Why Can't we travel faster than the speed of light?

radio frequencies cannot cause heat.

they can.. but of course its really large wavelength it has almost no energy and since it is not matching any absorbtion bands of normal molecules and atoms you wont experience in dayly life
but for heating plasmas it is every day used in science for example: link

A photon is a particle, same as a neutron and proton.

if you use this particle definition all formes of energy associated with some kind of momentum are particles
but this comparison here is not very usefull since neutron/proton and photon are way more different then for example electron and proton or pions and proton/neutron

photons have no rest mass, neutrons and protons have

photons have spin 1, neutrons and protons spin 1/2

photons can interact via gravity and em, neutrons and protons too but also by weak and strong nuclear forces

neutrons and protons can decay spontaneous into smaller particles, photons cant (only pair production during interaction with some charged mass)

Electrons can be converted to photon radiation, by passing electrons through a filament within a sealed vacuum.

no they cant since charge is conserved .. you only observe the electrons hitting something (large negative acceleration --> accellerated charge radiates) but they do not disappear


the following two statements coincide in no way so please get more precise or throw those dumb "transverse magnetiv wave barrier" away

There is a way around this. The idea is to form a transverse magnetic wave barrier.

Way beyond humans to achieve, but it does exist. It's like a tiny universe within a bubble, that shields the matter inside from the effects of gravity and radiation outside.

Originally posted by puerk
the following two statements coincide in no way so please get more precise or throw those dumb "transverse magnetiv wave barrier" away

There is a way around this. The idea is to form a transverse magnetic wave barrier.

Way beyond humans to achieve, but it does exist. It's like a tiny universe within a bubble, that shields the matter inside from the effects of gravity and radiation outside.

Originally posted by puerk
voltage isnt the speed of an electron cloud it is only the accelerating potential difference in the electric field also your medium where your electrons move can slow them down

I realize voltage is the potential difference in the electric field, and measure of resistance (in ohms) in the circuit signifies a voltage drop in powering the circuit load. Voltage translates to electromotive force; the greater the voltage, the faster a DC brush motor will rotate.

most easy to comprehend in a vacuum tube: puting an accelerating voltage the electron gets a higher velocity as longer it goes through the field and at all points its energy (and thereby (E=p²/2m nonrel.) its momentum and velocity) is as large as the potential difference between its starting point in the field and its current position

E=p²/2m is also p²=2Em which means as the energy applied to a mass is doubled, it's potential is exponentiated in a vacuum. This is probably how a vessel shielded by a Transverse Magnetic Wave barrier can travel in the vacuum of space at light speeds.

if one gets totally exact both cause vibrations in space.. but something tells me you did not mean gravitational waves (all moving energy (and therefore also matter and light) causes gravitational bending of spacetime (and if accelerated, even in periodic propagating (wave) shapes))
those waves would first be smaller than all what is measurable due to quantum mechanics so there effect is really neglectable (they would distort our whole (visible) universe by less then a plank length)

It is not with quantum mechanics, but that a Unified Field Theory will do better in explaining how this works.
It's these principles by which a disturbance in a gravitational field is achieved. Emitting gravity pulses at 7.46Hz against an existing gravity field bends the "flux lines" by either attracting or repelling. Much the same behaviour is exhibited by applying these principles in an induction motor.

so no vibrations in space are causing those waves to interact with matter

How very true. By the distending of gravity of a distant celestial body, and thereby producing a wavefront which acts upon the Transverse Magnetic Wave barrier shielding the vessel, propulsion is achieved in bringing the "bubble" and its material contents (the vessel and passengers) toward the celestial body. The kinetic energy released by the shear force of the gravity B "flux lines" returning to their original state, acts as a sling shot against the gravity barrier which surrounds the vessel.

sound also interacts due to charged particles but in a significantly different way: if two particles (as we are used to hear sound in air lats take some N2) collide their electron shells meet at first and if they get close enough together their negative charge repells them so that the kinetic energy from the incident particle gets transfered (partly) to the other

That's why sound only travels in air. Good detail, but a little bit off. Sound is not due to charged particles. The material strain of a speaker for instance, causes perpendicular compression waves in the equilibrium of air molecules between the source and the listener.

