How to send a faster-than-light signal (spot Paradox)?!

Mueiz

Suppose you have a source that send a very strong straight beam of light (say laser )
Then you direct the light toward a distant wall with angle 45 degree
as show in the drawing below
Then if you rotate the source 90 degree in one second, what is the velocity of the visual effect (spot)on the wall?
According to the distances given in the drawing it must be greater than the spead of light !!!
I do not know if any one think of this before but I hope I will receive more comments and analysis about this simple case.

jtbell

How does someone standing at the top of the screen use that spot to send a signal to someone standing at the bottom of the screen?

Mueiz

He can use another spot signal to the person who hold the torch.
and the total velocity of the signal from the top to the bottom will be still greater than C

darkhorror

Why not just shine the light at both places at once?

The spots that the light shows hold no information about that point. It's just light sent from the laser to that specific point. If you want some information from that point it has to send a signal back.

Sure that point might look solid to you but it's just light being sent from the light source. Or think of you light source as a machine gun and the light as a bullet. Sure it might look like you drew a line on the wall but it's just a bunch of bullets.

Mueiz

light spot can be made a signal easly if the three person agree to use certain code . say for example the number of spots per second or the time one spot stay in the bottom.
If the distance between those person is so great (hundereds of light-years) then the spot method will be very fast compared with
other ways

darkhorror

Please reread what I said.

The light can carry information from the light source to the spot. But the spot can't carry information from one spot to the other spot unless it sends information back to the light source.

The only information is coming from the light source so you aren't sending any information from first spot and the last spot.

Q-reeus

I like to let links do the talking where possible: http://www.weburbia.com/physics/FTL.html see 3. Shadows and Light Spots. One point not mentioned there is that the 'spot' won't be a spot for very fast motion of pointer - becoming an increasingly elongated ellipse along the apparent direction of motion. Ellipticity here being ~ (2*10¹¹)/(3*10⁸) = 666 - basically a faint streak!

Mueiz

I read what you said well..but you did not read my second post
I said that if the person in the top of the screen want to send a signal to the person on the bottom He can send first a spot signal to the source the source will send a similar signal to the bottom ..the final result is a signal from the top to the bottom which is faster than light also.

Mueiz

The shape of the spot is not important we can look at the center of the spot only and let it then be ellipse or even donkey-shaped

Q-reeus

Well OK but don't rush to patent just yet - peer review can save real money!

NoDoubt

Are you serious? Please calculate the your distance from top of the wall to the light source and then add the distance from source to the bottom of the wall, and you will find out that it will actually take longer than sending a signal straight from the top of the wall to the bottom. Please do the math. Thank you.

Mueiz

This wicked wikipeadia leaves nothing for us to discover
But there is a mistake in what is said in the wikipeadia.
The effect cannot be regarded as contradiction to special relativity not because it can not transmit a signal (it can as i proved in my last post) but because of the fact that the moving spot is not a single object ..the photons of the spot seen at the top are not those seen at the bottom.

Mueiz

No need for calculation it is simply the same velocity divided by 2..because we need only additional one second to send the signal from the top to the source..the final result of the velocity(of the signal and not the spot) from the top to the bottom is 10^11m/s.

Q-reeus

Right. So great for letting a whole bunch of beings on some distant planet each know you're here more or less at the same time. But won't speed things when it comes to getting back a reply message!

Mueiz

when we become able to live in such distant planets i think we will find a way to convert signal into things and cause Einstein to become angry for breaking his laws.

darkhorror

lol why not just send it directly to the bottom? Your going to have to send the signal at the speed of light to the source. Then the source will have to send it at the speed of light to the bottom. Why have the extra step of sending it to the source why not just send it from the top directly to the bottom thus removing the extra step/distance it would have to travel to get to the source.

darkhorror

It might only take 1 second to turn your source from pointing at the top to pointing at the bottom. But once you point the source at the bottom the signal still needs to move from the source to the bottom. Just because you point the source at the bottom doesn't mean it instantly get's the message.