what would happen if someone went the speed of light?

Originally posted by Neon Haze

Originally posted by racos
Isn’t the current theory relating to travelling at the speed of light say that as you approach it, things start to slow down and once passed the particles start to travel in reverse? I’m not sure if this would apply for a body of mass such as a person, it might do, but then there is the limiting factor which says nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

Mass as we know it cannot reach the speeds of light as the total energy required to push it to light speed would = more than all the energy in the universe.

You see the only way light is able to travel at the speed it does is due to having no rest mass. In other words it is energy.

You have to understand that mass and energy are interchangeable at incredible ratios.... One thimble full of sea water contains enough energy to power the world for 50 years.

Power to the People!!

NeoN HaZe

so if what your saying is true and mass cannot accelerate to light speed then light could not go light speed allow me to explain by quoting a physisit from u of illinois

definition of mass says that anything which has some gravitational pull on other objects has mass. By that definition, light has mass. This definition of mass is the same as the definition you get if you ask what ’m’ you have to multiply the velocity ’v’ by to get the ’momentum’ of an object. Momentum is a measure of how much stuff is moving which way. When things bump into each other, the total momentum doesn’t change even though it might be traded between the objects. Think of when two balls bounce off each other. Light has momentum, which means we can actually measure the push it gives to objects it runs into. This is the definition used by Einstein, for example in the famous equation E=mc^2.


[edit on 24-7-2008 by constantwonder]

Originally posted by constantwonder
Definition of mass says that anything which has some gravitational pull on other objects has mass. By that definition, light has mass. This definition of mass is the same as the definition you get if you ask what ’m’ you have to multiply the velocity ’v’ by to get the ’momentum’ of an object.

This totally depends on whether you subscribe to the standard model or not.

In the standard model light has no rest mass, as it cannot be at rest... (proven to be incorrect recently as a photon was captured in a cloud of supper cool particles)

In the standard model light has effective mass, in other words light can be observed to have properties as though it was to have rest mass.

I for one do not subscribe to the standard model as the be all and end all theory.

The standard model is very much like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit together but the picture is still all messed up.

There are other theories that we are currently working on that have some rather interesting things to say about the speed of light.... in fact even stating that light as we know it is not what we think it is.

If you would like me to point you to a few interesting sources to look into, then please feel free to U2U me.

All the best,

Power to the People!!

NeoN HaZe


[edit on 24-7-2008 by Neon Haze]

reply to post by Neon Haze


always lookin for good physics please gimmie anything you got ill look it over

correct me if im wrong but isnt their a physisit who is working on time travel and using the principle that light does indeed have mass to warp space so severely that it becomes a loop implying that the photons mass is what is doing the warping of sace time?

quote from physist Ron Mallet

Einstein himself found the notion upsetting, but he had only himself to blame. He showed that the effect we call gravity is a bending of space and time.

Anything that has mass or energy distorts the space and the passage of time in its vicinity, a bit like the way the surface of a soft couch is distorted when someone sits on it. Solving Einstein's gravitational field equations tells you just how space-time is distorted by mass and energy.

www.spacedaily.com...

fudge me now i think ive just opened a whole new arguement

sorry cant u2u yet havent enough posts built up



[edit on 26-7-2008 by constantwonder]

I'd say "you would die horribly" since it's really going to quickly, the skull of a human would shatter (since it's literally pushing you forward, it's the equivalent to putting a sledgehammer to a watermelon).
Of course I've never done too well in science.

reply to post by JamesRam


not true your mass would increase infinately bt you would not even notice everything else would increas at the same ratio

reply to post by constantwonder


I stand corrected, thank you for correcting me.

reply to post by constantwonder


I stand corrected, thank you for correcting me.

If someone were to reach the speed of light, it could be extrapolated that they would not experience time. They would perceive that they are at their origin and destination and every point between them simultaneously. It would take some time for them to actually cross the distance, but they would not experience it.

Traveling the speed of light doesn't make sense for anything with rest mass, though. Same as traveling less than the speed of light doesn't make sense for anything without rest mass.

Originally posted by johnsky
Yeah, thats the hard part about "speed of light" questions. If you're not talking about light itself, then you have to be using a reference point.

So, speed of light, related to what?

I mean, if you travel 75% light speed, something travels 75% light speed in the opposing direction, there's nothing else out there at the time to use as a reference point... couldn't you technically say one of you is standing still, and the other is traveling 150% light speed?

The universe has no fixed position. It's not like it's been pinned to a giant grid.

So you have to ask, in reference to what?

Ah, but you don't understand relativity. You could see something traveling one way from you at 75% c, and one thing traveling in the opposite direction at 75% c. However, if you were on one of those two objects, you would perceive the other as traveling away from you at maybe something like 85-95% c, not 150%. I don't feel like digging up the math right now, but there are well-verified and tested equations for it.

ie, if you were going one way from a fixed point at 99% c and something else was moving in the opposite direction at 99% c, you'd see them travel away from you at a bit more than 99% c, but still less than c.

The universe indeed has no fixed position. it does, however have a fixed maximum velocity which is the same from every frame of reference. At no point does anything ever appear to exceed the speed of light. Time and distance are affected by relative velocity.

Originally posted by Promecus
reply to post by Acidtastic

 

Ok, what is a zero G craft?

Either something made to move in an environment with no gravity (or, in the real universe, in microgravity or freefall), or something that NEVER MOVES EVER.

reply to post by constantwonder


Light has no REST mass. It has a relativistic mass proportional to it's frequency, which gives it momentum. It's all very interesting stuff.

well it is possible to imagine that if you go at the speed of light against the rotation of the earth then you would trigger a gravitational pull causing our entire solar system to go in the opposite direction therefore reversing time itself, there is also the theory that if you go with the rotation the earth and solar system would speed up causing the solar system to go forward in time.