There is also a shear stress parallel to the face of the speaker (measured in pascals, or psi), which is not heard, but does give rise to how the principle behind the TMW barrier applies to gravity. Maybe you can enlighten us all in how shear stress is found in other practical settings.

Sound and radio frequencies do not have mass, they are just vibrations in space.

sound (if u understand it as our comprehension of moving air) has no mass, but the moving air (which is the whole phenomenon) has
light (and all of the rest of the em-spectrum) has no rest mass

Heat cannot be reflected.

any type of metallic mirror will do..

In very close proximity, by heating the metal itself and then the metal giving off heat. You cannot focally reflect heat as you can radio frequencies or light.

[edit on 31-3-2008 by Kinesis]

Originally posted by Kinesis
Heat cannot be reflected.

any type of metallic mirror will do..

In very close proximity, by heating the metal itself and then the metal giving off heat. You cannot focally reflect heat as you can radio frequencies or light.

Have you never used an electric radiator, thermos flask, IR camera or burnt something with a magnifying glass using sunlight?

Heat is radiated as infrared which is just below visible radiation and it behaves exactly as visible radiation does apart from a slightly lower frequency.

Originally posted by Pilgrum

Originally posted by Kinesis
Heat cannot be reflected.

any type of metallic mirror will do..

In very close proximity, by heating the metal itself and then the metal giving off heat. You cannot focally reflect heat as you can radio frequencies or light.

Have you never used an electric radiator, thermos flask, IR camera or burnt something with a magnifying glass using sunlight?

Heat is radiated as infrared which is just below visible radiation and it behaves exactly as visible radiation does apart from a slightly lower frequency.

Infrared is an invisible spectrum of light. I've also used a blow dryer too, so on some level, yes, heat can be focused. In tandem with sunlight and lensing, you could conduct experiements to prove likewise. You would be hard pressed to focus a light bulb's heat using a magnifying glass.

I belive Einstien is correct , nothing can Travel faster than the speed of C in 4 dimentional spacetime. To do so would place you öutside the spacetime manifold we live in/on and outside the linear chain of orderly temporal causality we depend on to make sence of our environment.

If we think of the universe as a Set, the members of that set have to be contained by boundaries-Our spacetime "boundaries are the Planck lenghth and the the speed of c (yay for inertial mass, whatever it is it's helping keep it all togeather ! lol)

Just as a slight digression a lot of people in this thread seem to be equating
mass with volume or physical size or amount of "stuff" this is not the correct meaning as it pertains to SR.(as pointed out by other posters but not "listened to")

It is Inertial mass- ie the resistence to further acceleration-there would not be more of the stuff(fuel etc) it's resistence to acceleration constantly approaches infinity. It dosn't get bigger or provide an infinite fuel source.

The theory that we can't travel faster than the speed of light is wrong. I know it's wrong because I've seen a craft and beings that were not terrestrial in origin and the craft was designed for very short trips, no sleeping facilities, no food supplies, no restrooms, almost no furniture, and no need because it got from one place to another almost instantly.

The theory that you can't travel faster than light is based upon the fact that relative to a stationary observer, the closer an object approaches the speed of light the more massive it becomes, approaching infinity at the speed of light. The more massive an object becomes, the energy it takes to accelerate it, as it approaches the speed of light. The important thing to remember here is that's just relevant to the local observer here on Earth, but not to the occupants of an accelerating space ship.

An observer on Earth sees the ship as becoming ever more massive as it accelerates towards the velocity of light, and so it is thought infinite energy would be required. What is not understood is that this is how it APPEARS to an Earthbound observer because of the propagation speed of light. The ship doesn't appear to be going as fast as we think it should be because of the time it takes light to arrive to us which is ever increasing, thus to make all the other laws of physics work, it has to appear to gain mass and to shrink in length, but none of these things actually happen to the occupants on the craft, it only appears that way because we're not seeing it in real time, we're seeing it with ever increasing delay because light has to travel an ever increasing distance to reach us.

