Are We Alone ?

R Kym Horsell wrote:
In alt.astronomy Bast wrote:
wrote:
Amazing how the whole point of this thread continues to be missed,
that distances are FAR too great for any practical travel between
stars, even in the very unlikely event of traveling near light speed,
or of any communications. All experience so far has confirmed this.
You mean,......SO FAR
It was not that long ago the same thought about being impossible was said
about beng able to travel at speeds of over 30 miles per hour......
Until it happened.
If I have missed the point that some people willl always refuse to believe
that limits are only something thet has not been figured out yet, then you
are right.
Wait until we discover that light actually can travel faster than "C", and
it's medium is actually the "stuff" we now wrongly call "dark matter".
...
Sounds a bit speculative.
We know the speed of light in a vacuum is faster than the speed of
light in a material with a refractive index 1.
But we also know the vacuum is nowhere near empty -- there are virtual
particles, mostly electron/positron paris, jamming around any photon
trying to motor along. If you had a "real" quantum vaccum then you
might find photons moved faster.
....

Here's a classic paper on photons travelling faster than c
in a "special vacuum".

Between the plates of a Casimir device there is a volume
of -ve energy -- i.e. a quantum energy density below
the zero point energy of the (normal) vacuum.

The -ve energy space allows us to extract energy from
nowhere but also it's observed photons travel faster than c
in there.


[Yat Another Case of FTL:]
Speed of light in non-trivial vacua
Jos? I. Latorre, Pedro Pascual, Rolf Tarrach
Cited by: 148
6/3/1995
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0550321394004906
Finally, the modification of the speed of light due to Casimir plates has
been compared and related to the one due to temperature. A field-theoretical
explanation in terms of modes suggests the following physical picture of
why photons move faster between plates than in a normal vacuum, in contrast
to what happens in a heated vacuum.