Given the fact that data is an electric circuit of ones and zeros, flowing at the speed of light, could we technically send information across time?

  • Kalash@feddit.ch
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    No. The universal speed limit, the speed of light, is also the limit at which information or data can be transmitted.

      • Knusper@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        11 months ago

        That’s actually not as obvious as it might sound. The thing is, as far as we know, light seems to have no mass¹. No mass means no inertia. So, if it accelerates at all, it should immediately be at infinite speed. But for some reason, it actually doesn’t go faster than what we typically call the speed of light. And we assume, that’s the case, because that’s actually the speed of causality.

        So, it’s reversed. It’s not that light is just the fastest thing and as a consequence of that, nothing can be transmitted faster. No, it’s actually that there appears to be a genuine universal speed limit and light would be going faster, if it could.

        ¹) Light is still affected by gravity, e.g. can’t escape from black holes. We do assume that gravity is just a ‘bend in spacetime’ because of that, meaning even any massless thing are affected by it, but yeah, we’re still struggling to understand what mass actually is then.

    • FelipeFelop@discuss.online
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      11 months ago

      Photons are massless and along with other massless particles are known as Luxons because they always travel at the speed of light. But notice that the speed of light varies depending on the medium that light is crossing. (Eg 300,000 m/s in a vacuum . 200,000 m/s in glass)

      So you could certainly transmit data faster than light through glass by simply transmitting it in a vacuum. But there’s little practical use except perhaps gravity wave detectors.

      There are a class of particles that always travel slower than light (unless you accelerate them with infinite energy) and also a theoretical and controversial class of particles that travel at infinite speed and would require infinite energy to slow them to light speed. (If they did exist no means has ever been postulated to detect them)