However, what is an issue still is that the limits of chemical propulsion are at best a few tens of thousands of miles per hour, and even if we had matter anti-matter reactors, we couldn't carry enough ejection mass and enough fuel to accelerate that ejection mass sufficiently to reach the speed of light.

What we actually need is a way to pull against the fabric of space-time itself. We need some form of acceleration that is non-Newtonian, that is to say doesn't rely on the principals of equal and opposite reactions and there are a number of viable candidates but they are generally not acknowledged by most mainstream scientists.

But there is more than just acceleration to be practical. There is the problem of navigation. We can't rely on optical or radio beacons or anything that involves electromagnetic radiation if we're traveling faster than that.

And then there is the question of how matter reacts with us when we're traveling faster than the speed of light. The kinetic energy of the smallest particle becomes infinite as we approach light speed, what happens if we exceed it?

Even as we approach it we need someway to deflect particles; for charged particles it's not difficult, a large magnet field will do. But for neutral particles, unionized gas and dust, we've got a problem.

So there are a few practical issues besides just acceleration. Even on the way to light speed, light will be blue shifted to enormous energies.

But I know these things can be solved, because other get here.

Originally posted by Nookster
An observer on Earth sees the ship as becoming ever more massive as it accelerates towards the velocity of light, and so it is thought infinite energy would be required. What is not understood is that this is how it APPEARS to an Earthbound observer because of the propagation speed of light. The ship doesn't appear to be going as fast as we think it should be because of the time it takes light to arrive to us which is ever increasing, thus to make all the other laws of physics work, it has to appear to gain mass and to shrink in length, but none of these things actually happen to the occupants on the craft, it only appears that way because we're not seeing it in real time, we're seeing it with ever increasing delay because light has to travel an ever increasing distance to reach us.

However, the occupants of this spacecraft would instead witness the entire outside universe rushing pas them at the speed of light, thereby approaching infintite mass and zero dimensions. You are left with infinite energy being required somewhere...

Originally posted by d60944
y approaching infintite mass and zero dimensions. You are left with infinite energy being required somewhere...

I know this is difficult to understand but let's use a sound analog; when a train passes by, as it approaches the sound whistle sounds higher in frequency and after it passes lower, but the frequency the whistle emits remains the same.

That appears is NOT what IS. It just appears that way because you're using light for your observations.

reply to post by Warlon




What if you created anit gravity? i know we cant speculate what kind of effects that would generate, but in my mind i think if we could control the gravitational field all the way around an object, then we could effectivly mask its Mass. So an object had an "invisible mass" would that then be able to travel millions of times faster than the speed of light?


just a thought, please comment back id like to know what all you think about this theory.

Originally posted by Nookster
The theory that we can't travel faster than the speed of light is wrong. I know it's wrong because I've seen a craft and beings that were not terrestrial in origin and the craft was designed for very short trips, no sleeping facilities, no food supplies, no restrooms, almost no furniture, and no need because it got from one place to another almost instantly.

What was the shape of the craft?

Any idea of the composition?

There could be other interpretations of the lack of supplies and facilities, right? I'm curious as to why you think it implies near-instantaneous travel in space.

Originally posted by metaldemon2000
A reply to a post earlier that says we havent made anything travel at the speed of light. We have created current carrying devices and radio transmitting devices have we not? My question is, if we can create a substance that can transport molecules that travel at the speed of light, why can we not do with ourselves and why cant we study how these objects do it? Electricity is a very simple concept.

Electricity also doesn't move anywhere near the speed of light. Hell, the speed of the electrons is the drift current velocity, and that's not even a meter per second. The functional speed of the power transfer through a conductor is a fair amount faster, but still nowhere near the speed of light.

