Hmmm. I was trying to make it clear that I'm open to any comments on how the universe works. I wasn't trying to take one position or another.
I'm not aware of any fundamental limit on the compression that can result from a GW. Nor am I aware of any restrictions on creating a "beamed" GW...
See below.
Of course he's not traveling faster than light. He'd be traveling less far however, and from a practical perspective, traveling less far to reach the goal is just as good as traveling faster. It seems reasonable to me to compare the two trips, one undertaken before the wave has...
I wonder if initially approaching my questions this way would help give me some insight: Take two clocks that tick once each second and are located one light second apart in flat spacetime at points A and B. We can say the tick events are light-like separated in that flat spacetime region...
I hope you understand I wasn't trying to throw you, or anyone else. Nor am I trying to build a hyperdrive :-)
But I did come here wondering if I could find links to discussions of this aspect of physics - spacetime compression. I'm still working through Bill_K's link. It's pitched at...
I've worked through many simultaneity exercises in SR, and think I have a decent handle on them. I haven't looked at your link in detail yet, but it doesn't look like it's discussing what I'm interested in - changes in proper distance due to spacetime compression. The link starts off discussing...
Yes, I was/am confused :)
You don't have to avoid mathematics for me. I'm willing to dig through it.
Thanks for the link. It seems clear that proper distance decreases between the particles. The link is exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in, so again - thank you very much.
It...
Any appearance of reluctance on my part is entirely unintentional. As for not accepting what I'm being told - I'm just trying to understand what I'm being told, not disagreeing with it.
With that clarification out of the way ...
I'll do my best, but I suspect you could do it better. I'm...
To the latter question: No, not if I assume the line lies in flat space and not if it's a geodesic in curved space, but that does seem to avoid the question which asks if space is ever compressed. If I put the line on a flat rubber sheet then stretch that sheet, I have a decent analogy for the...
I probably phrased the original question poorly, but I was in fact asking about distance changes due to spacetime curvature.
Since you have phrased it well when you said: "the time for light to go from a to b for some observer is the same as knowing the distance," I can ask about LIGO the...
As I posted, I'm looking for links and information so I can understand this myself. I wasn't sure if there was some well known situation that resulted in spatial compression (around black holes or the like). Thanks for the reply. I'll take a look at the rubber sheet links. I'm already aware...
Yes, but I'm not trying to identify effects that "decrease travel time", per se. That implies an end run around lightspeed limits - and I'm not trying to do that, and I'm inclined to think it can't be done. Perhaps a boundary is involved that must be crossed that increases the total time. I'm...
Yes, I should have mentioned Lorentzian length contraction in my first post. However, that's a reduction in distance only when comparing two different frames of reference. It seems unlike what happens in dark energy/cosmological constant, which seems to increase the amount of space between two...
In my original post, I indicated I was familiar with the "Alcubierre Drive". I followed several links, but couldn't find anything that wasn't directly pointed at "Alcubierre Drive" and the problems with it - most relating to negative energy requirements and or crossing the bubbble/wave boundary...
Not really. Warp drive implies something that might usefully allow pseudo faster than light travel without locally exceeding the speed of light. I'm thinking about the more general concept of distorting spacetime to reduce the distance that light travels between two masses, in contrast to...
I'm interested in reading about the fundamental limits imposed by known physics on distorting spacetime in ways that bring two masses closer together so that speed of light travel time between them is reduced.
I'm familiar with the concept of inflation theory. I think of it as a rapid...