Travel faster than the speed of light

Blog 20151014 Travel faster than the speed of light

Luis writes:

- Is faster-than-c space travel possible? Can you envision some way of utilizing the aether to achieve velocities of > 300,000 km/s?

- Do you see humanity ever leaving the solar system, or are we "stranded" in orbit around Sol?

[GB: The fastest spaceship currently is the Voyager 1, which reaches velocities of about 17 km/s. It would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. Even at c, that would take 4 years. Velocities of microcosms are dependent on accelerations. Thus, in perfectly empty space, any acceleration greater than zero would produce ever-increasing velocities. However, the amount of fuel necessary to reach c, even if nuclear, would be enormous, probably prohibitive for any useful payload. Then too, we know that space is not perfectly empty (aether particles, electrons, atoms, molecules, dust clouds, and potentially lethal meteorites), so the macrocosm always produces resistance to “ever-increasing velocities.” The resistance would produce a “terminal velocity” like the one we observe in Earth’s gravitational field (about 122 mph [54 m/s] for skydivers in free fall). I doubt if anyone knows what the terminal velocity would be for interstellar travel, but it would not have anything to do with the velocity of light. Light is wave motion in the aether medium in the same way that sound is wave motion in the atmospheric medium. Like the velocity of sound, there is no reason to believe that the velocity of light poses a barrier to velocities that do not use electromagnetism for propulsion.

Could aether be used to attain greater than c velocities? Aether propulsion occurs whenever gravitation is involved. That is, after all, what pushes us down the mountain when we ski. It also is what current spaceships do when they get the “slingshot effect” produced by the gravitational field of other planets. But, as we explained in our NGT paper, aether pressure increases with distance from baryonic matter. It is thus mostly a macrocosmic effect dependent on pressure differences, which would be minimal in interstellar space. One could speculate on the possibility of producing a sort of “aether vacuum” at the nose of a spaceship, thus pushing the spaceship forward. Aside from the great energy required, I cannot imagine what kind of propeller could do that very efficiently. I speculate that aether particles are so small (10^-48 cm) that most of them would penetrate any kind of baryonic matter that was used. The few that did not penetrate would be slowed down just as they are at the Earth’s surface, but I doubt that the decrease in aether particle velocity and resulting pressure reduction would be significant.

So I think we will be stuck with old Sol until it dies in 5 billion years. Travel to other planets? Maybe, but why leave? It’s pretty good right here.]