Think of it this way: if you push one end of the pole, and the other end moves nigh instantaneously thereafter, the pole isn't moving at/near the speed of light. The force was transmitted through the pole pretty quickly, but still not at the speed of light (nothing is perfectly rigid. Motion is generally transferred at the speed of sound through a substance.). Electricity is a lot like that.

Originally posted by dismanrc
Think about it.

1. As you get closer to the speed of light your mass grows towards infinite.
2. you use mass to fuel your engines
3. as mass grows towards infinite would not your mass of fuel do so also?
4. would not infinite mass/fuel = infinite power?

No. You don't actually have any more fuel. It just takes more energy to accelerate it, because of the relativistic mass increase.

Originally posted by blahdiblah
Science said we couldn't fly.

Science said we couldn't go past the speed of sound.

Science says a lot of things.

We will travel faster than the speed of light.

How? Who knows.

To everyone quoting the theory of relativity by Einstein he fully expected it to be a dis proven and let me remind you its just a theory.

Very few scientists ever said we couldn't fly. Most thought it was an inevitability, but that it wasn't possible with the power sources of their lifetimes. If they thought it was impossible, why were so many trying?

Science also never said that we couldn't go faster than the speed of sound. Scientists were familiar with all kinds of things that went faster than the speed of sound, from bullets to the German V2 rocket, which was easily large enough to fit a person in. The problem was that the stresses shook regular airplanes apart. Most felt that we just needed to build a sturdier, differently shaped aircraft. And so we did.

We may or may not travel faster than the speed of light. But we certainly aren't going to get there by strapping more rockets on and trying to brute force it, which was a valid and obvious solution to those problems. There was never any scientific law against flying or traveling faster than the speed of sound. Those were engineering difficulties. The speed of light is an actual scientific problem. Do some reading before you spout cliche' lines used by guys with a Galileo complex.

Originally posted by grover
actually we do... the galactic masses themselves move faster than light and we are of course carried along with them.

Uh, sort of. We can see galaxies that move away from each other with a combined speed greater than the speed of light, but in no reference frame involved does anything exceed the speed of light. From the reference frame of one of those two galaxies, the other does not exceed the speed of light.

Originally posted by xnibirux
No, I can't prove this too you, it is simply what I believe to be true. How could you not believe that free energy was created by Tesla and has been further engineered since then by secret officials?

Quite easily, I think you'll find.

Originally posted by spacebot
reply to post by Warlon

 

If you ask me, I find it to be an attractive idea. It is not something we haven't done before.. well sort of.

There is a concept called supercavitation, it is about exceeding speeds greater than ordinary propulsion systems capabilities inside liquid mediums. In reality an envelope is formed around a vehicle (torpedo) separating it from the sea water and uses gas to form this envelope or bubble and then this bubble has the effect of reducing the drag of the vehicle enabling it to go faster.
If this concept has any chances to be applied to space propulsion, then we could use or slightly modified propulsion concepts to propel a craft through space with FTL.

Well, if you can find something emptier than complete vaccuum, go right ahead and build a vaccuum supercavitation device. Honestly, though, if such a state exists, I rather doubt it would be safe for matter to traverse it. You'd pretty much have to project a lack of spacetime. That just doesn't sound safe.

Originally posted by Warlon
Why do scientists think that if you break the SOL barrier that you will go back in time? How are time and light related.

From every refrence frame, no matter how fast it's going compared to anything else in the universe, light appears to be traveling at the same speed. If you have headlights on the front of your spaceship, no matter how fast you're going, the photons will be observed to be going at the speed of light, ~3e8 meters per second.

Since the spaceship is moving in the same direction as the light, yet the light appears to be going the same speed as when the spaceship was at rest, The consequences of this are that time has slowed down for the spaceship, and distances have also contracted a bit. For photons, the only thing that actually do travel at the speed of light, they are at their destination and origin simultaneously, and perceive no change in time. This can all be observed. The math behind all that works out so that if you had something traveling faster than the speed of light, it would experience time backwards.

