have to do is make the same event happen in multiple locations. Period. If you are on the planet mars, and you can make the same event happen on mars, venus, and earth, without any delays intervening, then you can communicate instantaneously. The speed of light doesn’t have anything to do with it. That would ONLY have something to do with it if you were trying to communicate in some antiquated fashion like physically transporting a message in some kind of form (particles or waves) across a distance. It may be understandable that people still maintain that communication and transportation are the same thing; indeed, in earlier times, like the 19th century, if you said a location had good “communications”, that did mean both what we would call good communications today AND good transportation, as both were included in the term communications in that era. But that is no excuse for limiting your approach to the concept of instantaneous communication to an approach which equates communication with having a message TRAVEL through space. One day, that idea will be regarded as primitive; it will be to instantaneous communication what indian smoke signals are to smart phones… As soon as we figure out how to make an event happen in two places at the same time, we will be able to communicate instantaneously, creating the same sound, say, on mars and earth at the same time. Once you do that, you just make the sound into words and you’re communicating. It would be even better to have a way of converting thoughts into writing, and making the writing happen in two places at the same time. Then you could compose instantaneous letters without regard to the distance between the people communicating. Take travel across space out of your thinking about instantaneous communication. Focus on making something happen in two places. Then the rest will just be logistics. Look, if Schrödinger’s cat can exist AND not exist in one place—is it really so outlandish to suggest that the cat could meow in both one place AND another place without a difference in time? Is the one idea so wildly less credible than the other? (Don’t answer that! It is a rhetorical question…)
They need to use sub-space communication
As a human who enjoys thinking about what might lie ahead, it can feel extremely limiting to confront a future without ftl communication.
Alas, there is no physics that allows ‘ftl’ or ‘instantaneous communications’ because they simply can’t exist in our universe. That’s the price of existence. Which is a price worth paying!
But don’t despair, exploration into the cosmos will just take longer. Remember that there is always the opportunity for travelling forward in time, for those who choose to travel close to a black hole. Time tourists we might call them?
Anyway, let’s build a future together and get there first by hard work and some cracking science, enjoy the ride.