Breaking the Speed of Light

Hi Guest, vermin answered you very well.

All I can add is that the only such very deep 'gravitational potential well' that exists in our own Galaxy is the supposed super-massive central black hole. And we know where that is. The quasars are spread all over the sky, where there is no evidence of deep potential wells in our Galaxy.

BTW, they do compensate for the quasar's own gravitational redshift due to it's own potential well. What's left of the redshift is then taken as cosmological redshift, i.e. meaning distance according to Hubble's law.

Jorrie

Jorrie, Vermin: Thank you for the discussion about gravity lens effect indications that quasars are extragalactic. I was looking for the possibility that the extreme red shift associated with quasars was mostly due to a time difference rather than doppler shift. My reasoning is that some objects in space may be in low density space, meaning areas where there is not much mass to slow down the clocks in that neighborhood. If quasars are indeed at the outer edge of our universe, they would be getting into space that is less and less dense as they move away from everything else. In that event, the quasar clock would continue to speed up giving the impression that they are acellerating because of an otherwise unexplained increasing red shift. I don't really know if quasars' red shifts are increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant.

I also don't know if a black hole at the center of our galaxy is sucking in all of the matter in our galaxy or if it is spitting out that matter. It does seem reasonable that in either case, gravity increases as we approach the galactic center. In that event, all clocks between us and the center of our galaxy are running slower than ours. It may be that our location on the outer fringe of the galaxy has given us more time to advance our technology. It may be that we are one of the most advanced civilizations while the others are still in the stone ages or even have dinosaurs thriving on their planets.

If my reasoning is correct, the most massive galaxies would have the slowest clocks. Since our galaxy is very large, most of the others would exhibit red shifts indicating they are moving away from us. One exception is the galaxy in Andromeda, which is half again larger than ours. Astronomers have said that Andromeda will collide with us someday, based on a violet shift in emanations from that object, indicating that it is approaching us. The violet shift might also be explained by our clock running faster than theirs. Observers in Andromeda might see a red shift when they look at us.

Hi Guest, you are welcome.

You have a few things the wrong way round, e.g.: "If quasars are indeed at the , they would be getting into space that is less and less dense as they move away from everything else."

No, quasars are found near and far and far does not mean at the "outer edge of our universe" and they are not in less dense space. Less dense space would imply gravitational a blue-shift and we observe a redshift.

As far as a distant quasar is concerned, it is at the center of its observable universe, just like we are in ours. Further, we view the distant quasars as they were billions of years ago, when the universe as whole was much denser than now.

You also wrote: "If my reasoning is correct, the most massive galaxies would have the slowest clocks. Since our galaxy is very large, most of the others would exhibit red shifts indicating they are moving away from us."

The most massive galaxies would indeed have the slowest clocks. If our galaxy is one of the largest (as you suggested), most of the other's clocks would run faster, giving blue-shifts, not redshifts! In any case, gravitational redshifts of the galaxies are tiny compared to the observed huge cosmological redshifts for very distant galaxies.

Lastly, the Milky Way and Andromeda have more or less the same total mass, so this could not be the cause of the observed blue shift. According to Wikipedia's Andromeda Galaxy: "Current mass estimates for the Andromeda halo (including dark matter) give a value of approximately 1.23 × 10¹² M_☉^[18] (or 1.2 million million solar masses) compared to 1.9 × 10¹² M_☉ for the Milky Way. Thus M31 may be less massive than our own galaxy, although the error range is still too large to say for certain."

Jorrie

Thanks, Jorrie, for catching me up to more recent cosmic information. I've been spending most of my time recently working on alternate power projects. The last I heard about quasars was that they were at the outer limits and that they all had extreme red shifts due to their acelleration at the time of the big bang. You might recognize this as 1980's technology. I have purchased a copy of the book "Relativity 4 Engineers" and I'm looking forward to reading it.

My astronomy books also might be outdated. The ones I have state that Andromeda is more massive than ours, but some of those books date from the 70's.

My reversal of red shift and blue shift might seem illogical, but I will send an analogy when I can get it sketched as a drawing. I also have a procedure in mind where I can possibly measure the time shift. I will pass a gravity wave over a stable oscillator and measure the phase shift. I'm expecting a time slowdown as the leading edge of the gravity wave compresses the space before it, and a time speedup as the trailing edge of the gravity wave depletes the space behind it. I really don't know which directions the shifts will take or how much the time shift will be.

I'll let you know the results if I can really measure it.

Wally

Good luck on the measurement. Just one thing... Space isn't being compressed in front and depleted behind. Whatever mass you use, simply bends space-time. So you will be moving your oscillator through less bent - to more bent - to less bent space. And that bend? Remember that's a three-dimensional bend, not two.