Incidentally, all methods of physically traveling faster than light can be shown to be methods of traveling backwards in time, regardless of how it's done. This includes wormholes, instantaneous teleportation, warping spacetime, and what have you.

There is a speed faster than light, which is the speed of relationship. It's instantaneous and supersedes the body. So you can travel faster than light if you figure out how, just not bodily (at this point anyway.)

Originally posted by Kinesis

Originally posted by Badge01
reply to post by jkrog08

 

Though there might be a way to go from point A to point B in less time than a light beam or photon stream moving through space takes, it is not likely to be on a 'vessel' (or Wessel as Checkov might say) using some kind of propulsion.

Also for those who are making bold statements about special relativity or general relativity, it might be helpful to preface your comments with a short comment or reference as to your basic understanding of what that is.

Likewise, those making a bold statement, such as 'photons have mass' should endeavor to reference their proof of this.

Though photons are demonstrated to exert a gravitational attraction on other objects and they themselves are affected by gravity, their mass at rest is 0.

First, with common sense.. if light had no mass then the principle of taking a film negative to make a photograph expose wouldn't work. Light is a form of photon radiation, within our visual spectrum. Refer to discoveries and laws by Max Planck.

When ultra-violet rays fall on a piece of metal in a vacuum, a large number of electrons are shot off from the metal at a high velocity, and since the magnitude of this velocity does not essentially depend on the state of the metal, certainly not on its temperature, it is concluded that the energy of the electrons is not derived from the metal, but from the light rays which fall on the metal.
www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk...

If you expect to be told that there's a such thing as weighing light, then you'd be right in assuming light has no mass, because that statement is false.

Gravitational propulsion cannot cannot be achieved through the theories of General Relativity, but through a Unified Field Theory. Just Google-search "Unified Field Theory", voila. There are no case studies supporting the Unified Field Theory, as with the atom bomb supporting Relativity. Attempts have been made with the Nazi-Bell experiment, and the Philidelphia Experiment. If you want information on a purely theoritical basis, look up: www.boblazar.com...

For some good visuals, and documentation about experiments of today, and interesting website to visit is: www.americanantigravity.com...

This is incorrect. Light has no rest mass. It does, however, have momentum despite that (which is undoubtedly weird), and it has energy, proportional to it's wavelength.

Originally posted by Warlon
As a continuance to my previous post:
This post is devided in two parts Mass question, and time travel question.

MASS QUESTION:
If the "Mass aproching infinety = infinate mass" (Hereafter refered to as MAI) theory is correct then why is it that photons don't hit you like the proverbial "truck" and/or blow straight through you? If this theory is correct then wouldn't photons from ordinary sun light or lamp light or any other light source erode you on the sub-atomic level? If something with infinate mass hits a relatively stationary object, i.e. the atoms in my body, my car, etc.., then wouldn't the objects with the larger mass anihalate (sp) the lower mass object? (Photons having the larger mass because of the MAI theory, and my atoms having less mass because of slower speeds)

When I start thinking about this and trying to make all of the pieces fit (which they can't) why do I smell burning batteries?

If I understand things that I have read about relativity and such, and if the MAI theory is infact bogus then all we would need to acheive higher than SOL speeds in a vacume is a propulsion system that has an exit velocity of greater than SOL, like a graviton drive. (Haven't scientists theorized/ proven that gravitons move faster than SOL?).

Photons have no mass, so they don't plow through you unless their momentum is great enough to, or unless you are largely transparent to them. X rays and gamma rays have enough energy to plow right through people. Radio and microwave don't generally really interact strongly with what people are made of. Wrong absorption band and all.

If you were so inclined, you could easily verify that it takes ever increasing amounts of energy to accelerate something, approaching infinite energy toward the speed of light. Particle accelerators do it all the time. In fact, if the equations behind all that were wrong, high energy particle accelerators like at CERN wouldn't do anything at all.

Gravity, I'm pretty sure, has been shown to work at the speed light, not instantaneously. I skipped your second question, because it was incoherent.

