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About LinkBacksWhat would actually happen if you travelled the speed of light?
Would you become infinitively massive?
August 23rd, 2009, 09:02 AM
What would actually happen if you travelled the speed of light?
Would you become infinitively massive?
You couldn't travel at the speed of light.
Originally Posted by drowsy turtle
The problem with that "if" is that it requires you to violate tha laws of physics as we understand them. If you assume that these laws are violated, then we cannot use them to answer the question, and since we don't know what new laws of physics are used to allow such an event, we can't give a meaningful answer on that basis either.
BUT if you had to give an answer what would you think? Doesn't matter if its not meangingful
You would spontaneously turn into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale.
In order for you to prove that a ball will not stay stationary in mid air when you bounce it on the ground, a person would have to bounce that ball for infinity. I.e travelling at the speed of light may be possible, Einstein may be wrong. Please don't lynch me!
As good an answer as any other.
Were you to reach the speed of light you would instantaneously become pure energy and ignite into a mass of protons and various other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
That is one of the more ridiculous statements that I have every encountered.
BUT if you had to give an answer what would you think? Doesn't matter if its not meangingful
This exhibits a complete lack of comprehension of not only physics, but fundamental logic.
So, in the spirit of a truly stupid question, the correct answer is 12. Units to be supplied later.
Nonsense! Its 42.the correct answer is 12
It is 12. And you misspelled "it's". :wink:
I'd much prefer to become a bowl of petunias, thank you
Wow Dr Rocket, You must be an extremely fun person to be around!
Interesting that you choose the petunias over the whale...
...I say interesting, actually I'm just bored.
well, The petunias are obviously Omniscient. And as such, they can clearly see this thread being closed.
I find it odd that I am the only one to consider his request in earnest. It should be easy to imagine "what if this observation isn't true?" Yet at the same time you criticize theists for being unable to imagine hypotheticals (what if God doesn't exist?)
For example, if something with mass accelerated to that speed by normal means, I imagine its mass would become infinite and the universe would collapse in on it. Probably forming a dense singularity the size of a particle and...heeeeeyyyy wait a minute... :P
You must not have read my first post in this thread, Darius.
I did. I'm proposing an alternate hypothesis.
Especially if you know the back story of those petunias.Interesting that you choose the petunias over the whale...
I truly wish I knew the whole story behind the petunias.
Nonsense.
There is no such thing as infinite mass or a singularity. A singularity in cosmology is simply a surface on which the curvature tensor fails to exist. That means that it is not part of the manifold and the manifold is space-time. So a singularity is not "something" but rather the lack of something, namely a defined curvature tensor.
Similarly infinite mass represents another type of singlarity.
So now you have two completely undefined quantities and you propose to draw a conclusion on how they interact. That is simply preposterous.
I seem to have offended people by asking this question (which by the way I realise this question IS NOT possible) and im an unsure why (prehaps it is my post count).
I will not ask a "what if" question again as I see now it offends some 'high post counters' for some reason.
Are we not already travelling at the speed of light? If information could be passed across the universe at the speed of light from earth then humans don't actually need to travel at the speed of light themselves physically.
I.e. if one day we could submit information (whether it be chemical chain reactions or actual physical information as in the internet) at the speed of light then the human race will have 'got it's message' across the universe without needing to travel themselves.
Example, if we could send intelligent information that is able to somehow replicate itself to a planet 500 million light years away we could, maybe, start life on that planet. This is obviously completely out of our realm now, but a few thousand years in the future?
If I am completely wrong please don't reply with a sarcastic message, explain politely! :-D
i heard somone in a forum asking this question which i think proves information can travel faster than light
you build a very light stick 300000 km long from planet to planet
you push it on earth at 1 m/s which is not a relativistic spped and that info wil have been transfred instantly
Well, right now no, we ourselves are not traveling at the speed of light. But, a good thread for you to read, lisa, would be the Relativity Primer thread stickied at the top of the subforum, it'll help you a bit and it's quite informative on the subject here.
No, all it proves is that there is no such thing as a perfectly stiff stick.
A stick is composed of atoms. When you push the stick the atoms influence each other by electrical and magnetic fields, traveling at the speed of light. Besides, the stick has mass, so it would actually move a lot slower than the speed of light.
The information would only travel as fast as the speed of sound for the material the stick is made of. For instance, through diamond, which has a high stiffness to weight ratio, sound travels at 12,000 m/s. This is still only 0.004% of the speed of light. So if you push one end of a 300,000 km long diamond rod, it would take almost 7 hrs before the other end moved.
we do move information at the speed of light using fiber optic cables
A variation on the stick is the sweeping spotlight or shadow. You can project an image (say, a cat) that flits from nebula to nebula.
That is not a variation.
The stick example would, if it were valid, allow superluminal transmission of a signal. It shows, as was pointed out why one cannot permit rigid bodies within special relativity.
Sweeping a light or shadow from nebula to nebula at superluminal speeds is allowable. But nothing, not even an information-bearing signal is transmitted in that way.
A similar thing is the contact point between a guillotine blade and a horizontal plane. That can also move at speeds greater than c, but again nothing, including information is moving that fast.
But like DrRocket has said, this involves no transfer of information from nebula to nebula.
Example I am shining a light on a planet 1 ly away. I swing my light around to poit at a second planet 1 ly away in the opposite direction. One year later the last bit of light that left my light while pointing at planet 1 reaches planet 1 and the spot of light disappears. At the same time the light I pointed in the opposite direction reaches planet 2 and a spot of light appears on it. It appears as if the the light instantly moved from planet 1 to planet 2.
