- #1
Vikrant94
- 8
- 0
Hi, I was reading the thread previously posted on faster than light, I don't know why it's been locked. I didn't understand this myself. What does it mean to say there seem to be ways for something to go faster than light... but not convey information?
What about this arrangement: Consider two rods, intersecting at their midpoint, making an angle [tex]\theta[/tex]0with each other. If one rod is held fixed along the x-axis, and other rod moves down with a constant speed v0 (less than c) speed (without changing its slope), we find that the point where they meet moves with a speed v=v0[b/h] (see figure), which can be adjusted arbitrarily, until v is more than c. Can't we transfer information this way?
Also.. isn't something to be considered about the nature of the rods in these cases? For example, imagine two people, P and Q, standing 1 kilometer apart. A rigid rod, 1 km long, connects them. P fires a signal (at c) towards Q. If he nudges this ideal rigid rod, Q will feel the nudge immediately, thus knowing a signal has been sent, before the signal arrives! I think what is overlooked is that anything is made up of atoms, held together by various forces, so there is always a time delay in "maintaining rigidity", that is, moving a long rod at one end means for some time, its length will change, or the information will be transferred through some sort of wave, whose speed must be <= c. But this length need not be 1 km, it could be the width of a proton even, which is another way of showing maybe the invalidity of the rigid particle nature of any elementary particle?
What about this arrangement: Consider two rods, intersecting at their midpoint, making an angle [tex]\theta[/tex]0with each other. If one rod is held fixed along the x-axis, and other rod moves down with a constant speed v0 (less than c) speed (without changing its slope), we find that the point where they meet moves with a speed v=v0[b/h] (see figure), which can be adjusted arbitrarily, until v is more than c. Can't we transfer information this way?
Also.. isn't something to be considered about the nature of the rods in these cases? For example, imagine two people, P and Q, standing 1 kilometer apart. A rigid rod, 1 km long, connects them. P fires a signal (at c) towards Q. If he nudges this ideal rigid rod, Q will feel the nudge immediately, thus knowing a signal has been sent, before the signal arrives! I think what is overlooked is that anything is made up of atoms, held together by various forces, so there is always a time delay in "maintaining rigidity", that is, moving a long rod at one end means for some time, its length will change, or the information will be transferred through some sort of wave, whose speed must be <= c. But this length need not be 1 km, it could be the width of a proton even, which is another way of showing maybe the invalidity of the rigid particle nature of any elementary particle?