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Faster than the Speed of Light?
Lambert Dolphin, Physicist
Superman was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, he was more
powerful than a locomotive, and was said to be able to travel faster than a
speeding bullet.
The speed of a bullet (300-900 m/sec) is no big deal in these days of
supersonic aircraft and spacecraft. Yet our fastest space vehicles do no
better than one one-hundred thousandth (1:10-5) of the current speed of
light. Overcoming gravity (the weakest of all the forces of physics) still
takes lots of push and power. The moon remains many days away and the
planets many months when traveling as fast as current chemical rocket
technology allows.
The nearest star is 4 x 1017 meters away, and the current estimated size for
the entire universe is greater than that by ten orders of magnitude or so (
about 1026 meters). For a long time the hope of space travel has been left
almost entirely in the hands of the science fiction writers. Yet with God
there are invariably hidden truths waiting to be discovered that make the
best that men can imagine seem like kindergarten.
Newtonian mechanics imposes no maximum upper limit to attainable velocities
in the universe, but Einstein's relativity theory does. As charged particles
are pushed up near the present speed of light they grow heavier and more
and more energy input is required to gain a smaller and smaller increment of
increased velocity. At the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), near where I
live, electrons injected in the accelerator reach 99.999% of the velocity
of light in the first few feet of travel, and then they ride traveling radio
waves for two miles down a long evacuated pipe, gaining virtually no
additional speed, but mostly acquiring mass (and therefore energy). There is
no reason to doubt the highly successful and well-verified theory of
relativity in this regard. One can point to countless examples of proven
relativistic effects whenever charged particles are involved.
Physicist Hal Puthoff (1) has recently suggested that the ability of a
spacecraft to modify the properties of space in its immediate vicinity could
allow it to travel faster than light. This is because the speed of light is
simply a measure of two properties of the medium of space, or the vacuum,
permeability and permittivity. It has been tacitly assumed by some
theoreticians that the speed of light might be a measure not only of the
electrical properties of space, but also the mechanical properties of space
as well. It turns out now that this is probably not the case!
An even very exciting possibility has now come into the light. It has long
been known that gravitational forces apparently act instantaneously over the
entire universe. Why this should be so is simply glossed over and ignored
in every generation of physics classes and in countless technical papers.
One way to understand this is to consider what is called "the classical
aberration of light"--which was discovered by Bradley in 1728. In fact,
aberration data became one of the early methods for measuring the speed of
light. Light from the sun requires 8.3 minutes to travel from the sun to the
earth during which time the sun and the earth have moved as much as 20 arc
seconds with respect to each other. Similarly light from the stars arrives
at an angle which can be as much as 20 arc seconds because the earth is
moving with respect to the stars. It is by carefully measuring these
aberration angles, and knowing the relatively velocities involved, that
Bradley made excellent and trustworthy measurements of the velocity of light
250 years ago.
However, during the time interval it takes light to travel from the sun to
the earth, the sun and the earth have kept in touch with each other "
instantaneously"--or at least very much faster than c! In fact every mass in
the universe communicates with all other masses in the universe in a time
frame that makes the present speed of light seem like the velocity of
molasses on a cold day!
Astronomer Tom Flandern has recently detailed all the evidence that shows
that gravitational forces, unlike light, operate with no measurable
aberration! (2) But Van Flandern shows that there are sound reasons for
believing that the "speed of gravity" is not infinite. By carefully studying
the observable data Van Flandern now concludes that the speed of gravity is
greater than or equal to the present speed of light by a factor of 2 x 1010
. This velocity (6 x 1018 meters per second) turns out to be just below
Barry Setterfield's latest estimate of the speed of light everywhere in the
universe on Day Two of creation week! Setterfield arrives at this initial
velocity of light on the basis of the maximum observed Hubble constant which
gives an initial value of c turns out to be 2.54 x 1010 times the present
value. (3) Since creation week the diameter of the universe has been
constant (a static universe) and the speed of light has dropped
precipitously to its present value--following decay curves we can now piece
together with some confidence based on (a) measured values of c for the last
300 years, (b) corrections to known radioactive decay dates which go back
to approximately 2000 BC, and (c) the observed quantization of the red shift
of light from distant galaxies for the time period from creation to about
the time of Abraham.
As the universe aged, the free space permittivity and permeability increased
and c decreased--but the velocity of gravity may not be tied to the
permittivity and permeability of free space! If this the case the velocity
of gravity stayed at the original velocity of c. If we can produce a
propulsion system based on gravitational principles rather than
electromagnetic or chemical ones, we could travel at absolutely enormous
speeds--we could hope to push a space craft anywhere in the universe, very
literally at warp speeds beyond what even the Starship Enterprise could
produce!
By the way, this discussion solely relates to the physical part of the
created universe. For now we must defer discussion about how angels travel
and communicate--they are spiritual beings. And we must postpone speculation
about what we followers of Jesus the Lord may find ourselves capable of
doing when we don our new resurrection bodies (these bodies are, after all,
"not of this creation"--but spiritual bodies--see 1 Corinthians 15).
If Van Flandern and Setterfield are correct, space travel may indeed be just
around the corner! A fringe benefit is that we may at last have clues to
help us begin to understand the well-documented behavior of countless UFOs
whose velocity and acceleration behavior has thus far defied explanation by
conventional physics.
Notes:
1. JSE Review by H. E. Puthoff, Ph.D., Institute for Advanced Studies at
Austin, Austin, TX 78759. Available on my web pages, http://www.ldolphin.org/hill.html. Putoff reviews the book Synopsis of Unconventional Flying Objects, by Paul Hill, Hampton Roads Publ. Co., Charlottesville, VA, 1995 (ISBN 1-57174-027-9). The latter is an excellent if somewhat outdated analysis of possible UFO propulsion schemes by a retired a Chief Scientist-Manager at NASA's Langley Research Center.
2. Tom Van Flandern, The Speed of Gravity: What the Experiments Say, Meta
Research Bulletin, Vol. 6. No. 4, December 15, 1997. See http://www.metaresearch.org.
3. Barry Setterfield, Box 318, Blackwood 5051 SA, Australia, private
communication., 1/7/98. (Setterfield's recent report Creation and
Catastrophe is available from Koinonia House, http://www.khouse.org). Technical notes on the speed of gravity, speed of light and ZPE.
4. See also "What is Light," for a discussion on the nature of physical and
spiritual light.
5. Constancy of the Speed of Light information pages.
6. What Holds the Universe Together? | e*******n
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