You can't travel faster than light
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Xian-Luc Picard
Space Marshal
Since nobody replied to you, yes, that is correct. Photons lack mass which allows them to travel at the "speed of light". In fact, any particle that lacks mass will inherently travel at that speed relative to you and I. To the particle, however, no time passes; from it's point of view, it travels instantaneously from it's origin to every destination along it's path *because* it is traveling at the speed of light. Physics is FUN!
The reason only photons can travel the speed of light is because they are the only particle that lacks mass. The reason nothing else can travel FTL is that the final acceleration would require an amount of that asymptotically approaches infinity.
Excluding things like worm holes (like what jump points sound like in SC lore) and warp drive and other FTL ideas that use a frame of reference trick to travel more distance than light travels you are left with using a special theory of relativity framework. The problem with both that framework is that as velocity increases to the point where time dilation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor) mass goes up in the same way. So your ship that could accelerate at 1G drops to 1/2G as the apparent mass doubles and that keeps going. So the last tiny acceleration from 0.9999999999c to 1c would take a near an acceleration force near infinity.
Even if we developed engines that can take us to say 80% of the speed of light the cost benefit of price for fuel over shorter trips might still make the better flight plan to boost up to some place between 20% or 50% and coast because you would burn all your profit in fuel if you went max speed.
This is mostly what I remember from physics + following some sci-fi things down a wiki link chain.
Excluding things like worm holes (like what jump points sound like in SC lore) and warp drive and other FTL ideas that use a frame of reference trick to travel more distance than light travels you are left with using a special theory of relativity framework. The problem with both that framework is that as velocity increases to the point where time dilation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor) mass goes up in the same way. So your ship that could accelerate at 1G drops to 1/2G as the apparent mass doubles and that keeps going. So the last tiny acceleration from 0.9999999999c to 1c would take a near an acceleration force near infinity.
Even if we developed engines that can take us to say 80% of the speed of light the cost benefit of price for fuel over shorter trips might still make the better flight plan to boost up to some place between 20% or 50% and coast because you would burn all your profit in fuel if you went max speed.
This is mostly what I remember from physics + following some sci-fi things down a wiki link chain.
its simple really. everything except photons (which is light) has mass and requires a certain amount of energy to get it moving. the faster the object moves the "heavier" it becomes and the more energy it takes to make it go faster. to reach the speed of light you need infinite energy to get an infinitely heavy object to go that fast.
a photon does not have mass so it can go that fast. lets not forget how time itself changes to as you get close to the speed of light and all that... thats a whole other thread in and of itself.
a photon does not have mass so it can go that fast. lets not forget how time itself changes to as you get close to the speed of light and all that... thats a whole other thread in and of itself.
I love these kinds of conversations.
I am no physicist and I think I will never have a useful understanding of it but then again, I am eager to learn :)
Let me pose a question.
We have reproduced light speed particles from one static point to another.
Say those particles were sent out orbiting the planet and light speed is achieved, is that achieved by looking at it from a static spot on the earth's ground or from a static point in space where we can also account for the earth's rotation to add or subtract the speed of rotation?
Secondly. Science has always been based on theories and experimenting to prove or disprove them.
It makes science the biggest guessing game of all.
If our theories are based on a misunderstanding, which happened countless of times in the recorded (and unrecorded) past we will only know once a better "truth" or "mistruth" has been established.
Will we really get to the bottom of how the universe and all therein works? We came a long way, but how much of it is really true?
I am no physicist and I think I will never have a useful understanding of it but then again, I am eager to learn :)
Let me pose a question.
We have reproduced light speed particles from one static point to another.
Say those particles were sent out orbiting the planet and light speed is achieved, is that achieved by looking at it from a static spot on the earth's ground or from a static point in space where we can also account for the earth's rotation to add or subtract the speed of rotation?
Secondly. Science has always been based on theories and experimenting to prove or disprove them.
It makes science the biggest guessing game of all.
If our theories are based on a misunderstanding, which happened countless of times in the recorded (and unrecorded) past we will only know once a better "truth" or "mistruth" has been established.
Will we really get to the bottom of how the universe and all therein works? We came a long way, but how much of it is really true?
DarthMatter
Space Marshal
I'll start with the second question because it's easier.
If all or most of our understanding is based on flawed conclusion of observation's we will come to a point where our current models clash with what we see. At that point lots of new models will be proposed and tested to find the best one, as science always have. The old models will then be used as aproximations for the parts they still explain pretty well. For example we didn't stop using Newtonic physics just because relativitstic physics was better, it's still used because it still works under the right circumstances.
Not even the introduction of quantum mechanics said that the old model's where useless, just not good enough beond a certain point. Wrong and useless are two different things.
We will probably never be able to precisely explain everything (we cretainly can't measure everything precisely, since observations require interacting and slightly changing the observed object), just gett better and better approximations. Observing something that makes every theory up to this point useless is practically impossible, since we can see that they work under at least some circumstances.
As for the first question, I'm not sure what you are asking...
If we accelerate something to the speed of light in orbit around the Earth, in what frame of reference does it have the speed of light?
Is that it?
DarthMatter
Space Marshal
I hope it's not just rambling. I tend to get lost in my own thought and wander around, while writing and might even miss to answer the question :p
Basically yes. though the question is actually twofold.
My question is based on the following proposal.
a particle is traveling between point a and b along the direction of the planet's rotation and is being observed by 2 separate observation points. Point 1 is observing from the planet surface at a point between a and b and point 2 is in space, outside of the effect of the planetary rotation.
The particle is moving at the speed of light, now i wonder which of the following is true and my question thereafter would be, why?
