Achieving Light Speed

My idea for achieving light speed is to construct a beam approximately 47,746km long and then rotate it in a circular motion a 1 rotation a second. This would make an outer part of the beam reach 300,000 km/s.
I don't know if this idea has already been proposed.
The only major flaws I can see in it would be if it created its own gravitational field.

(Formula 300,000/pie * 2 = 47,746)

Please discus any other ideas or criticism.





[Mod Edit: Spelling in title]


[edit on 2006-9-15 by wecomeinpeace]

Oh, only 47,746 km eh? Where do you propose to do this? The diameter of the earth is 12,600 odd km. It would be next to impossible to create this, and then to spin it at 1 rotation a second would also be impossible. Something that big would develop its own gravitational field, and would probably snap if it was moved that fast. There is nowhere where an end of the beam can be attached to to create a pivot either.

Also, as something moves faster, its size increases. I heard somewhere that anything travelling as fast as light would be so huge that it would swallow galaxies (not sure about the last bit, but that is what i was told a while back).

well to answer your first question i would be done in space and secondly you wouldn't have to use a bead it oculd be done with rope or something like that, apart form that i agree about what your saying, it was only an idea.

You know Purple, thats a damn interesting idea.

It could be done with something relatively small and lightweight, like a fibre optic cable tethered to an asteroid with an ion drive engine providing continual thrust to the outer edge.

Einstein theory of relativity mentions nothing about size, but it does suggest mass will increase as light speed is approached, so I'm wondering if it would create its own gravity well.

But if it worked.... you could attach a small craft to it, let it rotate up to speed and then just time the release off the tether and whoosh....away it would go.

Now I come to think of it I'm sure I've seen that idea used in a sci-fi film or programme.... or maybe it was a serious proposal for space travel. I'll look it up.

Originally posted by purplemonkey
well to answer your first question i would be done in space and secondly you wouldn't have to use a bead it oculd be done with rope or something like that, apart form that i agree about what your saying, it was only an idea.

Yeah, in theory, its a good idea, but theres nowhere to keep it fixed to create a pivot (even in space, an asteroid would be too small) Also, to spin it at 1 rotation a second, wouldnt the thing thats c ausing the spin have to be travelling at light-speed? So i dont think this would solve the problem of travelling at light speed, seeing as though you would need a craft to travel at light speed to make the rope turn at one spin per second in the first place

Originally posted by neformore
Einstein theory of relativity mentions nothing about size, but it does suggest mass will increase as light speed is approached, so I'm wondering if it would create its own gravity well.

Mass is the amount of energy and matter an object constitutes to, so surely, if it gains mass, it would be logical for it also to gain size as the atoms in the object move around quicker? Even if it doesnt gain size, but just mass, you would be talking about so much mass that the object may be able to swallow entire galaxies, and in effect, become a black hole.

haha yeah, lets tie a ship to a spinning rope and just hope we release it at the right time to "throw" it in the right direction. This idea is about as smart as the guy's who said "Why don't we use a controlled explosion to propell things?" Its crazy talk. Ahh ya made me laugh though, haha. I'm just picture a rope tied to a ship and it swinging around menacingly. I could picture the result of that mission, 4 or so frozen bodies half way between here and nowhere.
Ha!


But i like your idea. Its crazy, and so I love it.

what if you used thrusters to achieve the target rotation? something nuclear powered?

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second,isn't it?

instead of actually spinning the outer craft i thought of cpining the center, like a fan. here is what i ment if you didn't understand

so there is an inner machine that rotats the rope which pulls the crft on the outside. the rope would be (the lenght i mentioned), when the rope turns 1 rotation it would have moved the craf about 300,000km.

anyway thanks for your constructive critism its really interesting to here other view pouints.

What force would be needed to spin an object so large? Since there is no air in space, would there be any resistance?

There is one problem I see with this. Because its in space, there is no pivot point to fix the beam to, so it cant be spun directly off something else, unless that something else had a larger mass that the beam. This has something to do with inertia? Am I right?
Therefore each side of the beam would have to be propelled in opposite directions to get the spin happening. The force of propulsion to move something so large would need to be greater than the potential force of the beams mass. The closer the thrusters are to the middle, the more propulsion they would have to create, but with less movement. A lever in other words.

To put this into context, how much force do you think it would take to shift the earth? A lot! Not only because of its huge mass, but also because of gravity. Imagine the amount of gravity a beam that long would create.

Also it would have to be so strong that any one point along the beam could withstand the forces of inertia acting upon it when it tries to move.

Also people have already pointed out that the closer something gets to the speed of light, the more mass it gains. So the outer edges of beam would have way more mass the the centre and would create weird gravity effects.

So in summary, if you even managed to get it moving, the mass of the beam itself plus the mass of the outer edges moving at light speed would cause havock on the experiment, not to mention would probably suck the whole galaxy into a super massive blackhole

yeah i understand that, but most of your reasons for it not working are based on theroies. but i do understand exactly what you mreAN AND AGREE WITH YOU 100% on what would happen and that it is basically impossible.

Good idea! Mine was to construct a disc.

The only drawback I see is the material needed to build this thing.

The forces would tear any known material apart.

Cool idea though.

Can't the rod get smaller so the spin can go faster.

Spin it magnetically.

Will the edge dissapear as you go faster.

Don't say Einstein's equations say it can't be done.

I want to see it.

Wait, we can't see the edge of a black hole, we don't see the edge.

But the insides are spinning faster. Wala, Einstein never had that

to contend with.

