Hacker News Reader

Comment by osigurdson | Hacker News Reader

Agree, but I suspect at that time the opinions regarding the impossibility of flight, though popular, must have been highly uninformed. There were no violations of long established physics to achieve flight, "only" engineering challenges to make it possible.

I still don't see any point in claiming that a given thing can never be done. What does it help? Our knowledge of the universe isn't complete and I don't think people are starving because others are thinking about warp drives.

View on HN

Plus, there were live examples of stuff flying around (birds).

I do not see anything going FTL anywhere right now.

> I do not see anything going FTL anywhere right now.

Yes, well, you wouldn’t see it, would you?

You would see it soon. Too soon.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/672472-there-was-a-young-la...

> I do not see anything going FTL anywhere right now.

Other than distant galaxies from each other.

Kind of a sad reflection of society that this comment is grayed out. In that the person downvoting it was so certain it was wrong, they didn't even stop to consider they might be the one who is wrong - and they are. [1] Galaxies are already moving away from one another at speeds greater than the speed of light. So the speed of light already has at least one asterisk there. In that nothing can be perceived as moving through space at speeds faster than light, but the expansion of the universe can happily send objects drifting apart at speeds well above the speed of light, and accelerating.

[1] - https://phys.org/news/2015-10-galaxies-faster.html

It's greyed out because it's FTL by technicality. If FTL had an appropriate name, it would be clear why it doesn't count.

Take a strong laser pointer and point it at one side of the moon. Then flick your wrist to point it at the other side. The laser just "broke the speed of light" but it didn't transfer any information so it's all good.

>> The laser just "broke the speed of light" but it didn't transfer any information so it's all good.

I don't think the laser / wrist combo is breaking any speed of light limits here.

The rate at which the universe is expanding IS FTL

Faster than light is a bit of a misnomer as it actually has nothing particularly to do with light.

It's actually "Maximum speed of information". There are things that are FTL, but nothing that carries information is.

> but nothing that carries information is.

Well, that would break causality. I believe if we ever learn how to go FTL (improbable!), it'll still force non-causality breaking. Meaning the place where you FTL'd is not your universe anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com