Why would'nt this work?
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My mistake, that's why sound travels at the speed of light.
It's just not useful to talk about this at the level of the standard model. We are interested in the bulk behaviour of condensed matter, the fact of the matter is that you will not be able to tell that the other end of the stick has been touched until the pressure wave reaches the end. It doesn't matter if individual force carriers are moving at the speed of light because they are not moving in a single straight line. You are interest in the net velocity.
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Exactly. At the atomic level solid matter acts a lot like jello. It also helps explain why things tend to break if you push or pull on them at rates that exceed the speed of sound in that material.
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This wouldn't work, entangled particles don't work like that. They would be disentangled the moment you do anything to either particle of the entangled pair. The only time any information can be encoded onto entangled particles is when they're created.
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I very explicitly said the whole thing is slower than the speed of light (much slower even) and even pointed out why: at the most basic of levels, the way charged particles push each other without contact is the electromagnetic force, meaning photons, but the actual particles still have to move and unlike photons they do have mass so the result is way slower than the speed of light.
To disprove the idea that a push on a solid object can travel faster than the speed of light (which is what the OP put forward), pointing out that at its most basic level the whole thing relies on actually photons which traveling at the speed of light, will do it.
Going down into the complexity of the actual process, whilst interesting, isn't going to answer the OPs question in an accessible and reasonably short manner using language that most people can understand.
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The only time any information can be encoded onto entangled particles is when they’re created.
If that were the case, then we aren't really doing FTL communication, unless we manage to entangle them at a distance. No?
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- Aceticon BcS Applied Bullshit
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This is a nice example that also makes me think more questions.
- Will the hole punching be forward or backward?
- Assuming infinite deceleration, for an observer on the other end of the barn, will the barn be punched through, before or after the pole-pusher has stopped?
- For the pole-pusher, will the barn be punched through, before or after it has stopped?
Gets more interesting
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You said unfoldable not non-compressible. Your fault.
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You know what's more crazy. Electrons don't flow at the speed of light through a wire. Current is like Newtons Cradle, you push one electron in on one side and another bounces out on the other side, that happens at almost light speed. But individual electrons only travel at roughly 1cm per second trough a wire.
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it wouldn't work, because there is no unbreakable, unfoldable stick. the stick will have flex, and the force transmitted will occur much more slowly through the molecular chain of the stick than light's travel time.
reality is much more woobly and spongy than you know.
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The stick would only move at the speed of sound. Or the speed the molecules can push against each other, which is the speed of sound in that material.
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The issue is, that kind of stick wouldn't even exist. You'd have better luck with between some dwarf planet and its satellite, since the stick would break under its mere weight.
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...so the thing is that, after accounting for time dilation, light is instantaneous and perhaps better-described as the speed of causality...even a perfect stick comprising quantum-crystal wonder-material can't move before it's pushed, so you'd find that it, too, transmits information at the speed of light...
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It's a thought experiment. Of course such a stick wouldn't exist. OP's question is what laws of physics prevent this theoretical scenario from working.
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You also cannot choose the spins of entangled particles, they collapse randomly in either direction when interacted with, meaning you cannot send messages. If you can figure out how to directly influence the spin of generated subatomic particles then BAM you have FTL communication.
But you would be amazed how many obstacles the universe throws in front of you when you try to break the speed of causality. Faster than light communication isn't possible because it makes no sense when you understand it. It's like "getting answers faster than questions." It's nonsense.
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but since the pole still won’t fit it either punches holes in the barn or shatters.
Latest research is suggesting that the observer from the pole's perspective sees the far door open before the near door, basically reversing the order of events. (Assuming the barn doors close briefly around to contain the pole, and then open again to let it through. The Barn sees the entire pole momentarily inside the barn with both doors closed, the pole sees itself enter the short barn, the far door closes briefly and then opens letting the front of the pole through, then the back door closes and opens as it passes through. IE: order of events can be recorded differently for each observer without breaking causality.)
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I enjoyed a lot of the discussion in the comments
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In carrot vs stick terms, this is the most unfortunate fellow: he who can't avoid the stick.
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Stop fooling around and give Ruyi Jingu Bang back to Sun Wukong.