Now imagine that there is a packet of information you want to move from planet 1 to planet 2. There is no way to use this method to move that information.
True, true. It broadcasts information much as a chiming clock tower. When two pedestrians set their watches, there's no communication between them.
what if the first planet choses to reflect or not the ray to the second planet?
if it gets reflected second planet will see two signals if not just one
since oposite rays of light will have a relativistic speed with respect to each other of half than if it just goes one sense
yes, but it would take twice as long for the light to go from the first planet to the second. And beside that, your flashlight's light would take x years to get to either planet, so in order for it to appear as if it happened at the same time you would have to shine your light on planet one for 2x years ( takes x years to get there, x years to get halfway back and will be right in line with you when you switch to the other planet.) and then immediately swing it over to planet 2. While you see an instant change, the planets you are "illuminating" won't.
what about the theory that if change a photon instantly another photon changes instantly this would be transluminical speed
if it was not transluminical the universe would be unbalanced for a while
so either transluminical info is posible or the universe could be briefly unbalanced, total momentum wouldnt be 0
You're talking about quantum entanglement. Yes, something happens superluminally, but nothing that can be used to transmit information. Basically, the only way you could know that the change was the result of someone transmitting something would be if someone told you they had transmitted something, which would require a normal light-speed signal.
I'm not great a physics, but was thinking about this.
If einstein was correct in that E=Mc^2 where E is energy M is mass and c is velocity, then light must have some kind of mass.
If it had no mass then there could be no energy or speed.
The Mass of light is ~=0; therefore the amount of energy required for the mass of light to reach the speed of light is >~0.
The energy required for an particle to reach the speed of light would be almost impossible to control; let alone that required for a human being.
Lets say that u were somehow able to find a way to create and harness enough energy for you to make it to the speed of light.
You are then faced with a couple of problems.
How do you accelerate yourself uniformly enough so there is no stress of your body?
If you come under the influence of any other force, your atoms that were affected by the force would abruptly slow from the speed of light, while other regions would not slow quite as fast, causing most certainly fatal damage. In short, if you approached the speed of light, your body will cease to exist and the particles that made up your body would be scattered across the solar system.
Gravity.
E=mc^2 tells us how much energy a mass of m can be converted to. The c^2 (the speed of light squared) is the conversion factor. By itself, the formula is only useful for objects that have a rest mass. Light has no rest mass.
The more general form of the formula which can be used for light is:
Where p is momentum. Light does have momentum, so even if m is zero you get an non-zero answer for the energy of light.
Is light 'energy" itself? Is that 'Photon' (qubit) in many of the wavelengths, the energy when the 'm' is broken up?E=mc^2 tells us how much energy a mass of m can be converted to. The c^2 (the speed of light squared) is the conversion factor. By itself, the formula is only useful for objects that have a rest mass. Light has no rest mass.
What mass, is that momentum applying too?The more general form of the formula which can be used for light is:
Where p is momentum. Light does have momentum, so even if m is zero you get an non-zero answer for the energy of light.
What is moving thru space? That second script is for "mass" . W
You are suggesting the accepted frame. To account 'angular momentum' to the vector (your momentum).
what you just did was use the E=mc2 (wavelength/frequency) to the particle (mass) based on an assumption of the photon being both. (this is what is accepted in physics but not reality (ie... it it like accepting a "creator".. to me)
That conversions you are implying is using a word 'mometum' to a trajectory (vector potential) creating angular momentum into the physics describing the system. (it creates a particle to energy itself)
the amplitude of any unit photon is being converted to angular momentum (the particle spin (torque) but maintains the energy content to the 'f' ^c yet, when combing 2 systems, the total power cannot be caluclated because of that very issue.
this is the true conflict between a wave and particle frame (the math requires the assumption to the 'energy' itself as you just posted above)
the systems are not interchange able without a patch to convert back.
ie..... what is the particle to a 'string' in M theory?
There are two ways to skin this cat.E=mc^2 tells us how much energy a mass of m can be converted to. The c^2 (the speed of light squared) is the conversion factor. By itself, the formula is only useful for objects that have a rest mass. Light has no rest mass.
The more general form of the formula which can be used for light is:
Where p is momentum. Light does have momentum, so even if m is zero you get an non-zero answer for the energy of light.
Your equationis correct, with the interpretation that
is rest mass, or
. The equation
is also correct with the interpretation that
Either way is correct. In order to apply this to light, in either case you need the basic equation for a photonwhere
is Planck's constant and
is the frequency. This latter equation provides the means for calculating the momentum of the photon from the equation for energy. Specifically, noting that
,
That's very clever of you Dr. Rocket, you're on of the few who tried to answer his questions without saying stupid things. I believe whenever we go in a forum we must be open minded on listening on the ideas of everyone then if his ideas are wrong or his wordings are incorrectly spelled then it is OK to let him know the correct answers..
Huh?
I see that you are new. Welcome.
I was responding to Janus. Janus is pretty knowledgeable.
I was not responding to Bushadi. Bushadi is hopeless. Explaining things to him is pointless. Been there. Done that.
He has managed to actually accumulate negative knowledge of science. Everything that he "knows" is wrong. It is just unbelievable.
You would to well to ignore Bushadi. He contributes nothing and detracts greatly. If you already know the subject you will be immune. But if not and if you pay any attention to him at all it will be to your detriment.
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