1. The particle, as observed from the ground is traveling at light speed thus from space it is observed traveling at the speed of light PLUS the speed of planet's rotation.
Or 2. The particle, as observed from space is traveling at the speed of light thus the planetary observation point spots the particle's movement as speed of light MINUS the speed of the planet's rotation.
Oh and don't worry, i understood the rambling quite well thanks :slight_smile:
Although now i think of it, speed of light is attained in frictionless space...?
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Goodness gracious. So much science. Can't we all just drink beer and crash ships?
Didn't I read somewhere that Neutrinos were clocked moving faster than light? I only remember this because of the big deal over Quarks a few years ago (no, not the bartender on DS9).
I mean, neutrinos do have mass, it is almost unmeasurable, but there.
Therefore, if neutrinos have mass and have been shown to go faster than light, then mass can go faster than light and Einstein can suck it cause he got the whole cosmological constant wrong also. You can't just make up stuff to balance out your equations and go "There, fixed it!". Don't even get me started on Dark Energy, that is just someone else going "There fixed it!" to make their equations work.
Imma gonna need a beer now, my head hurts.
I mean, neutrinos do have mass, it is almost unmeasurable, but there.
Therefore, if neutrinos have mass and have been shown to go faster than light, then mass can go faster than light and Einstein can suck it cause he got the whole cosmological constant wrong also. You can't just make up stuff to balance out your equations and go "There, fixed it!". Don't even get me started on Dark Energy, that is just someone else going "There fixed it!" to make their equations work.
Imma gonna need a beer now, my head hurts.
I think the answer is neither. The particle moved at the speed of light, which is constant. Both observers clock it at the speed of light. It doesn't matter that the point of origin is moving, you still can't travel faster than light.
And there are theoretical particles, tachyons, that do travel faster than light. However, the math only works if you use imaginary numbers, so that's kind of cheating.
For all practical purposes in the remotely imaginary future, you can never get close to the speed of light because you would need more energy than exists in the entire universe to do it.
As it for now science say we can't.
- I say as far as we know now we can't.
I always say something that most agree to but don't like to hear...
That is there is nothing that is imposible, you need three things to make anything posible if one of those three are missing you will fail period.
First you need the Ide for what ever you want to do, and to achieve that...
Second you need the knowledge how to do it and most likely...
Third you probably need a shitload of money as in hire/buy/employees/equipment to make it possible..
Short version:
1. The Ide
2. The knowledge
3. The money (equipement/personnel)
This is what I usually say to people who are presistand that you can not do anything you want that there are laws about physics..
But if you can achieve all those three stages you will succeed no matter what previously are known about laws of physics and,
if one is missing you fail. simple as that.
Cheer :beer::beers:
Edit: to put it in to practice.. Lets go faster than light.
1 we have the Ide
2 we lack the knowledge of how as is it of today
3 we probably could scramble the money for it
one of three is failed ... can we go faster than light? NO as it is now we lack the knowledge.. ;)
- I say as far as we know now we can't.
I always say something that most agree to but don't like to hear...
That is there is nothing that is imposible, you need three things to make anything posible if one of those three are missing you will fail period.
First you need the Ide for what ever you want to do, and to achieve that...
Second you need the knowledge how to do it and most likely...
Third you probably need a shitload of money as in hire/buy/employees/equipment to make it possible..
Short version:
1. The Ide
2. The knowledge
3. The money (equipement/personnel)
This is what I usually say to people who are presistand that you can not do anything you want that there are laws about physics..
But if you can achieve all those three stages you will succeed no matter what previously are known about laws of physics and,
if one is missing you fail. simple as that.
Cheer :beer::beers:
Edit: to put it in to practice.. Lets go faster than light.
1 we have the Ide
2 we lack the knowledge of how as is it of today
3 we probably could scramble the money for it
one of three is failed ... can we go faster than light? NO as it is now we lack the knowledge.. ;)
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But both Beer and Ships require science. So we need Science to crash ships. One could say, that crashing an Aurora into a multi-billion dollar space station whilst drunk, is the pinnacle of science.
Stop wasting your time thinking about light speed. Can one you frikkin geniuses explain to me how every time I pour a beer within 30 minutes it seems to have completely disappeared, yet there is no leak in the glass or no discernible evidence of where it went?
Friar thug states that the beer photons when poured into a glass container become unstable. Glass as we all know is transparent, since photons can pass through transparent glass then the beer photons simply passes from one plane of existence into another. hence why most good beer is shipped in dark glass bottles, to prevent the plane shift from happening.
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DarthMatter
Space Marshal
They did measure neutrinos going FTL, but the equipment was faulty. And faulty equipment being the reason for the most main-stream any scientific discovery have been don't sell papers the same way "Einstein was wrong" headlines do.
Dark energy is just the name of the force making the Universe expand. Dark is given to most things we can't see when looking at it (same with Dark matter), so it's more of a placeholder name until we can explain it better.
And most things we "make up to balance equations" are because of things we see. An equation only needs to be "re-balanced" if we find something that doesn't agree with the previous results, and we need to adapt.
DarthMatter
Space Marshal
1. You have fun when drinking (I assume) and time goes faster when you have fun. The beer takes time, it's just relative to your fun-level it seems to have vanished.
2. People have a worse sense of time going by when drunk, so it may have been longer, you just didn't notice it.
3. Is there a big hole in the top of the glass? That might be where it went... Happens to my friends all the time.
Speedkills
Admiral
Everything is made up of energy so it's plausible anything could travel at the speed of light or faster. Except my kids. They are lucky they make it to school and back in the same day.
DarthMatter
Space Marshal
No, but matter is equivalent to energy. They are not the same thing, but can be changed into each other.