But i have also heard theory's that if you move at the speed of light you would open a rift enabling you to travel back or forward in time. But doing so this would be dangerous a common mistake that can be made is if you change something of key importance in the past or future then everything after that moment could be completely destroyed. This may trigger a void collapse complely destroying the universe.

To travel at the same speed as light. You would probably have to break your self down to itzy bitty particles that could go right through the once who dont travel at the speed of light. And you would have to be resistance to all the friction and heat you would be exposed to when passing through these things at the speed of light. But making a powerful engine or a form of energy that small to boost you to the speed of light. We are not even close to that stage yet.

But a possibility in the future is to move the particles that produce friction around the transportation device.Like creating a artificial worm hole or a tunnel to reduce the friction and energy needed to get to higher speeds.

To be able to reach the speed of light you would need energy like (=) or higher then the speed you desire. When you have that you need to build something that can withstand the friction other particles you have to pass at the speed of light create.

I dont think we can travel at the speed of light without burning up or broken into pieces by friction.



[edit on 27.06.08 by spy66]

If a person was traveling at the speed of light. They will see all the colors that blends into light. Also lights that bounce off of planets, moons , and other heavenly bodies, will also be traveling at the speed of light. It all will be blend together. That person will go whack into a planet.

I'm Posting this vid because it is relevant in some aspect. It does however give an interesting theory that light speed is possible under certain conditions.

i`m not verry much into science but this seems rather not possible. It might be intresting as a debate if you belive it possible..

The speed of light, is quite fast.

You'd probably lose your hat, and go back in time to BEFORE your hat was invented.

Thus you could then 'invent' that particular style of hat again and not worry about the original hat.

If you HADN'T gone faster than the speed of light, then your hat would not have been invented.

But either way, you win.

reply to post by meliv


Things are not always as they seem.

What I see here are interpretations of the theory of relativity in reference to the speed of light travel, nothing more. Interpretations of how a theory may or may not apply.
There are a growing number of scientists that question this idea of matter not being capable of a velocity faster then the speed of light.
There is some potential of testing these interpretations with the LHC.
In my opinion, if you travel faster than the speed of light, you get there very fast.
There were those people who thought that if you traveled faster than the speed of sound, you would go deaf and mute. Now, we all know better.

The answer to the question from the original post is simple with special relativity. The traveler would arrive instantly at his or her destination as a previous poster mentioned relative to the traveler at light speed. If the traveler is accelerating at 1G of acceleration (after escape velocity of course), she will not experience a speed limit of light relative to her but will keep accelerating. Her mass will not increase relative to her, she will be able to traverse the universe and back in a lifetime (not counting the expansion of the universe calculation which I don't have on hand) but certainly 20 million ly round trip no problem. Relative to us she will take well above 20 million ly to complete her trip, as she approaches close to light speed relative to us on earth her mass will appear to increase as she is no longer traveling through the time dimension relative to us. She will appear to be existing in less 3D space for an longer period of time relative to our observation which we describe as having a greater mass. It will also appear to the observer that she is not accelerating as quickly as her initial constant (1G) due to her relative mass increase as she approaches the speed of light.

Hope this helps a little. Ask questions and I will try to clarify the concept.

Heh, even such "known facts" as mass and light speed properties can create diffrenent standpoints, like I've seen thoughout this thread.

I'll try to make an analogue to what CERN has dug up;
You have a spaceship. This spaceship starts to accelerate as you feed it energy. You feed it more and more energy since you want to break lightspeed. Then you find yourself nearly at lightspeed, but now, no matter how much energy you feed into your engines your ship won't go any faster. Then where does that energy go? As Einstien showed us energy and mass are the same. So instead of going and faster, your ship would begin to inflate, swelling due to the energy you try to feed it. All the extra energy will be added as mass on every object you carry with you on the ship and the ship itself. Well, the problem here is that you are feeding your engine, which is also only capable of handling energies in a known quantity, with a finite source of energy. And you do this over time, not instantaneously.

Therefore you could never break lightspeed with a quantity of energy. And that's the thing, you can't go past light when feeding your engine a known quantity of energy, you would need a source of infinte energy that could be released (or tapped into) in an instant. Anyone care for a blackhole? Yes, these supposed objects with infinite proportions would be key in a singularity drive that could toss your ship or whatever past lightspeed. Gogo LHC.

Oh yea, what CERN also proved was that no matter how much energy they put into accelerating particles they couldn't reach lightspeed. About 99.9999~% was their best shot. And yes, the particles had increased their wheight about x18 or so, depending on what they gave in input.

Edit:
Forgot to write that this applies even to yourself when going at all speeds, with your car and on your bike. Just on a way smaller scale.

[edit on 25-2-2009 by Clear]

According to Hawkins, if you travel faster than the speed of light, time it's self will slow down because it breaks the laws of physics. If we try to travel faster, we would simply slow down/stop.

I do not understand this theory though or the theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light when it is so clearly documented that when the universe was first formed, that it expanded FASTER than the speed of light.

Obviously, if the universe expanded faster than light speed... It HAS to be possible that we can harness the same energy which was used when the universe used to expand.

This has confused me greatly. Everything we are taught/told seems to contradict it's self.

there once was a lady named fay
who left in an unusual way
she got such a fright
going faster then light
she returned before she left yesterday

[edit on 9-7-2010 by Danbones]