[QUOTE=Brian W;769719]
Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
No they're not. You haven't been listening (or reading as the case may be). Velocities above "c" are not impossible. As a matter of fact they're quite acceptable in the terms of SR. In fact, astronomers measure relative velocities much greater than "c" nearly everyday with distant galaxies (anything with z>1). What cannot be attained in any way, shape or form for ordinary matter moving through space, is "c". There's nothing stopping matter moving with space, or outside (i.e. higher dimensions, wormholes etc) of it, traveling at whatever velocity it likes. It's the traveling through space at "c" which is the hard part.
Ok Carl, if i understand the point... scientists have clocked distant galaxies at faster than the speed of light. Therefore if one of these speed demons headed our way and passed close to us or even through us and we orbited our starship around one of the galaxies planets or suns or whatever, we would be traveling faster than the speed of light in relation to other galaxies but not faster than the speed of light in relation to the speed demon galaxy?
Brian
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No.....it is the expansion of space which is driving it at that speed, relative to our own position with that galaxy. If you were to orbit a planet in that galaxy and/or observing home from the surface, looking back towards us, we would be moving faster than "c" with respect to them. If that galaxy was in our local neighbourhood, it wouldn't be moving at the speed it does. It's not moving
through space faster than "c", it is being
carried along by space faster than "c" from our point of view. The galaxies themselves actually move through space at speeds of several 100kms relative to one another locally, sometimes upto several 1000kms in dense clusters.