Originally posted by johnsky
My issue with being told of a limitation at the speed of light is as follows :

Relative to what?

If the entire universe is thought to be all moving in one direction at a set speed, you can add to that set speed by moving through it yourself in the same direction... if EVERYTHING is moving, then relative to everything you have broken no laws.

Essentially you can't have a set speed without something to base it on. So what is the speed of light to be set by?

If it were set by your closest object, it could be an asteroid, bring that up to near light speed with you, and suddenly you can achieve almost double light speed.

If it were the center of the universe, then who is to say the center of the universe isn't already moving.

Everything is relative to each other, measurements of time especially...

You REALLY don't get it, do you? Relative to anything and everything. All possible observers observe light traveling at c, and everything else traveling slower. Even if, from a third observer, two other observers appear to be moving apart at a combined speed that sums to more than the speed of light, neither will be exceeding it in any frame of reference. Velocity, time, length, and mass all vary between observers. only c is constant. There is no center of the universe.

The set speed is based on observations of time and distance. Light is always observed to be ~3e8 meters per second. A consequence is that neither meters, nor seconds are constant between reference frames.

Disregard what kinesis posted, it's entirely incorrect. I only get 6500 characters a post, so just trust me on that one. I don't want to triple-post

If you travel faster than light, how are you going to see where you are going?

the photon, which is the only thing that achieves the Speed of Light
has no mass or weight

i may be wrong, but no other subatomic particle has ever equaled
the speed of light in those super colliders either.
So just how in practice terms could a multicellular organism with mass, weight, density, get an infinite source of energy for propulsion...
when even super massive colliders cannot get almost infintessimally light & small subatomic particles to go that fast, driven by magnetic energies that are multi-trillions more powerful than the projectile.

Two questions on faster than light travel:

These are crude examples, so bear with me.

1) Say you have a spaceship that it 100 miles long. This spaceship is traveling at 99.99999% the speed of light or around 185,999.98 mps.
Inside this 100 mile long ship is a fighter jet that can reach speeds of 5,000 mph or 1.38 mps. Ok, 185,999.98 + 1.38 = 186,001.38. So, relative to anything outside of the spaceship, the fighter jet is traveling at faster than the speed of light.

You can take this even further an say there is a 1,000,000,000 mile long spaceship, and inside this there is a 10,000 mile long spaceship, and inside this is a 100 mile long spaceship, and inside this is the fighter jet.

So, the first spaceship is traveling at 99.99999% the speed of light, the second spaceship is traveling...etc, etc. Relative to anything outside the first spaceship, wouldn't the fighter jet be traveling well over the speed of light?

2) Speed is relative to size of the object. Example, a housefly may only be able to fly at 15 mph. So, in four minutes it can fly one mile. Say the fly is 1/4 of an inch long. In four minutes, it has flown 253,440 times the length of its body. If a 6ft man were to travel 253,440 times the length of his body in 4 minutes, he would have traveled 1,520,640 feet, or 288 miles in four minutes. So, a man would have to travel at speeds of 4,300+ mph in order to travel the same distance as the housefly, relative to the size of the fly.

Anyway, (again, bear with me), if there was a giant that was 1000 feet talk too a step, this step would be approximately a 500 foot stride. If taking a step takes a person 1 second, the giant would be walking at 500 feet per second, or 340 mph. So, if a giant were to step over you house, it'd happen so fast you'd likely not see enough to realize it was a giant! Right?

OR...

Would the giant's perception of time be different than ours? Would a giant's single stride perhaps take much long, like say, 5 seconds? But, to the giant, 5 seconds would be to him like 1 second is to us?

Here's my point: Would a large enough object have a better chance at traveling at faster than light speeds than a smaller object? If a spaceship was 186,000 miles long, it'd only have to travel it's own length ever 1 second to reach light speed. A 1,000,000 mile long spaceship would only have to travel a little over 1/5 its length in one second to travel at light speed.

