Faster than light not possible?

Try this... imagine a train carriage hurtling along at the speed of light and you are just a passerby watching this.
At the rear of the carriage is a chap who throws a ball to another chap at the front of the carriage; that ball is travelling faster than the speed of light.
As an observer, within the carriage, it would appear that there is just one chap throwing a ball to another chap.

There "relativity" was born

A similar thing can be seen with a carousel and two people at opposite sides throwing a ball to each other. To a viewer on the Carousel, the ball appears to go straight, but, when viewed from above, the ball travels in a curve. (corioli effect)

The Fourth dimension is time and us 3 dimensional criters see the shadow of that as "inside/ outside" (but it is both at the same instant - no beginning, no end)

yeah, imagine you're in the Batmobile with Wonderwoman.. that's pretty much the same grounds in terms of that theory's validity..

What Charvel just said plus;

Out of the millions of species on this planet, homo sapiens is unable to communicate in an intelligible way with any but their own species. Some might even debate that point.

Yet we seem to think we can communicate with so called 'alien life forms'. SETI? Ridiculous waste of time, money and brainpower. What are the chances of anything out there being at exactly the right point in its technological development to receive and/or respond to any electromagnetic signal? Out of the billions of years since the formation of the universe, the Human race has had radio technology for what, 110 years? Just seems a bit naive to me. Come to that, what if all alien life is vegetable or viral? Or pink elephants?

If life comes about so easily, then why is our entire solar system devoid of life but for here? They also spend untold amounts of cash going back to Mars again and again in the search for evidence of the potential for life in the past, present or future. It isn't there.
Then the theorists turn to a warm ocean under the ice of Europa as being the next inline for a visit. Then to Titan as being a future life bearing moon with its alternative life-friendly chemistry.

It all boils down to people being unable to accept that this is it. This is all there is. Life's a bitch and then you die etc.

Fairies and goblins is bang on.

Having said that, my bookshelves are full of science fiction. I love it, but that's what it is, fiction.

Blimey, I think I just had a bit of a rant. Sorry chaps!:-D

The B-52 would have been quite a surprise for the Germans, too!
:-D

Nope, sorry. Doesn't work like that. For one, as you approach the speed of light your mass becomes infinite. Time will adjust so that the speed of light is never exceeded.

If you are talking relative to another object, sure. a light beam going one way compared to a light beam traveling the other will add up to twice the speed of light but the point is neither in themselves will exceed it. You cannot throw the ball any faster than the speed of light in your example.

The experimental evidence for this is already out there.

erm, we can have forms of basic communication with other animals actually.

lol that's a bit generic man! Considering that the faster way of transmitting data that we have at the moment in space is light and radio waves, I reckon it's worth a try. Our first radio waves are roughly 80 light years away from our planet as we speak, not much, but it's a start.

it's all fascinating speculation, they're not gonna go nowhere anytime soon. If by 2030 they really make it to mars I'd be well impressed, not for the achievement per se, but because I expect modern society to fail way before that date.
it's obvious that our society is not ready for space exploration, simply because we can't live in peace on this planet as it is. But it's within human nature to ask questions: 1000 years ago they couldn't explain what a lightning is, so it was "god", now we have different horizons. You can't just sit back and relax, I find the research they do very fascinating, and worth spending more money than wars for sure.

It's ok, it's friday, time to hit the pub me thinks! ;-)

I disagree about human civilization destroying itself. That's an echo that reverberates through the generations past the sixties when it was hip to emote self-loathing. These subsequent generations also tend to be myopic, understandably just as any generation, without anything to compare their times with.

Humanity is far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for, and has progressed in too many positive ways that the doom-and-gloom crowd choose to ignore when forming their world views.

However, with that said, technology advancement has not only grown but accelerated over the past 100 years which makes society's response time too "laggy" to adjust and react quickly enough. Also, it will take some time to settle out as a pan-global society that largely polices itself, not out of moral or religious values (actually a negative force against stability as it's used inevitably for control by few individuals over the many) but out of economic practicality.

lawl :grin:
See what happens when you listen to pop rock groups from Georgia while posting?

two words

dee troit

Catwoman would get jealous though...

now to the point... when you can't plausably discredit the fact you resort to ridiculing it. Its an age old human trait, indicating a closed mind.
Ridicule it all you want, but you'll never change the fact that the ball has to travel faster than the carriage in order to travel from the rear to front along the carriage's line of travel.