Hi Wally.

You are talking about "gravity waves". What do you mean by that?

It surely cannot be 'gravitational waves', because you cannot generate such a wave. BTW, if you know how to make one, the LIGO team at Caltech will be VERY interested. They need some to test their detectors.

Jorrie

Jorrie: My gravity wave is probably nothing like the gravitational wave you're referring to. I will need to read your book "Relativity 4 Engineers" in more detail to understand the real gravitational waves. Also, as a side note to Vermin, when I speak of compressing and deleting space, it is only a shortcut in my way of thinking to accomplish a test.

I have initiated construction of a phantom mass generator that I hope will have the effect of countering Earth's gravity. It will be part of a light-weight levitating vehicle intended to replace automobiles with their multitude of parts and high cost. The technology has been around for several decades. I'm trying to improve it. With the proper power source, it could also be used for a 1 G space travel vehicle.

I've had only a little time to scan the book "Relativity 4 Engineers." I'm sure I will learn much from it. My background is payload engineer for rocket studies of the ionosphere. I didn't learn any astrophysics from the American, European, and Asian scientists I worked with, but I did learn a different way of thinking and problem solving. It's made my world a much more interesting place.

I tend to invent words and phrases for things I don't understand. I need to study your book to discover the proper phraseology. From comments by you and Vermin and from what I have read in the book, it appears that I'm on the right track.

I would like to see some applications to real space travel using the mathematics in your book. My indications are that 1G acceleration will get us to the moon as a day trip and to Mars in two or three weeks. It should be much more comfortable to travel at 1G acceleration and deceleration.

Wally

Hi Wally.

Yes, a 'long-playing' 1g propulsion system would be a wonderful invention.

I'm however skeptical as to the feasibility of such a device. Mother Earth does that continuously (providing 1g acceleration), but think about the mass-energy of Earth!

But then, who knows what may surface...

Jorrie

Why stop at 1g: if you want to go a bit further a field in a reasonable time frame you've got to really up the ante (anti?). First off imagine that you had a rocket powerful enough to accelerate the earth at 2g: if you stood "on the ceiling" in a building at the bottom of this "rocket" you'd experience exactly 1g.

Extending this idea what we need to do is grab a small piece of neutron star and put it in orbit around the sun: you then build the rocket with the mass in the nose and the passengers in a huge lift initially at the bottom, so that the occupants experience 1 g. Now as you gradually increase the acceleration you move the lift closer to the mass in the nose. Once you reach the optimum acceleration the lift stops and the passengers move into the living accommodation. Of course if the power fails for any reason you get squished. When you reach the halfway point of the journey you have to move the lift away from the mass whilst reducing the acceleration, and at the point when you're in free fall you turn the whole thing around and start to increase the deceleration whilst moving the lift back towards the mass. Most of the second half of the journey is spent in constant deceleration.

The picture is the gravitational field generated with a lump of neutron star far out to the left and a constant acceleration of 30 g. the whole shape is rotated about a horizontal (from C to D) axis.

Key to colours:

White less than 0.2 g
Blue 0.2 to 0.9 g
green 0.9 to 1.1 g
salmon 1.1 to 2 g
yellow 2 to 3 g
red 3 to 4 g

The whole thing is scalable so: in a small ship a single passenger might sit with his head just above A and his feet below B; he would be being squashed up from the bottom and down from the top. Or he might sit with his feet at C and head at D in which case he would be being stretched.

But, it would be much more fun with a huge ship with living accommodation all round the area with approximately 1g. If you wanted to get from A to B you could jump through a hole in the floor and should just about get to the other side before you came to rest (relatively). If you wanted to get from C to D you would need to climb "up" towards the centre where you would reach a room in which you could jump off the floor onto the ceiling (making sure to avoid the people shooting past from A to B), you would then climb "down" to D. Finally at C the force is away from the centre and at A it is towards the centre, so, we would need Escher to design the stairs/corridor from C to A.

Hi Randall.

Quite imaginative!

But why do you want to waste that enormous amounts of energy by dragging a piece of neutron star with you? Acceleration of 1g or perhaps 2g does quite an adequate job. One reaches some 0.95c to 0.98c in one year and you are really going places then. Your 20g monster (with it's gross inefficiency) is not going to get you there much quicker...

Jorrie

Hi Jorrie,

Well Wally and you started it: I just figured that if we had an almost infinite amount of free energy I would like to play around in those strangely changing gravitational fields.

Randall

When you're discussing Breaking Lightspeed....I'm hoping you're not referring to my band....right?????

Rod

Lightspeed

www.lightspeedmusic.com

www.myspace.com/lightspeedband