"Ed Keane III" wrote in message om...
Sam Wormley wrote in message
...

If you ask me a good an answer to "why can't we go
faster than the speed of light" would be "because that
would mean that you would arrive somewhere before
you left".

Heads Up!! Take a look over your shoulder, and you will see that you
finnished before you began. (LOL)


Astronomer Sandy Faber points out:

"These giant telescopes, they are the only true time machines
that human beings have and they are totally faithful. There's
nothing hokey about this. You look through a giant telescope, you
get a view of a very distant region of space, and it is as though
you were a historian and could put your eye to a telescope and
actually see Hannibal crossing the Alps and all those elephants
trotting along. We are actually seeing the Universe and the
things in it behaving as they did billions of years ago".


He is using *as though* much more loosely than I would.
Yes we can see things that exist in the earliest visible moments
of the universe. No way can we see Hannibal crossing the
Alps. Not even with a perfect scope mounted on a perfect
spaceship.

Correction!!! I am on NG146 (about 2000 light years away) and I can
see old Hannibal picking his nose!


As an asside....

Ref: pgs 391-392, "The Elegant Universe", Brian Greene (1999)

"5. For the mathematically inclined reader, we note that from the
spacetime position 4-vector x = (ct, x_sub1, x_sub2, x_sub3) = ct, x_bar

Why does one need to be mathematically inclined? I snipped
a bunch of formula here but why shouldn't this be obvious to
someone who is not mathematically inclined?

This shows than an increase in an object's speed through space must be
accompanied by a decrease in dtau/dt, the latter being the object's speed
through time, i.e., time dilation.

Was that obvious to you the first time you saw it?
Do you wonder why c is a constant?

Any comments are appreciated.

-Ed Keane III

Get your old photo album out. Look at page of father, then
grandfather, etc. Have you "gone back in time" because you are
receiving old images? Of course not! Travel faster than light, and you
can look back at old photos, BUT that is all that is REALLY happening.

-Jim Greenfield 1/0

(Jim Greenfield) wrote in message om...
"Ed Keane III" wrote in message om...
Sam Wormley wrote in message
...

If you ask me a good an answer to "why can't we go
faster than the speed of light" would be "because that
would mean that you would arrive somewhere before
you left".

Heads Up!! Take a look over your shoulder, and you will see that you
finnished before you began. (LOL)


Astronomer Sandy Faber points out:

"These giant telescopes, they are the only true time machines
that human beings have and they are totally faithful. There's
nothing hokey about this. You look through a giant telescope, you
get a view of a very distant region of space, and it is as though
you were a historian and could put your eye to a telescope and
actually see Hannibal crossing the Alps and all those elephants
trotting along. We are actually seeing the Universe and the
things in it behaving as they did billions of years ago".


He is using *as though* much more loosely than I would.
Yes we can see things that exist in the earliest visible moments
of the universe. No way can we see Hannibal crossing the
Alps. Not even with a perfect scope mounted on a perfect
spaceship.

Correction!!! I am on NG146 (about 2000 light years away) and I can
see old Hannibal picking his nose!


As an asside....

Ref: pgs 391-392, "The Elegant Universe", Brian Greene (1999)

"5. For the mathematically inclined reader, we note that from the
spacetime position 4-vector x = (ct, x_sub1, x_sub2, x_sub3) = ct, x_bar

Why does one need to be mathematically inclined? I snipped
a bunch of formula here but why shouldn't this be obvious to
someone who is not mathematically inclined?

This shows than an increase in an object's speed through space must be
accompanied by a decrease in dtau/dt, the latter being the object's speed
through time, i.e., time dilation.

Was that obvious to you the first time you saw it?
Do you wonder why c is a constant?

Any comments are appreciated.

-Ed Keane III

Get your old photo album out. Look at page of father, then
grandfather, etc. Have you "gone back in time" because you are
receiving old images? Of course not! Travel faster than light, and you
can look back at old photos, BUT that is all that is REALLY happening.

-Jim Greenfield 1/0

Hello
Suppose we use a telescope and can collect light from a very distant
mirror ( like anything that reflects light). Do you think, we can
see our forefathers satnding on Earth if the morror somehowexactly
reflects the light from that time.

Ezhuthachan Gopakumar Ramakrishnan wrote in message
om...
(Jim Greenfield) wrote in message
om...
"Ed Keane III" wrote in message
om...
Sam Wormley wrote in message
...

If you ask me a good an answer to "why can't we go
faster than the speed of light" would be "because that
would mean that you would arrive somewhere before
you left".

Astronomer Sandy Faber points out:

"These giant telescopes, they are the only true time machines
that human beings have and they are totally faithful. There's
nothing hokey about this. You look through a giant telescope,
you
get a view of a very distant region of space, and it is as
though
you were a historian and could put your eye to a telescope and
actually see Hannibal crossing the Alps and all those
elephants
trotting along. We are actually seeing the Universe and the
things in it behaving as they did billions of years ago".


He is using *as though* much more loosely than I would.
Yes we can see things that exist in the earliest visible moments
of the universe. No way can we see Hannibal crossing the
Alps. Not even with a perfect scope mounted on a perfect
spaceship.

Hello
Suppose we use a telescope and can collect light from a very distant
mirror ( like anything that reflects light). Do you think, we can
see our forefathers satnding on Earth if the morror somehowexactly
reflects the light from that time.

You got me there. There are probably some interesting
calculations about how large such a scope and mirror
would have to be to actually catch enough photons to
provide the necessary information but with a good enough
scope and mirror set up you could see forefathers standing.
And Hannibal crossing the Alps.

-Ed

(Jim Greenfield) wrote in message om...
"Ed Keane III" wrote in message om...
Sam Wormley wrote in message
...

If you ask me a good an answer to "why can't we go
faster than the speed of light" would be "because that
would mean that you would arrive somewhere before
you left".

Heads Up!! Take a look over your shoulder, and you will see that you
finnished before you began. (LOL)

There was a young lady of Wight,
Who traveled much faster than light,
She departed one day,
In a relative way,
And arrived on the previous night.

In looking for this old chestnut, I actually found it
quoted by Stephen Hawking in a popular lecture. I'm not
sure why he's treating it as if it's something that really
is consistent with SR, but he seems to be.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html
(Click on "Space and Time Warps").

- Randy