So, is it possible that somewhere in the universe there is a race of 1,000 foot giants traveling in 186,000 mile long spaceships traveling at faster than light speed?

Yeah, I know all of this sounds kooky, but is it possible?


3) Everyone talks about using gravity to spend space/time. But, say you have two planets that are 1000 light years apart. Theoretically, you can bend space/time to bring these planets closer together. So, you can travel from Planet A to Planet B which were originally 1,000 light years apart in, say, one light year. But, if you're using gravity to bend space/time to bring the planets closer together, wouldn't the planets themselves have to be traveling at faster than light speed in the process of being brought closer together?

reply to post by cardinalfanUSA


1.

No, it doesn't work that way. Anything inside a spacecraft moving 99.99999 percent of c will certainly observe things moving around inside the spacecraft moving at normal, because relative to them, stuff in the spacecraft is more or less stationary in their reference frame.

Realitive to anything outside (and inside) the spacecraft, though, the fighter jet will still be moving slower than the speed of light. The fighter jet is only moving at 5000mph relitive to the frame of refrence of the people in the spacecraft. To observers outside the spacecraft, the people in the spacecraft experience time slower than they do, and they experience a contraction of distances. Anyone outside the spacecraft would say that the fighter jet is doing a fraction of one mile per hour relative to the spacecraft that it is in, because of time and distance dilation effects.

It doesn't matter that the jet was inside the spacecraft. The spacecraft could launch a missile forward. The missile would be traveling even faster than the spacecraft. But it'd still be doing less than c. There's no fundamental difference between this scheme and simply using a bigger, heavier, beefier rocket engine to try and exceed the speed of light through sheer stubbornness. It won't work for the exact same reasons that prevent you from just rocketing your way past the speed of light.

So basically: No.


2.) In physics, speed is not relative to the size of an object. It doesn't really matter. There's no significant meaning to how much faster something goes in proportion to it's length, except when narrating amusing shows about strange animals.

A larger object would probably have an easier time reaching speeds close to the speed of light (excluding things like individual particles, atoms, and molecules fired out of particle accelerators, which can get a damn sight closer to c than any craft that didn't start out made 99+% of antimatter fuel.), only because most fancy engines don't scale down very well. There's a minimum size we can build an orion drive, or a nuclear salt water drive, etc. You need a certain amount of radiation shielding, if you plan on having people or computers on board.

And as you go faster, you blue shift all incident radiation from the front, once you get very close to c, you'll have blue shifted the cosmic background radiation into deadly X-rays or gamma rays. Hope you have dozens of meters of ablative shielding.

3.) No. The planets don't really factor into it. Using gravity to warp space time around a spaceship to go places faster is a bit far-fetched, but it doesn't require the planets to go anywhere besides around their respective suns. honestly, I'd prefer the techniques that use negative mass, but the fact that it doesn't appear to exist poses a bit of a problem to that plan.

Here some thoughts...

The Sun, when you view it from Earth it is not in the correct position. Actually the Sun is about 2 degrees past where you see it, because by the time the light reaches Earth it has already moved. That means when we look at the Sun, we are looking into the past.

Now, look at the Stars. Any single one of those stars could be completly gone from existance or burnt out, and you wouldn't know for a few years because the light it sent is still traveling.

Now think of THIS. Light from the Sun bounces off your face in the year 2000. Right now that light that bounced off your face is traveling out into the universe. Because it is 2008, it would mean that light is 8 light years away. Now, if you got a space ship that could travel faster than light, and you some how were able to travel 8 light years away from Earth. When you look back at Earth, with a telescope, you will be looking into the PAST, into the year 2000. If you were to have a radio out there too, the radio station would be playing exactly what was being played in the year 2000 also.

B.T.W. when you talk about "faster than light" are you talking abouth VISIBLE LIGHT, or gamma-rays?

reply to post by ALLis0NE


Visible light, gamma rays, radio, X-rays, microwaves, IR and ultraviolet all travel at the exact same speed. The difference is only in their energy, which is a factor of their wavelength.