Light speed is estimated to be about 690 Millions miles per hour. Photons move at the speed of light. I believe to accomplish light speed we have use centripetal force. Every reaction has an opposite reaction. So if we create a centripetal force rotating over 50,000 rpm the opposite reaction could be 100x greater or more. Imagine a pressure cooker, the energy has to eventually escape, because energy doesn't die only recycle; we can virtually use the bled off energy to power the drive creating the centripetal force. If we are able to create a suction force of 2 tons or greater the opposite escaping energy which is centrifugal force will have to build up enough energy to escape centripetal force. If we direct this energy into one direction we would have a tremendous amount of energy and thrust. Nature is the key, look how tornados and hurricanes cause so much damage and imagine that energy controlled in directed anyway we choose. The earth itself spins counter-clockwise (Centripetal) as well as many planets with the exception of Venus. Explosion is not the key, implosion is the devine energy.

Had to edit this post: Anti-gravity is much easier than what we are to believe. If I ask you to create an invisible object... how would you do it? Well I would cause this object to vibrate at higher frequencies because we can only see in a certain spectrum of waves. Think about what is keeping you on this planet... gravity or centripetal force? Are they one of the same?

Sorry for the edits.

[edit on 21-9-2006 by blaqmyst]

[edit on 21-9-2006 by blaqmyst]

[edit on 21-9-2006 by blaqmyst]

I have been looking for your web site for quite some time. Glad I found you. With regard to your hypothetical rotating rod that reaches light speed at the tip...........To the best of my memory, Einstein did not say that nothing could exceed the speed of light. Actually, he said that nothing in this universe could exceed the speed of light. So perhaps a corolary to Einstein's thinking is that if matter were to exceed the speed of light, it would leave the universe.......at least the tip of the hypothetical rod would do so as it surpassed light speed. As to the rest of the spinning rod, however, I am not sure if it would still be discernable in our universe? It is possible that the entire rod would be pulled out thru the cohesive nature of the elements of rod. Interestingly enough, as the tip of the spinning rod surpassed light speed, you could put your hand into the path of the rod and you would feel nothing. It would not be invisivble or cease to exist in the true sense of the word. Rather, it would simply have left the universe.
Perhaps this is what pulsars are all about with their precise and ever constant blinking. From my basic physics class long ago, I seem to remember that pulsars are considered to be very large, rapidly spinning stars. Perhaps the equitator of a pulsar is spinning so fast that it is teetering between super and supra light speed, sending it in and out of our universe, wihich causes it to appear to blink to us. It doesn't actually disappear in the true sense of the word. It is still exists but just no longer in our universe. There are, I believe, very strict rules of physics governing such actions which remain to be discovered.
By the way, has anyone ever heard the name Jonathan Allen? He was a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis about 15 or 20 years ago. As I remember, he was studying laser refractions at the time.
Thanks again for letting me onto your web site.
The Wizard 50

In short ...no you couldn't. At least not in so far as we understand physics today. As an object's speed increases to near the speed of light, it's mass increases exponentially. So what you would get is this: as you move the pivot side of the beam, the mass of the beam(or whatever object you're spinning) increases in mass the further out and the faster it's moving. And the more energy it would require to move the pivot end. this seems counterintuitive at first, but think of it like trying to move a large beam through water , when you're on a boat. that's just a mental exercise that doesn't fully equate to what i'm talking about , but is the closest approximation i could think of.

the way to beat light-speed really, is wormholes and "spooky action at a distance" quantum entanglement. possibly even hyperdimensional travel, whatever that might entail.

Originally posted by neformore

Einstein theory of relativity mentions nothing about size, but it does suggest mass will increase as light speed is approached, so I'm wondering if it would create its own gravity well.

Not necessarily. In the case of cosmic strings, with huge mass/length ratios, we find that they would exert no gravitational forces on their surroundings.

Originally posted by neformore
Einstein theory of relativity mentions nothing about size, but it does suggest mass will increase as light speed is approached.

Exactly. The end of the beam would grow ever more massive as it approached c. Even if the beam didn't break due to centrifugal 'force' and the end fly off into the wild blue yonder at considerably less than c, the amount of rotational energy needed to accelerate it would tend to infinity as the speed of the beam end approached c.

Besides, the principle of moments shows that the most efficient place along the rotating beam to place the means of propulsion would not be the fulcrum but at the very end of the beam. Which means there's no point having a beam and fulcrum in the first place.

Kudos for purplemonkey for making the effort, though.

Now I come to think of it I'm sure I've seen that idea used in a sci-fi film or programme.... or maybe it was a serious proposal for space travel. I'll look it up.

That's what we do when we sling satellites round gas giants. It's also, in a rather more subtle sense, the principle behind the space elevator.

[edit on 26/3/09 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by CavemanDD
haha yeah, lets tie a ship to a spinning rope and just hope we release it at the right time to "throw" it in the right direction. This idea is about as smart as the guy's who said "Why don't we use a controlled explosion to propell things?" Its crazy talk.

You mean, like the controlled explosions we use to propel our cars, aircraft, trains, ships, spaceships and just about everything else that has an internal combustion engine?

Yeah maaaaaaaaan, real crazy talk.

[edit on 26/3/09 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by Astyanax

Originally posted by neformore
Einstein theory of relativity mentions nothing about size, but it does suggest mass will increase as light speed is approached.

Exactly. The end of the beam would grow ever more massive as it approached c. Even if the beam didn't break due to centrifugal 'force' and the end fly off into the wild blue yonder at considerably less than c, the amount of rotational energy needed to accelerate it would tend to infinity as the speed of the beam end approached c.

There would be an upper limit to the acceleration with a velocity considerably less than c.